Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-08-10
BAN ON POORSONINL LAW

Is absurd to expect any young man to
have achieved that much success.
If the young man has a bank ac-
count to match the girls fathers he
is bound to have inherited it. He
hasn't had time to make it for him
sell. Looking at the matter from a
business point of view, and with refer
ence to the girls bread and butter, it
is strange thing that it doesn't often
er strike fathers that the young man
who has successfully held the same
place IN an office or a store for four or
nve years and saved up a thousand
or two dollars while "clerking it, is a
thousand times better match for any
girl than the youth who never earned
dollar in his life, who knows neither
now to make money nor to
save it. and whose one star perform
ance in life consists in having been
born the son of rich man.
only too often, however, the we'll
to-do man turns cold and unfriendly
eye on the suitor for his daughter who
tells him that he has nothing but a
good situation with a chance of doing
better. Father sternly remarks that
when HE married he was able to sup
port his wife in the style in which she
had been accustomed to live
He forgets that he took his bride to
cottage or humble fiat, while he
expects his son-in-law to install his
daughter in n fine mansion. He ig-
nores the fact that his wife in their
early days did her own cooking and
made her own frocks. while he de-
mands that his daughters husband
shall provide her with retinue of
servants and millinery from Paris
or course, in trying to keep his
daughter from marrying a poor man,
the father truly says that he has moth
ing but her happiness at heart. He
believes that she will be perfectly mis-
erable living in less style, with fewer
clothes. and palmer surroundings than
those TO which she is accustomed.
That depends on the girl.
If she is the kind of a girl whose
heart is stuffed with chiffons and
whose soul will go to Paris when she
dies, she will never be indiscreet
enough to fall in love with a man who
isn't strictly eligible from a monetary
point of view. She is just as incapa-
BILE of loving a man without a nose as
one without big bank account
But the girl whose true heart beats
Just as faithfully and warmly under
velvet as 1t would under homespun
whose eyes, unblinded by wealth and
fashion, see the man and not the posi-
ton, and who is willing to exchange
nlte OF the tlnSel OF society Tor the
fine gold of an honest love, knows
what she is about when she picks out
her own particular Jack and refers
him to Papa.
And Papa makes the mistake of his
life when he refuses his blessing for
no better reason than that the young
man can't support the girl in the style
in which she is accustomed to live.
There is, also, this other point of
view, that IL the girls father has rails
ed her with such luxurious tastes that
she cannot be happy on the income
that an ordinarily successful man can
offer her II is nothing but common
fairness for her fond and foolish par
ent to provide her with a dowry that
will offset her demand for frills.
That is one way around the difficult
ty, and certainly 1t is quite as just as
TO expect the young man to be able to
humor the unreasonable extravaganza
and wastefulness in which the daugh-
ters of so many rich parents are
reared.
AS it is. the average worthy young
man fights shy of the rich girl. The
idea of breaking into a family In
which he is not desired because he is
poor is not attractive. Neither is 1t
alluring to feel that his wife is looked
upon as a martyr for having married
him.
The modern father must adopt a
kinder attitude, If he doesn't want to
be left with a lot of old maid daugh-
ters on his hands.