BACHELORS BEWARE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIX, Issue 21968, 21 May 1941, Page 8

BACHELORS BEWARE

MARRIAGE PROPOSALS WITHOUT WORDS You don’t even have to propose to a girl nowadays to find that you’re caught up out of the ranks of happy bachelors—or alternatively, pulled up in Court for breach of promise. Not in America, anyway states a London paper. The girls always get the best of it over there, and there have recently been astonishing instances to prove this. The romantically-minded young man has only to utter one loving sentence, and he’s “for it.” “Love the Conqueror” Albert Palmer, of New York State, sent a locket to Helene MacDonald. Even then, he would have escaped had he not made the mistake of putting his portrait inside the locket. “A. P. to H. M., 25/12/40,” might be deemed an expression of a matrimonial intent, and then again it might not, but a jury in City Court could see but one meaning in that portrait. They appreciated how Helene’s heart fluttered, when she gazed on the precious miniature in its circlet of gold, and awarded her £SOC because Albert shied at marrying her. If Richard Nolan had been content with merely writing letters to Dorothy Kennedy, he might have escaped the fate that came to him. For they were not ardent love letters at all—Just ordinary. ’But then Richard cut an article from a newspaper, entitled “Love the Conqueror," and sent it to the young woman. Across the article he scribbled “Read this.” Time went on. It came about, as so aften happens, that Richard’s affections cooled off. He stopped writing even just ordinary letters to Dorothy. So Dorothy brought suit against Nolan in the Circuit Court, and at the trial her counsel introduced in evidence a dozen missives, all in the handwriting of the defendant. The presiding Judge examined them and declared that while they were indiscreet from the standpoint of a confirmed bachelor, yet they could not of themselves be constructed as an offer of marriage. Straightway, counsel backed them up with “Love the Conqueror,” and the Court decided that when Nolan had penned the words: “Read this,” he had involved himself sufficiently to lay the matter before the jury. Miss Kennedy smiled engagingly at the twelve good men and women of the jury, who retired for five minutes and returned with a verdict for three hundred pounds. In the old days it was far simpler. If William loved Mary, William first saw Mary’s father. Then William, according to the rules then in force sought out Mary and said: “I love you. Will you marry me?” But nowaday*, it seems, the unfortunate William need not utter any words of love at all. It takes a very little, ■in the light of the instances this article records, to make a declaration of marriage.