HOME TOPICS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13926, 7 December 1908, Page 3

HOME TOPICS.

"GOOD " OLD-FASHIONED COURTSHIP."

I often wonder what, the loving parents of our land would do in the way of lamentation if facts could be adduced in their own families to prove the reasonableness of fiction. In modern magazine literature the short-story form, -which was never intended to trace the rough and tortuous course of love, is consecrated wholly to that difficult service. The result is—if I may refer without malice to the plots of a few late stories—that all our love-making arises suddenly out of nowhere, and runs to its. consummation at marvellous speed.

A lady of family, and presumably of sense, is stranded in mid-desert by her extinct automobile. Whereupon (the t author allows himself one brave touch of naturalism) she sits down to weep. The form of a solitary man appears out- of the waste. They walk together towards the settlements for the matter of two clays, saying little, but thinking much—though we are not. let into the matter of their thought as subsequent events go to prove. Arrived within sight of habitation, the rescuer submits to the fate reserved for all heroes in fiction, and makes the inevitable proposal. She accedes with an alacrity that would be expressed outsido a sentimental piece only by the boys' exclamation, "You bet!"

The movement, of the story ends here, and with it our intoxication. Reason begins to clamour. And so we are told in a final sentence that the man is not a tramp of the dosert, but, like the woman he has won, the flower of fashion, and the pole of an enormous system of wealth. In short, fiction would have us believe not only that love springs into full bloom at first sight, but that marriage usually follows before dewfall. And since our heroes and heroines are always men and women of quality—wealthy, cultured, selfpossessed— dangerous and unseemly haste represented by their actions must be the prevalent style of courtship in the very best circles of our society. How then, oh, how, must it bo with the chambermaid and the sorving-man? Biddy, the cook, is precipitately wooed, won, and married, all in the course of a minute! Were I a father and thought such things could be, and if my children had only a modest endowment of discretion, I know I should keep them under surveillance day and night; and, like Tristram Shandy's father, pas« my natural lifetime composing a system of education for thorn. It occurs to me that life must be a sad and dismal discipline alike for the writers who create this kind of love affair, and for the folk who take their ideas of the tender passion from such masters. I myself confess to a feeling of tedium in the perusal of a three-volume novel. But I would willingly resort to one for the treat of a good, old-fashioned courtship as they are said actually to have occurred when our grandmothers were of marriageable age; and as they did—if personal bias must come out at last —when I went a-sparkin'. Then John would "drop in" from the neighbouring farm and sit with the family on the front porch, talking of crops and markets, births, deaths, and marriages, until a late bedtime; although the new polish on his boots made all disguise of no avail, and proclaimed that he had come for a very different purpose. At last all would retire but Katie. And then John's boots, that had erst been tucked somewhat awkwardly beneath his chair, would produce themselves, dramatically, and begin .to flash in the moonlight. They two would then withdraw to the front gate, so convenient to lean upon, or to the kitchen, and what they said only the moon heard, or the cat, yawning beneath the stove.

I think I should protest with the loudest against old-fogeyism. But if our short story literature of love is a true transcription* of the love of real life, then I am happy to be ranked among the ancients, knowing that my superannuation insures mo against this dreadful kind of mortality the crowding of years into a day, and of all the joys we have worth remembering into an li our.—The Atlantic Monthly.

WOMAN'S ATTRACTIVE AGE. "When we speak of. the attractiveness of woman, we really mean the attractiveness of woman to man. " With men the question of when a woman is most attractive is; doubly complicated, because it depends not only on the woman, but on the taste of the man himself. Not many years ago, if this question had been asked, the answer would have been unhesitatingly made that a woman is most attractive between the ages of 16 and 20. Most of the heroines of classical fiction are mere children.

"It must be confessed that,, with rare exceptions, tho modern man prefers something more sophisticated than sweet 16, though it is undeniable that the unintelligent woman is at her best when she is in her teens. This is easily understood. "Almost all young creatures are beautiful, and heaven gives to even the homeliest women a day of grace between 16 and 18, when she is pretty .with the prettinees of rcsh checks and dewy eyes and glossy hair. " Twenty-three is an ideal time 0' the clock for the woman of average intelligence, unless .she happens to be college bred. If she has had the misfortune of acquiring the higher education she is still top-heavy with learning, and it requires ten years more for her to find out that, for a woman to be thoroughly charming she should have had a good education and forgotten it.

"For the woman, however, who is meant to bo human nature's daily food, no age is moro attractive that 23. She is in the first flush of having just arrived. The slim promises of girlhood have been realised in the .full beauty of womanhood. She still has illusions, but they arc not delusions. She still is innocent, but no longer ignorant. " Her intercourse with the opposite sex has a. certain frankness and comradeship that is not the least of her charms. She seems so safe that she is deadly dangerous. Statistics show that more women marry at 23 than at any other age. " The bachelor women is at her best at 30, because she is consciously charming. She has all the advantages with which nature originally equipped her and she has added to them the frills and furbelows of . ait. She has learned to enhance her good looks by better dressing, and to put a red shade on the lamp and sit with her back to the light. She has also learned how to talk, and, bettor still, how to be a fascinating listener.

THE HUSBAND AND HIS WIFE'S

FROCKS.

Just 'as a coachman's or a footman's livery is the property not of the wearer, but of the master who pays for it, so, it seems, by a recent decision at Brompton County Court, the frocks of a wife are the property of tho husband who has paid the dressmaker's bill. Evidently, to judge by the extraordinary flutter that the County Court decision has made, this has never been clearly- understood before. It is to be hoped, says a writer in the Lady, that few husbands will be so illnatured as to use it. as a weapon. Imagine a man retaliating on his wife if she has offended him by threatening to take away her newest model gown ! On the other hand, wives, if husbands use their power, can retort by insisting that if their clothes are not their property, the real owners must keep them in order. " You must really send your pink dross to be cleaned," a wife could say. But it would be small consolation to hor to' be able to say it if meanwhile " your pink dress" was seized by the brokers to appease the appetite of "your creditors." It is easy to make a joke of the situation, but it is not a very good joke, and suggests that the position of a married woman with regard to her property ought to be cleared up. She ought to know " where she is."