 | Saratoga in 1901 |  |
FIFTH HEAVENUE FLIRTING.
Fifth Avenue Hotel, Feb. 10.
Those flirting Fifth-avenue fellows!
Everywhere I go, the young ladies are furious at the way
Brown's Boys are conducting themselves this winter. Their
chief aim seems to be to get a young lady “on the string” and
then trifle with her affections. They always talk, but they never
propose. They fuss around three or four months with a young
lady and then plead poverty and the I-don't-want-to-take-you-from-your-nice-home
dodge. Now, the girls are willing to go.
They are willing to live in a garret with a brave, handsome,
working fellow, with a heart big enough to kill them with manly
love. They don't like these timid, calculating fellows. They
like a man who will rush headlong wherever love beckons him,
knowing that happiness and wealth will surely follow after. The
young ladies begin to get mad. They are tired of waiting.
I LIKE TO BE LOVED.
Last night I went home
from Dr. Ewer's with Julia.
Julia is visiting with her
cousin who lives in a palatial
residence on Fifth Avenue.
The old folks had retired,
and the gas in the front
parlor was down. The
back parlor, we noticed
through the windows in the
folding door, was brilliantly
illuminated. We sat on the sofa. The darkness gave me
confidence, and I took Julia's hand and was about to say something
confidential in the feeble gaslight, when we heard Julia's
cousin Mary in the back parlor with Charley Brown. Charley
shadows on the glass-door. I heard him whisper:
“Mary dear, I have something confidential to tell you.”
“What is it, Charley?” she lisped, in a sweet voice.
Then we saw one arm of his shadow encircle her shadow, and
somebody whispered:
“I think, Mary—I think that—I love you!”
Then we heard a suppressed sigh.
“Julia,” continued the voice, “do you love me?”
“Yes, Charley, I do love you,” she sobbed.
“How much?”
“More than words can express.”
“I am very glad, Mary,” continued the voice, “for I do like to
be loved.”
“Well, Charley?”
But Charley never said another word. Young fellows seldom
get further than this now-a-days.
This is as much as any reasonable young lady ought to expect.
Now, Charley is an honorable fellow, and he has gotten just so
far with 386 different young ladies on Fifth Avenue. It is called
by the fellows the “sticking point.”
One day I said, “Charley, did you never get any further than
the `sticking point?”'
“Pshaw, Eli, yes,” he replied. “There are two other points
still. We call them the `awful oath dodge,' and the `poverty
dodge.' Why, I've come these dodges over the Fifth Avenue
girls more than twenty times.”
“What is the `awful oath dodge?” I inquired anxiously.
“The `awful oath dodge' is where we `get sweet' on the girl,
tell her that we love her, get her to say she loves us, then announce
with tremendous solemnity that we were compelled to
take an awful oath at the bedside of our dying grandfather not
wait so long as that, and we are out of the scrape.”
“Well, what is the `poverty dodge,' and how do you do it?”
I asked, still opening my eyes at Charley's revelations.
“Never tell, my boy?”
“Never!”
“Well, I always tell the girls that I love them.”
“Yes?”
“Ask them if they love me.”
“Yes?”
“Then they say `Yes.”'
“And you—”
“Why, then I sigh, and say, `Alas! darling, I do love you,
but I love you too much to ask you to marry me. You, Mary,
are used to a life of luxury. I am poor and proud. I would
not ask you to leave a home of comfort for a home such as I
could give you.”'
“Well, Charley, how does this generally work?”
“Splendidly, old fellow! That's what we Fifth Avenue fellows call the `poverty dodge'—the very last jumping off place,
you know.”
Oh, Charley is such an honorable fellow!
Now, the city is so full of Charleys that we good fellows, who
really mean business, are completely in the shade. We are so
diffident. We hold our hats deferentially in our hands, and
when it comes to the question of proposing, we, non-professionals,
stammer and back up, then go ahead, and finally get the cold
shoulder, while Charley runs off with your sweetheart.
No fellow can ever propose nicely till he has done it twenty
or thirty times.
JULIA'S IDEA.
This morning I got a perfumed note from Julia. She says
she is down on the “I-like-to-be-loved” fellows, who go around
making girls commit themselves, as Charley Brown and her
she has got a new idea
which she brought from
Philadelphia, and so she
writes it to me:—
“Fifth Avenue, —
“This is our new
idea. All the girls have
agreed to it. We call it
the honorable dodge, and
we are bound to put
through every flirting fellow
in New York on it.
The idea is—but I'll tell
you how I practiced it
last night and you'll understand
it better. But
you know it is a secret, and of course you are to be trusted.
“Well, last night Fred Palmer called. You know he is an
awful flirt. We sat on the same sofa where you and I sat before.
The gas was low, and pretty quick Fred began to talk `spooney.'
I pretended to be affected. Then he said, `What a pretty ring
you have, Julia.' (The old dodge, you know.)
“`Yes, so—so, I replied.
“`Is that your crest engraved on it? he asked, taking my
hand. (Another old dodge, you know.) It isn't half pretty
enough for your hand, he continued. You should have a diamond
solitaire. Would you like one? he asked, looking lovingly
into my eyes.
“`Yes, I said, if it comes from the right one.
“`How would you like one from me, Julia? he asked, with a
sigh.
“`Oh! I should be delighted, if I thought you loved me, and
then I looked down on his coat sleeve.
“`But, Julia, you know I do love you—I love you dearly, I —.'
