The Ideal Wooing.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXX, Issue XVII, 25 April 1903, Page 1187

The Ideal Wooing.

(By the Bachelor of Experience.) The poet, when he sings of love, generally surrounds his man and maid with sylvan beauties, conjuring up for our pleasure rural glades, purling streams, and sweet-scented fields. My object will be to show, however, that the ideal wooing is not carried on under these conditions, for I take a practical view of all such matters, and consider that, even when he is working up a love-story to its climax, a novelist should keep an eye on our climate, and provide his hero with an overcoat, and his heroine with a water-proof cape.

There will I make thee beds of roses, And a thousand fragrant posies. A cap of flowers, and a kirtle Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

Yes, yes. Master Christopher Marlowe, this is all very well —for a summer afternoon! But how about when it rains? Why, I will e’en parody thee in that case:

But when the meadows full of splosh is. We’ll true love make 'neath mackintoshes. Or underneath —pray choose, my Molly— The harmless, necessary brolly.

The first verse will, of course, appeal to sentimental people more than my hum-drum version; but mothers of families who are in the habit of dealing with bad colds will admit that there is, after all, something in the latter mode of putting it. SUMMER-DAY WOOING

is certainly ideal, but such wooing is for a summer day only. Consider our long, eold winter time, when there is mud and snow, and our long, cold sum-mer-time, when there is also mud (and occasionally snow); consider our bleak spring and our inhospitable autumn, and then deny, if you can, that much of an ideal wooing is carried on indoors. Take two young people and put them in a village or small country town; let them live somewhere where they are bound to meet each other at least once a week, and perhaps twice; let them attend the same chureh and belong to the

same tennis club. Then, if they grow attached to one another, what a grand new interest adds fragrance to their lives! Think how surprisingly regular he will become in his church-going, and what a sudden eagerness she will develop to test her new Slazenger racquet! Then let him become a pretty frequent visitor at her house, and let her evince an extraordinary liking for one of his sisters. This will lead to constant encounters, when, it is true, they will not, in all probability, have an opportunity of saying much to each other. But what of that? Perhaps, during a long evening she will glance shyly in his direction once. If he sees that glance it ought to make him happy for days. And the next time they meet she will, perhaps, treat him very coldly, and HE WON’T DIKE THAT; but, if he has studied feminine ways at all, he need not be very east down, for a really nice, modest girl is chary of her favours, dispensing them with a niggardly hand until such time as she deems it fit to shower all the treasures of her love upon the man who has proved himself worthy of them. Believe me, the ideal wooing does not consist of wandering in meadows and making “beds of roses.” Under such circumstances conversation is apt to lapse into inconsequential nothings that may possibly grow tedious. But when a man ean only find opportunity to talk to a girl at odd, brief times, then will he carry about in his heart afterwards her least ejaculations, and recollect every detail of her appearance and demeanour. In what I will call the “local” wooing a man and a maid become really acquainted with one another—come to know each other as people ought before they take hands together along the hilly and difficult road of wedlock.

How much knowledge of one another

have two London people who have only met a dozen times or so—chie-fly at dances—before the man proposes? THEN COMES AN ENGAGEMENT and—disillusionment. People who live in London don’t see half as much of one another as they who live in the country: therefore the ideal wooing is not carried on in London, although a great deal of very excellent wooing is that bears fruit and results in happy matrimony. Very iew tilings ean be ideal nowadays, and so we have to scrape along and make the best of circumstances. When a man does a-wooing go in London he often has to travel by district railways, “tubes,” and ’buses, and turn out into bleak February nights, homeward-bound, leaving a warm fire and his ladylove behind him. He generally reserves Sunday for these expeditions, and so has something to look forward to all the week.

And though the six days between Sundays are not ideal ones from the lover’s point of view, yet it is not bad for him to have to exercise patience; and in the end he generally attains his object, and takes a flat, and presently provides it with a mistress.

But the ideal wooing is conducted in a village or small town, where two people don’t quite know when they won’t see each other, as opposed to a London wooing, when the two know with a large measure of certainty when they will. So the former mode of wooing must be superior to the latter, and I maintain that an ideal wooing is when a couple

meet unexpectedly and frequently, and not at long or defined intervals.

Little glances, brief snatches of conversation. chance meetings—these constitute the ideal wooing. And so. if the maid ponders all such in her heart, and the man considers that Iler very frowns are fairer far Than smiles of other ma'dens are. we may take it that it is a genuine, a commendable and a most promising “affair.” Lord Kitchener Again.

Queen Victoria once asked Lord Kitchener if the report which she had heard was true. “Did he not care for any woman?” “It is true, with one exception.” Lord Kitchener replied, with a smile. “And who is that?” inquired the Queen. “Your Gracious Majesty." came the answer. It is. by the way, quite untrue that Lord Kitchener is a real woman hater. What he scorns is effeminacy in men. “Is that your sister's handkerchief?” he asked of a young lord, who sported a delicately scented square of cambrie. “No. sir. my own. Pretty pattern, isn’t it?” “Very pretty, indeed,” said Lord Kit ehener. “Now tell me your taste in hairpins.”

When cooking greens and cauliflowers, always put a piece of stale bread crust in the saucepan, as it will take away all the unpleasant smell. Take out with a spoon before taking up the greens.