The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-03-15
WOMAN'S WORLD

the love for some man who has been
too dull, or too careless to see that he
was passing by a treasure Probably
he only needed a WORD to call his at
tention TO it, probably he would have
been only too glad to clasp it to lis
heart, or he may have been only too
much of a coward to dare to claim It
for his own, but no word was spoken
the man passed on, and a life was
wrecked.
That men have small taste, and less
judgment in picking out wives the di-
vorce courts abundantly show, and the
chances are that women would display
more acumen. When a widower with
six children wants to marry again, he
generally picks out a flighty young
creature with pink and white COM
pleXion. Very likely she marries him
for his offer may be the best thing i'm
sight. but she would never on earth
pick him out if she had the proposing
to do. Her taste would run to Johnny
Twostep, and she would leave her
elderly sutton to the middle-aged wo-
man, who would mother his children
and make his home happy and COM
Portable, and bring peace to him. in
stead of misery and discord. When
Tom Poorman gets married he selects
the s1lliest and vainest and f1ightiest
girl of his acquaintance. but little
Miss Frivolity. who marries him and
keeps his nose on the grindstone the
balance of his life. would have known
better than to have proposed to an
impecunious clerk herself. She would
have asked somebody who was able to
pay her dry goods bills Many and
many a rich woman would be glad to
snare her fortune with the poor man
she loves, and who never asks her. if
she only dared tell him so: many an
old bachelor would be rescued from
privations of his clearinghouse and
landed in a happy home if only the
woman who is dying to do it could
call his attention to the fact of how
comfortable she could make him.
There isn't a bit of use in saving
that any woman with tact can do all
of this without popping the question.
There are men so dense they have to
be slugged with a fact before they ever
see it, and if they ever get to the brink
of a proposal they have to be showed
over, or else they back away.
If women had the right to propose It
would be a powerful incentive to do
mesticity. Now, when they have to
take any old thing that comes along,
they naturally feel that any kind of
housekeeping and cooking is good
would ever think of such a thing as
asking a man for his hand and heart
unless she could make him a good
home. Then, too, after she had won
the promise of her shrinking Adolphus,
she would have to face the ordeal of
the interview with his father. when
Adolphus' stern papa would demand:
Young woman, can you make my son
as comfortable as his mother has all
ways done?"
Why men should so strenuously op-
pose woman's right to pop the uues-
ton is hard to understand. One would
think they would welcome, rather than
shun it. To have beauty on her knees
before you, can surely not be an I'M
pleasant sight, to say nothing of the
scliG satisfaction there would be N
having some fair one weeping because
you were a good thing she couldn't pct.
And as matter of fact, being made
love to is not an unpleasant expert
e1ce. Quite the contrary.
And a man would always have the
right to decline. He could say mo -
or refer the matter up to a papa, and
when he saw a girl beginning to get
sentimental he could head her off by
telling her how much like a sister he
regarded her. And he would at least
know where he stood and who was
making gOo-Soo eyes at him and so he
would be safer. 1t would be much
less dangerous to face a business-Iike
proposition than to ward off the insid-
iOus attacks of those who are trying
to hypnotize you without your fielding
it out.
theoretically women's right to pro-
pose, the advantages of her doing It,
even. are indisputable. Practically she
longs to do it, but she lacks the cou-
rage of her convictions, for, strange as
it is. the sex that defies laws and con-
d!tiGns is a slave to conventions. and
the woman who has fought her way
into the front rank of the battle of
life can still be shooed back over the
fence by a flap of Mrs. Grundy's
skirts.