RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33453, 7 February 1974, Page 10

RANDOM REMINDER

SAVOIR FAIRE

Distant are the days when it was customary for a young suitor to go down on bended knee before the object of his affection and plead his cause; it must have been a merifully brief assignment for some. And when successful; the swain would be subjected to further torture of a mental nature in seeking out the girl’s father and asking for her hand in marriage. This, more likely than not, could turn out to be an inquisition. Questions were asked and answered, with all the parry and thrust of counsels at law indulging in sharp verbal exchanges —some of them decidedly one sided. As in the instance of an Edwardian era head of the house who bluntly told the young swain that he had worked hard all his life to keep the wolf from the door and the fact that his daughter had bought one home did not mean that he was allowing her to be sacrificed at the altar.

But times have changed. Now it seems that it is more courtesy than custom to even broach the subject to the head of the house, who watches the cooing—and gets the billing. However, it is just as well perhaps that when young romanticists are pressing their suit they are sometimes left with creases on their foreheads. A friend of ours, a spinster, delights in recalling the experiences of her two attractive young sisters who either by instinct or intuition distinguished with no beg pardons between the eligible and ineligible—of a veritable procession and succession of young gallants haunting their home with amorous intent. They seemed, it transpired, were given short shift until, in both instances, the right men hove on their horizons. The older of the two, who before marriage graduated with honours as an M.A. (history), was being ardently pursued by a likeable young man—an apprentice electrician—who desperately wished

to marry her. But he was given what is colloquially known as the brush-off. She told him that circumstances compelled her to decline a marital arrangement with a man of no pecuniary resources.

“Er,” "he stammered, “I don’t get you?” Back came her icy reply: “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” Her younger sister, on the other hand, also a graduate, who incidentally obtained a degree in Psychology, displayed finesse rather than forthrightness in giving one swain in particular, her interpretation of the meaning of persona non grata. They had been sitting on the patio alone in the moonlight. Not a word broke the silence and the stillness for half an hour until she asked him what would he do if he had money. He threw out his chest in all the glory of his young manhood and told her he would travel. He felt her soft warm hand slide into his. When he looked up she had disappeared. And in hand was a 50c piece.