WOMAN PROPOSES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21165, 23 April 1932, Page 6 (Supplement)

WOMAN PROPOSES.

LEAP-YEAR LESSONS. QUE,EN VICTORIA'S EXAMPLE. Flicking back the calendar with a busy finger, the modern girl has scarcely a thought to spare for the once fateful figure of February 29. Whether any woman who wanted to propose marriage ever waited for Leap Year is unknown, but that women could, and did pay their addresses with dignity is richly proven, we are told by an overseas paper. Proposing to Albert. The august example is, of course, Queen Victoria, whose proposal to Prince Albert was neat, graceful and unambiguous. The Queen afterwards acknowledged that it was " a nervous thing " to do, but once having screwed her courage to tho sticking point, she Neither feared her fate too much Nor her deserts were small. To fear to put it to the touch, To win or lose it all. To her beloved uncle, King of the Belgians, she made rather light of the actual proposal. "/My mind is quite mad© up, and I told Albert this morning of it." In reality, it was a more tender declaration. The Queen received her young cousin alone, and made some pretence of ordinary conversation. " After a .few minutes I said to him that I thought he must be aware why I wished him to come here —and that >t would make/ me too happy if he would consent to do as I wished (marry me). Then we embraced each other, and he was so kind and so affectionate. Well Done. Even Victoria herself may have thought quite justly that the affair did as much credit to her head as to her ardent young heart. " I have got well through this with Albert," she announced to Lord Melbourne.

Putting aside all the complexities of her Royal state, the motives which moved the verv young Queen to declare her sincere affection were not altogether remote from thoi.e which have caused many a humbler lass to give a helping hand at the last moment to the traditional wooer.

Left to himself, Queen Victoria very sensibly remarked, Prince Albert would never have asked in marriage the Queen of ; " he would never have picEumed to take such a liberty. Nine times out of ten, the girl who decides on frankness is probably moved by the reflection that, like those unfortunate people who are apparently incapable of going home once they have said good-night to their hosts, the youth who does not propose is behaving like the eat in that lost fable, who let " I dare rot " wait upon " I would." Blighted Romance.

Sometimes even this tender expedient has. been known to fail, as in the case of James and Jane Soursob, whose course of true love ran so smoothly that it Ecarecly seemed to move at all. For 20 years the little country district in which they lived had witnessed their fitaid and uneventful friendship. _ At 40 Jane decided to drop a hint to stir James' romantic imagination. She spoke to him of all their old companions in youth, now happily married, and then paused delicately. "We ought to get married ourselves, Jim," she added. Only honest incredulity met her gaze. " Who'd have ns?" said James. Many Inventions. In remote country districts, conversation peppermints, which announce, " I "would like to know you better." and, on the reverse side, " Will you be mine ?" have been known to bridge the chasms which lie between romance and ring. Their distinctive advantage was in not being too committal, but leaving an opening for Euitable encouragement. If one can credit old magazines, flowers once filled the same office. There was a whole code of elaborate meanings attached to botany, which we arc to belie re the young man of the period mastered as part of his education. It was the day of dropped handkerchiefs and bended knees, of subtle acrostics and aligned puzzles in rhyme breathing passion in every hidden word. Once Serious. The original Leap-Year proposals partook of none of these ambiguities. A Scottish Act of 1288 is said to sum up its spirit;. "It is statut and ordained that during the rein of hir maist blessit Majcstc for ilka yeare known as lepe yeare, ilk maydn ladye of both high and low estate shall hac liberie to bespeke ye man she likes albeit he refuses to taik her to be his lawful wyfe be shall be mulcted in ye sum ntio purnlis or loss." In Lngland in 1606 it had become a part of common law that " as often as leap year doth return, the ladyes have the sole /privilege during that time it continucth of making love, either by words or looks, as to I hem seemeth proper," and no man might receive their addresses with slight or contumely. A silk dress was the traditional penalty for the ungallant in later years, and probably many a length of delicate and slippery material was counted cheap at the price.