The Savannah morning news., 1904-05-01
ASKING PAPA.

truth he would confess that the most
unpleasant quarter of an hour that he
ever spent was that in which he faced
a cold and unromantic father and ask
ed him for his daughters hand. OF
course, if there were extenuating cir
cumstances in the way OF money or po-
sition-if he could offer the girl auto
mobiles and a cottage at Newport-the
situation was robbed of most of its
horrors, and the parental blessing a
foregone conclusion. If, however he
was an impecunious youth, with moth
ing to give his wife but the love of his
heart, and the work of his hands he
would sooner have faced gattling
gun than the old mans stern inquiry:
Young man, can you support my
daughter in the style IN which she mas
been accustomed TO live?"
A father always thinks that II Is ms
first duty to ask that momentous ques~
tfon, and the majority of them feel
that they should move heaven and
earth to keep their daughters from
marrying If the young man says NO.
It's reasonable too, from their point OF
view, and a hard-headed old business
man isn't going to take any young
man TO support, not IL he knows 1t.
Moreover. he considers that a girl is
simply throwing herself away to mar
~ fellow whose entire salary
wouldn't much more than pay for her
silk petticoats, and that he is just as
much bound to keep her from doing it
as he would be to prevent her from
committing suicide in any other way.
SO he pooh-poohs the very suggestion
so scornfully that the young man, hurt
and insulted at the intimation that he
is a fortune hunter, and that he is
asking too much Of a sacrifice of the
woman ne wants to marry, has to be
either exceptionally tenacious of pur-
pose, or excessively in love, If he
doesn't abandon his suit right then
and there. Many a rich old maid owes
her lonely life, and her loss of good
husband, to her fathers determination
that she should not marry any man
who wasn't standing ready to offer her
just as many frills as she was used to
having.
OF course, a father is doing no more
than his duty, and is strictly within
his rights when he tries to protect his
daughter from grinding poverty, but
when he goes further than that, and
objects to a worthy man simply be-
cause he can't offer girl all the lux
uries that she has been accustomed to
the trips abroad, the summers at the
sea, the opera box and the house on a
fashionable street.-the is going too far.
He is demanding that the young man
start where he is leaving off. 1t has
taken him many years of hard work to
be able TO afford his family the luxury
in which they live now, and 1t is abb
surd to expect any young man 10 have
achieved that much success If Jack
has a bank account to match Maud's
fathers, he is bound to have inherited
IL. He hasn't had time to make il for
himself. Simply looking at the matter
from business point of view and with
reference to Mauds bread and butter,
it is a strange thing that it doesn't
Oftener strike fathers that the young
man who has successfully held the
same place in the office or store for
four or five years, and saved up a
thousand or two dollars while clerk
ing it, isn't a thousand times better
match for any girl than the youth who
never earned a dollar in his life, who
neither knows how to make money or
save il, and whose one star perform
arlce and claim to recognition consists
in having been born the son of rich
man.
II is one of the queerest things on
earth why so many American parents
seem to have such a horror of their
children ever being brought into actual
contact with the practical side of life.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred
Maud's wealthy father begun life as a
poor boy. He clerked for somebody.
he saved up a little money and got
an interest in a business for himself:
he married the girl he loved and they
went TO housekeeping in an humble
cottage in a back street, where his
wife helped him to economic and work
and they were happy as happy could
be. 1t was an experience out of which
they brought nothing but good, but
the very idea that Maud should go
through 1t Is appalling TO Maud's fatn-
er. who sets up kind of diamond sun
burst and opera box standard for her
suitors. and expects them to either put
up or shut up.
So he turns a cold and unfriendly
eye on Jack, who modestly tells him
that he has a good situation, with
chance of being taken into the firm
in year or two, and sternly remarks
that when he married he was able to
support his wife in the style in which
she had been accustomed to live. He
forgets that he took his bride to a cot
tage, while he expects Jack to install
Maud In fine mansion. He forgets
that his wife. in their early days, did
her own cooking, and made her own
frocks, while he demands that Maud's
husband shall provide her with re-
tinue of servants and millinery from
Paris
1t is not to be denied that the pa
rental attitude towards poor Jack is
pretty hard on Maud, and enormously
increases her chances of being an old
maid. If she is not to marry, except
in defiance of her family any man
who can't provide her with all the
luxuries to which she has been accus-
toned, it narrows down her chances
to a few gilded youths who have been
fortunate enough to inherit money,
and. alas, there is never enough of
these in any community to go around.
Moreover, such is the inconsistency
Of fortune, it frequently happens that
Maud, who bestowed her hand upon
young Dives in her youth, because he
could give her the truffles and cham
payne to which she was accustomed,
finds by middle life that he is quite
unable to give her plain bread and
butter, while Jack has reached that
pith of success in business that he
could feed his family on humming
birds tongues and peacock brains, If
they happened to relish those dainties
This Is not a phase of the subject that
Mauds father coDaiders very often, but
II happens so frequently that the
choice in marrying a rich young man.
or poor Woodworking young man,