The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing

Description

SOCIAL FORMS



Manners and Customs of Good Society



ETIQUETTE OF COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE.



It is a growing custom in America not to announce an engagement until

the date of the marriage is approximately settled. Long engagements are

irksome to both man and woman, and a man is generally not supposed to

ask a girl to marry him until he is able to provide a home for her.

This, however, does not prevent long friendships between young couples

or a sentimental understanding growing up between them, and it is during

this period that they learn to know each other and find out if they are

suited for a life’s partnership.



When a “young man goes a-courting” it generally means that he has some

particular girl in mind whom he has singled out as the object of his

devotion. A man a-courting is generally on his best behavior, and many a

happily married wife looks back on her courting days as the most

delightful of her life. At that time the woman is the object of a

devotion to which she has as yet conceded nothing. She is still at

liberty to weigh and choose, to compare her lover to other men, while

the knowledge that she is the ultimate girl that some man is trying to

win gives her a pretty sense of self-importance and a feeling that she

has come into the heritage of womanhood.



Whether it is one of the fictions about courtship or not, it is

generally assumed that a young woman is longer in making up her mind

than is the young man. When a man finds the right girl he is pretty apt

to know it, and it is his business then to start out and persuade her to


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