THE "SECOND BLOOMING,"

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12786, 1 November 1919, Page 5

THE "SECOND BLOOMING,"

PERILOUS TIME IN MAN’S LIFE. > SWEET YOUNG THINGS AND OLD FOOLS. The good old method whereby women get rich quick, the breach of promise . suit, seems to be passing away (says the “San Francisco Chronicle”). Now that women have tjie vote, as men have it, and insist upon on' equality in economic life, it may be that the breach of prunise laws will be wiped out, or. at hast permitted to fall -into Mr Cleveland’s famous state of innocuous desuetude. Yet to date there have been hundreds of thousands of breach of promise suits from which women who claimed to have been injured by man’s duplicity and their ’own worse than' wonkress have realised comfortable little sums as halm to injured feelings and mounded hearts. At the same time the breach of promise suit has never , been a real American institution. " v . In the' last hfty years, since American girls Lave become independent and have not, as a rule, demanded formal engagements, as portions, dowries, dots, etc., have no place in the American code of marriage, breach ofi promise suits have beCn less frequent, thoug.i breaches of promise—such as they may have been—have very probably become more numerous. AMERICAN GIRL’S INDEPEND- , ENCE. She was deemed a poor sort of a girl seme years ago who was not engaged to at least three men at the same time If ohe of them defaulted, it is not likely that the girl was going to make much of a row about it. Probably her parents did not know that she was engaged to any of the young men, and if tiiey did they probably disapproved. Then the American girl is active and has abounding faith in her ability to win another, other and Mh°'- homes for herself than the one she loitj -ausuy the men sued for breach of promise are beyond the age of puppy love. Rarely do we find a man under thirty sued for breach of promise. Most of tho defendants in breach of promise suits are over forty, many ol them over sixty. The “ second blooming,” the second boyhood which probably comes before tho second childhood. between tho ages of sixty and seventy, is the halcyon period of the, brca- li of promise su't Tile well-to-do single man over fifty is a favourite mark for the lady who sues for breach of promise. Not long ago an Irish-born girl got heavy damages in New York from a suitor who was over seventy. The girl was a dashing beanty of twenty-four or tivenly- , five. had been but a few months in the United States. The old man, who died soon after paying 250,000 dollars damages, was in his dotage. Just the same, the girl showed scores of high-powered missives from the ancient Romeo, and her beauty and modesty of demeanour were so great that a jury awarded her enormous damages. She took the money, went back to Ireland,, and married the young man of her choice. Some cynic has said that “when a man’s in love he is a fool and writes himself down one. ,, There is no doubt that most of ns who write have at one or another time written ourselves down fools. Few of ns who have written love lettera have failed to recognise ourselves in the letters printed in newspapers during breach of promise ’ suits, that the * readers may laugh I themselves sick anthem. * MAN IN LOVE FOOL AND WRITES , HIMSELF DOWN ONE. ■ Few men who have written of love to women—God help the man who. has not—but have seen their own letters in those printed during the progress of breach of promise cases. Yet we have all laughed at the slush and said: ,** The fool 1 He should he soaked for .writing each-mushi” We should know, we wrote it, or we will writ© it, some day ourselves. For the fact that your nearest and dearest pal has been hooked and shown up in a breach of promise case carries with it no security for you. There are plenty of men who have read and said, “I did not think old Jim was such a silly ase,” and a year or two afterward .saw their own slush in tho newspapers, I Almost all, of our American breach' I of promise cases result in the publi;cation of theso “slush” lettere. The coldest, cleverest, most businesslike, methodical and restrained of meii write the most ■ astonishingly absurd ►and gushy love letters. The middleaged, widower or divorcee who is paying alimony gushes after a fashion that, ai fourteen-year-old schoolboy with Iris nret case of puppy lore would be •shamed to indite. The boy is wise and a bit ashamed. ■He takes a slate and writes: Rosie Reach Is a peach, her a glimpse, of tho magic phrase and forthwith erases it with a healthy expectoration and much rubbing of cuff. He does not permit what he .writes to endure. > t The middle-aged mnn not only writes it, he permits it to endure. He is even so foolish as to stick it into on envelope. He will even address the envelope to a lady to whom he should { particular not to address-it. He will | even make such a jolly jack of himself I ™ thrust tho addressed envelope | into a mail box. He may then kiss a good portion of um bank account a fond good-bye. | ATOSHT LETTER STOWED AWAY FOR FUTURE EXPERIENCE. I Within a few hours she has that mushy, gushy, mushy, everything but I cushy letter in a saie-deposit box 1 where it will remain until‘her lawyer! oaks for it. J I ' Mo ?- mature men, men who have ! •cored decided successes in various 1 Tl. rL*u e ’P ut tbrir names at the bottom of silly love letters. How is this for a sample of a letter written by a head of a great chain of stores dealing in women’s apparel P \ M Po?pTt“ fc 0wu ' Hippity Pippity Does her love her own Oozy Woozv Toozie zis morning P His has been vo’v bad boy m being naughty and goiii’ out of town on business when if he had iuzzuhis own way he would he withz his m'H^W- J TS? Plfcy rr? oppit al | (le time. 0!d Oozy Woozy Toozv can hardly wait Pntil he can kiss her little Toozio •w oozio Oozies of handsie, wauzv danzies. ■ That and about eighty more like it cost Oozy Woozy Toozie IS.OOOdoI. His best, friends said .that he should have lieen willing to pay ten times that sum to keep such stuff out of the papers. Moat of ns will agree with his friends, EVEN THE COLLEGE PROFESSOR , IS NOT IMMUNE. H®-*® is part of a letter written by > famous professor of sociology at a Croat university to a love pirate; j White ' Lady ° f &11 11,0 To ir unworthy little boy deplores Ids ntfce- unworthiness to kiss your little vaom; feet. But ho missed you last »ighf ( and the first thing this blessed taononc he is sending you one million trilUM hugs and kisses., He is a very ttnisersble Tittle boy. and will not bo jfcapoy until ho sees his beautiful white JroeeOcsh, which, he hopes, will be this over.ijg at 8, ; Several score letters, all worse than tho above, cost the eminent student and lecturer on the science of human -behaviour 7000 dol, and would probably han owl him toon wa* it not tat the

