H. C. Bunner

“ The symptoms of emotion working in her young breast on her own account were patent to even unobservant Tom, and they irritated him the more that he could not help contrasting to himself the gentle submissiveness of this tender young nature with Mary's cold-blooded self-sufficiency. "Here's a girl," he said to himself, "who would manage to get some time out of twelve days to talk alone with a lover who had come hundreds of miles to see her." And as he thought thus he cast a side glance at Bessie and noticed really for the first time how very pretty she was. ”

“ When two people have been married for five or ten years it is most wise and desirable that they should take careful thought to the appearance which they present one to another; for about that time such things are liable to be noticed, but in the first flash of young love a girl may have a hat on crooked and a young man may have his hair mussed, and yet each may look beautiful exceedingly in the other's eyes even when everybody else is wondering what he can see in her or what she can see in him. ”

“ MOST of the novelists—at least, most of those novelists who deal in lustrous-eyed heroines, and in heroes running from "a little over the middle stature" to "six feet of manhood"—try to create the impression that the period of matrimonial engagement is a pleasant one. It isn't. It never was—at least, not to any properly constituted human beings. And why on earth should it be pleasant and to whom should it be pleasant? Let us take the case of the engagement of John Smith and Mary Jones. ”

“ But, like all lovers, he thought first of his looks. As a matter of fact, it is only when two people are very much in love with each other that neither minds very much about the nice details of the other's appearance. ”

“ Gussie was a little thing with golden hair and bright blue eyes and a creamy complexion, but for all Tom noticed of her she might have been a red-headed mulatto. Gussie subsequently referred to him as "that silent gentleman who grinds his teeth while he drives."
The next day Tom committed the serious mistake of remonstrating with Mary. It sometimes pays to remonstrate with a woman, but not frequently, and never unless you know exactly what she is up to. Tom got nothing by his remonstrance except getting put in his place in a way which made him feel there was no getting out of it. ”

“ He saw that Bessie had wholly revised her judgment of him, and that as soon as he became conscious of conviction of error she began to rush to the other extreme and to accuse herself in her own mind of being a desperately wicked girl whose frivolity and stupidity and thoughtlessness must have been a great annoyance to this distinguished, high-minded, and earnest man whose knowledge and experience set him so many miles above her. ”

“ Thus painfully passed the time until the professor arrived to give the signal for what he called retirement. As for Tom, he retired to his room and walked the floor until three o'clock in the morning. There was no man more amazed than he in the State of Pennsylvania, and there were few more indignant. He examined himself as to his conduct during his whole period of engagement and he could not find that he had been remiss in the smallest particular. ”

“ It was in Florida in the winter-time that Tom had wooed and won Mary, and from the time that she said "yes" in January he had had no opportunity to see her until he managed to make a vacation for himself in August, when he arranged to see her at the ex-professor's summer home at Milford, Pa.—to see her there; not to stay at the house and have unlimited opportunities of talking with her and walking with her and gloating over her generally; for he had to stay at a hotel, the professor's house being full of young ladies in course of preparation for college. ”

“ And never before, probably, were six really pretty girls so outrageously slighted by a young man of marriageable age. Tom tried his best to be civil, and even courteous, but after he had had ten days of acting as escort and cavalier in general to the whole seven he came to the conclusion that they were the most helpless set of young women he had ever encountered, and that perhaps Mary was not so much to blame as he had thought for her neglect. ”

“ It is true that he has the promise of his heart's desire, but a promise is one thing and a certainty is another. The only certainty he has is that it will be six months sure and certain before he gets his heart's desire ”

“ Here are presented a few of the facts which make the period of marital engagement anything but a happy time for the contracting parties. Any married couple who tell you that they had a good time when they were engaged either tell a sinful fib or prove that they are idiots of an extremely low organization ”

“ A young man—I do not vouch for the tale—who committed matrimony suddenly and without warning, showed that he had encountered a lady of experience by the excuse which he gave for his unconventional haste. ”