University of Virginia Library

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

was taking advantage of the darkness, too. We saw their
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

to marry until the age of thirty. Of course the young lady can't
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.