fact that even famous college professors are rarely if ever rich. • J The author of tho appended gem of I purest mush serene was, and prob-’ ably still is, one of the ablest corpora*, tion organisers in the world. 1 ' Peaches and Cream: | If all the flowers in all tho world 1 were placed in one field and each flower represented a woman, there would be ono flower that obscured all the rest, and that flower would represent you, Peaches. Peaches, when she turned up on the witness stand, was a henna blonde and admitted to throe former husbands, as well as several temporary alliances, m the course of some thirty-five years. Her mature and successful lover was rich indeed, but henny blondes of 35 do not appeal to American jurymen, i and all she got .was 17,500d01., which was quite a price to pay for writing letters like the one printed hereinabove to a hehna blonde. WHEN THEY START BABY TALK THERE IS NO HOPE. Here is a letter written by a man rated as one of the keenest all-around’ fellows to be found in New York, tie is a successful business man, a thorough man of the world, knows his way about the stage doors and tho lobster palaces, has made his pile and seen many of his friends gouged by women, yet when his time came h© fell, and this is’what he put ou paper: Tweeteat Tuthie Too; Your ioklo boy wants -to kith (kiss) da lovely eyes and make ’em well again after the nathy thun (nasty sun) hath made ’em thore (sore). ■ Meanwhile here ith thumthing to make my Twee tost Dm (girl) ’appy until 'er ickle boy thees her thoon. Phew! When, as the girl said, " thev make baby talk at you. you’ve got ’em on your little waggon right.” You sure have. That effusion of infantile paralysis of the intellect cost Mr Business Man exactly 47,000d01. to settle out of court. The other letters were so much worse than the one printed above that he dared not let them be read in court. That highly-educated and highlyseasoned men of middle or old age should write such letters seems to be an enigma. It is explained on the basis that when a man is in the throes of sex passion ho becomes a boy for time being.