“`Do you love me enough to speak to father about it? I
asked, interrupting him.
“`Yes, dear Julia, I will speak to him to-morrow, he said,
kissing my hand, `I—I—'
“`No, Frederick, I remarked, removing my hand from his
convulsive clasp, `I am glad you are willing, but I am engaged
to Eli Perkins, you know, and I was only seeing how far you
would go!'
“So keep the idea a secret a little while, my dear Eli, and we
girls will fool every fellow in New York. Mum is the word!
FLIRTING
The following letter from a young lady is full of suggestions.
It comes written in a patrician hand. The writing is graceful,
sweeping, and dashy. It tells the story so truly, and teaches a
moral so keenly, that I cannot resist giving it to you.
Miss Mollie Brown, of Forty-sixth street, writes:
I wish to ask your sympathy and advice on a subject that has
long been weighing on my mind, and that is—flirting.
You see I have got the name of being that despicable thing—
a flirt—simply because I look after my own interests. Par
example: I am pretty—every one says so—and have plenty of
admirers. Well, so soon as a young gentleman, whom I like
pretty well, calls on me two or three times, I am brought up for
examination before my paternal.
“Who is he?” my relative sternly inquires.
“Mr. Smith, papa,” I meekly respond, telling in ten words all
I know about the man.
“Where does he live? What's his father's name? What's
his business? How much does he make a year? What are his
habits?” follow each other in quick succession, and, not being
able to answer, I steadily set to work to discover these important
facts, my father never thinking of doing it for me.
Well, in two months, by continual pumping I discover his
place of abode—quite stylish!
In three months I discover his father's name—John.
In four his business—small broker in Wall street.
In five, income—uncertain.
In six, habits ditto!!
Now, what is left for me to do? I have wasted three months
finding out that it would be very foolish for me to marry Smith.
I can't help it—I tried hard; but in a big city like this, it is hard to
find out about anybody, so I can do nothing but give the case of
Smith up, and try again. Of course I've treated Mr. Smith
kindly, because he looked like a solid fellow, and I didn't like to
lose a good opportunity.
Now, it happens that, having tried to look out for myself in
this way some dozen times or so, I have drawn down on my
devoted head the opprobrious epithet of—Flirt—and as a natural
consequence, all your “Brown's boys,” thinking me fair game for
a flirtation, are overwhelming me with their detrimental
attentions, to the disgust of all the eligibles.
Now, dear Mr. Perkins, can't you advise me on this subject,
or at least make Mrs. Grundy retract the unenviable name she
has bestowed upon me?
My only desire is to pursue my own way peacefully, and,
before I die, marry some well-educated young man with a good
family, good business, good habits, good income, good-looking,
and good-natured enough to make me love him; and surely no
girl could ask less, could they?
Forty-sixth street, March 17.
No, Miss Mollie—no! your experience I believe to be the
experience of almost every pretty young lady from Madison
square to the Park. The mission of an accomplished young
lady is to marry a brave young fellow with money enough to
support her, and love enough in his big, generous heart to make
her happy.
You are not a “flirt.” You simply show a little management.
You are doing simply what your big brother and shrewd father
ought to do for you—guarding against being deceived. You
don't want to wreck your young life by marrying a man whose
life is purposeless, and who is penniless, reckless, and heartless?
“What is to be done?”
Why, there should be confidential relations between you and
your father. I don't mean that he should be an old pepper-andsalt
dromedary, who drives blooded fellows away by boring them
to death with business questions the first night they call; but as
soon as Mr. Smith shows the least speck of devotion, you should
go right and tell your father, and he in a gentle and Chesterfieldian
manner should make a quiet inquiry about Smith
aforesaid. Finding Smith one of Brown's boys, he should tell
you so, and the next time he called you could be out; while if
Smith was found to be a plucky, and aspiring young fellow, your
papa could say that, and leave the rest to you and Smith
aforesaid.
“What is flirting, anyway?”
It is simply making yourself agreeable. It is a compliment
to be called a flirt. I never knew a flirt who wasn't pretty,
accomplished, and whose heart, when once caught, wasn't big
enough and warm enough to make a man worship her all his life.
Such being the case, of course she was fixed out with velvet
walking dresses, camel's hairs, six-button gloves, and boxes at
the opera for the rest of her natural existence.
If you call it flirting to become engaged to a fellow and then
break such engagement, and with it an honest man's heart, after
bouquets, I don't. If you call it flirting for a scamp to absorb a
year of a young lady's life, to steal her confiding kisses of
betrothed maidenhood, and then break an engagement and a
confiding heart—if you call that flirting, I don't. I call such
things criminal, and a man ought to be put in the Tombs for
doing it, just the same as he ought to be put in the Tombs for
any other swindling confidence game.
Flirting in the New York sense is when a young lady makes
herself agreeable, and consequently has lots of admirers, whom
she keeps “on a string” until she makes up her mind which one
she loves best, and which one has the biggest and bravest heart.
Flirting with blooded New York fellows is when a young fellow
with a heart full of splendid boyishness loves all the pretty girls
on the street, until, by-and-by, some sweet angel captures him,
head, heart, Russian overcoat, and the thousand little flirting
loves are concentrated through the focus of honest love upon the
new object of his adoration. And there they both stand, Mollie
Brown! both caught, both true and together—one spirit, they
travel down the happy highway of life!
| Saratoga in 1901 | |