First Proposals.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIII, Issue XVI, 15 October 1904, Page 62

First Proposals.

Everybody is supposed to be able to manage their own affairs best, but as a rule at no time in her life does a girl stand so sorely in need of a wise woman friend’s help and advice as during that time just preceding her first offer of marriage. But it all has to be done so tactfully that even the girl herself does not know she is aided, and her mind led to see things in their right light.

A curious blindness usually afflicts a girl who is being courted for the first time, and it prevents her from having the slightest inkling of what her lover is endeavouring to lead up to. Then when he proposes she is so astonished and perturbed that not knowing her own mind he is perhaps refused when

iie should be accepted, or accepted when a gentle refusal would tell more truly the state of her affections.

Girls seldom consider sufficiently their first proposal. It seems hard to a girl that in the midst of a particularly happy companionship with a friend she is suddenly stopped for all the responsibilities of life to be arrayed before her, and for her to decide if she will walk this new road with the man who is pleading at her side, or, refusing his hand, see him no more, and empty her life of at least the enjoyment she had found in his society.

But there is the other girl who, on being proposed to for the first time, thinks only of the joys and importance of the being engaged period. In a moment she is in a flutter of excitement, and answers “Yes,” without a moment of thought. It is only afterwards that she learns that the delights of being engaged” usually come only to those engaged to the right man.