The evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1907-1908, 1908-01-27
COURTSHIP CHANGES.
Modern Girl More Critical, but Easier
to Win,

1t was customary for girls to be ex-
tremely. even slavlshly, obedient to the
parents in the good old days-that Is to
say. when they did not rebel and with
amazing ~audacity defy papa. In the
former M usual role a girl was merely
the echo of her mother, suffused with
bushes, and, vide the novelist of that
day, "shy as a fawn," she gave no man
opportunity to press his suit save
under the maternal eye. "An obedient
daughter makes a good wife," and She,
the acquiscent bride, went to the altar
with perhaps scant personal knowledge
of her husband-to-be, says Helen Old
field in the Chicago Tribune. On the
contrary. she was sometimes so up
lifted by love to deeds of daring as to
run away with the lover upon whose
suit her parents frowned, and, clipping
to Jersey or 10 North Carolina, with
luck she was married by a convenient
preacher in the nick of time, before
papa, holly pursuing, had crossed the
border. 1t all depended upon whose
"steed was the best"
Runaway matches in these days are
few and far between, for the good and
sufficient reason that the modern par
ent knows his business better than to
interfere when his daughter has made
up her mind to choose her own hus-
band, with the parental consent If 1t
be forthcoming, but quite cheerfully
without 1t should 1t be withheld. Pa
ternal authority was much more puis-
"a In We olden time than today. Tho
modern girl makes her lovers path far
more easy for him than by any pos
slbility the girl of the past could do.
Men wereA really and truly, masters of
their homes. Surprising a father
of a century ago objected to his daugh-
ter's being married, he might refuse to
allow young men to visit at his house,
or when he preferred to be courteous
he had only to assume that the calls
were for himself, and take the callers
to his office to smoke and drink and
talk politics or neighborhood news,
away from the ladies, who never com
mitted the social crime of invading the
precincts devoted 90 the men of the
family.
Should n youth be so bold as to sig
Nifty that his visit was meant for the
ladies' he was allowed to see them all,
collectively, Sisters, cousins and
aunts,' and the mother of the family.
Was a wooer persistent and a daughter
refractory, she might be sent to visit
relatives at a distance, which. since
railways and telegraphs, to say moth
ing of motors, we're n~on-existent, and
postal facilities we're circumscribed,
usually was effective in separating tho
couple. Moreover, bread and water
diet in a locked bedroom was not con
sidered too drastic nor too childish a
D. H. -fr .ftAa AAGa1 hnT
parents and carried on a clandestine
courtship with her lover. and so had to
be reduced to reason and obedience to
her fathers authority.
When we reflect how many diff
culties which obstructed the path OF
true love in those days have been re-
moved. it Is hard at first to reconcile
the present lack of marriages with the
plentiful number of the past. The girl
of today turns green with envy when
her great aunts tell her how many
offers her grandmother had. Herein,
however, lies the chief reason for deny
ing the fact thai the modern girl is
really more easy to win than the old
fashioned one. The modern girl is by
far more critical OF the modern man
than the ld-fashioned girl ever pre-
snmed TO be, and Is much less willing
to abandon her freedom than was the
damsel of the past, whose single idea
of success in life appears to have been
to make a good marriage, financially
and socially.
A woman's determination to marry
only when she finds a man who really
suits her has been foisted by her wider
education and by the fact that so many
careers impossible to the women OF a
former day have been opened to her
a fact which naturally renders her
practically Independent. 1t was q diff
ferent matter when girls were taught
that it was beneath them to work.
Then they were obliged to marry or
spend a life of dependence upon par
ents, brothers or well married sisters.
Now any woman who chooses a fend
for herself and earn her W livelihood
and is, consequently, at liberty to
marry the man whom she wishes, in
stead of the man who wants to marry
her.