The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-01-10
POPPING THE QUESTION IN 1904.
A Year In Which the Proposing Is Wo- E mans Prerogative In Form and Fact.


 From the Chicago Chronicle.
 The new year is leap year, but the addition of another day to the month of February Is by no means its most inn portant peculiarity. For during this year, according to immemorlal tradition. it will be good form for women if they choose to propose matrimony to men in- stead of waiting for men to propose it to them.
 Most people of either sex would say without a moments hesitation that this leap year tradition had never been leap year custom and that 1t was either a joke or an absurdity without a thing in reason or in human nature to support it. But that is going too far, for there Is no folklore of any description, whether song riddle or proverb, that Is not, in the last analysis, founded on some immuta- ble principle of human nature and so 1t Is with women popping the question in leap year.
 The principle of human nature on which this leap year tradition Is founded Is the paradoxical one that while the verbal and external proposition of mar riage proceeds from the man, every per fectly normal and happy matrimonial match has its initiative in the heart of the woman. There are many kinds of courtship and marriage, but no marriage is ever happy one unless the woman courts the man, albeit without his know ing 1t.
 There is a profound and important req son why this must be so. It is woman's nature. not only in affairs of the heart, but in everything else, to be unable to change her spontaneous tastes and pref erences Her likes and dislikes display a remarkable .fixity. She does not make them and she cannot unmake them. Whether 1t be In the realm of cookery, art. music. dress. amusement, friendship or love, this principle controls her. She can be dragooned away temporarily from her natural bent. but she Is then a crushed woman. and sooner or later she will revert to her original impulse.
 .,One may say 1t Is exactly the same with man but 1t Is not A mans pref erences are largely a matter of ratioci- nation They are modified by argument. by expediency. by considera tions of in- terest, by his conceptions of duty. by his ideas of prudence. This makes his heart in matters of love sort of chessboard on which all these feelings contend for the mastery He is capable of loving woman for a great variety of reasons be- sides the involuntary admiration called falling in love.
 It Is on account of this essential differ euce between men and women that the woman's preference is the thing mainly to be considered If marriage is to be stable and happy.
 Happy Is the man. therefore whose wife by mere instinct pitched upon him as her ideal and woe to the man whose wife has swerved from her instinctive choice by the advice of parents. the love of money or any other influence to wed him.
 This is the reason that 1t is folly for a man to set out to win womans heart at least. by devotion The only wise thing he can do in this line is to stand around, accidentally and unconsciously, as it were. and let her do the rest.
 fair woman who has been begged and entreated to love a man until she has consented Is not worth having, for she will most assuredly make him mis- erable. It Is the woman who has court ed the man who makes a happy mar riage and happy home.
 It is certainly a most singular thing that while this is the eternal law and in- evitable course of true love 1t should still be contrary to nature for a woman to propose to a man in words. Yet so It is, and courtship forever remains the mans in form and the woman's in spir- 1t.
 Both inleap year and fin every other year the woman virtually proposes in every happy marriage.