Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 September 1876 — Going Courting. [ARTICLE]

Going Courting.

One of the chief compensations of a woman’s life is found in the fact that she does not have “ to go a-courting.” It must be confessed that, in these days, the modem lielle does her share of the wooing, but she does not have to dress up in a stiff collar, and a pair of boots two sizes to small for her, and walk up to the cannon’s mouth of her inamorata’s family, consisting of father, and mother, and f rand mother, and maiden aunt, and half a ozen brothers and sister, and inquires, in a trembling voice: 41 Is Miss Arabella at home?” Whenever a man goes a-courting, everybody seems to know all about it. His demeanor tells the observant spectator the business he is intent upon. He might just as well placard himself with the legend, 44 1 go a-courting.” Everybody is cognizant of it, and looks knowing; and asks him if the “northern lights were bright last night about one o’clock,” and “ how the market is for kerosene up to Daddy Brown’s,” and a score of other questions equally out of place. We have in our family, at present, a young man who is deeply, we trust successfully, engaged in going, a-courting; and our warmest sympathies have been aroused for him. When Sunday afternoon arrives it is plain to see that something is about to happen. Our young man is fidgety and non-com-municative, and cannot sit in one place half a minute at a time He is continually interviewing his watch and comparing it with the ola eight-day coffin-shaped clock in-the corner. He looks in the glass frequently, and draws his forehead locks first back and then forward, and combs them up and pots them down, and is unsatisfied with the effect throughout. The smell of pay-rum and bergamot is painfully apparent. When he shakes out his handkerchief musk is perceptible. His boots sbiae like mirro s. There is a faint odor of cardamom seeds in his breath when he yawns. He smoothes his budding mustache with affectionate little pats, and feels his invisible side whiskers continually, to make sure they are still there, a fact which is not established to outside observers by the sense of sight. He tries on all his stock of neck-ties without finding what is just the thing; and he has spasms of brushing his coat, that commence with violence, and last till one grows nervous for fear the broadcloth will never be able to stand it.

He declines soup that day at dinner. He says it is because he doesn’t feel hungry, but we know it is because there are onions in it, and onions, as every one knows, do not sweeten one’s breath to smy great extent. If spoken to on a sudden, he starts and blushes, aud looks as guilty as if he had been caught stealing something, and directly one does not speak to him, he goes back to tlie delightful occupation of staring at nothing, and waiting for the hourhand to creep around to seven. At seven, he sets forth, clean and tidy from top to toe, looking precisely as if he had just stepped out of a band-box. In sympathy and in imagination we follow him. Affairs are not fully understood between him and Mary Jane. He is still in astute of anxious, though somewhat blissful uncertainty. He does not feel quite sure whether she means business, or is only flirting with him. Consequently he is somewhat timid. He steps through the gate into the yard of Mary Jane’s paternal domicil with inward trepidation. He is not entirely certain that his visits are welcome. He wonders if the old folks will be at home, or if they will have had tlie grace to go to evening meeting and leave toe coast clear. He devoutly hopes that those two little brothers are in bed, for they are the torment of his life since he has been trying to court Mary Jane. And if 44 that other fellow” is there, he mentally vows that he’ll know what such carryings on mean —yes, that he will. By the time he reaches the door-steps he is in a cold sweat, and almost wishes he hadn’t come. He rings the bell with a nervous jerk, and then feels an insane desire to rush off down the street without waiting fur any one to answer toe summons. But he hears footsteps within, and knows that it is too late to make good his escape. So he remains and puts a bold face on it, and feels those side-whiskers, and smiles hopefully, and says to himself that he does hope Mary Jane will come to the door herself, and not send that grinning servant-girl, who invariably giggles in his face, and then crams her apron into her mouth to stop further developments, when he inquires, “Is Miss Mary at home ?”

After he gets inside the house he is still in a state of perplexity. Will his welcome be warm enough to admit of his removing his overcoat and leaving it in the hall ? or will the state of the atmosphere be such that he will (eel chilly round his heart with his overcoat on * When he is seated in the parlor, the problem he is called upon to solve is—what shall he do with his feet and hands ? His hands he can put in his pocket when everything else fails, and he most devoutly wishes that he could dispose of hisfeet in the same manner. ’ n ~ What shallhctalk about after the topic of, the weather is exhausted ? Does she notice his side-whiskers, and think them becoming? Does she like the way his hair is parted ? and does she think a blue neck-tie becoming to him ? All these vexed questions pass through

his mind, and be sits on the corner of a chair, and looks at her, and thinks how charming she is, and would give all his spare money fbr the courage to rise and take a seat beside her on the sofa, where she has left room for Ititn, and wants him to ait, no doubt. But then a woman may not express her mind on such a thing. His heart sinks as lie hears in the next room the old man’s sonorous “Ahem! ahame!" and knows by the rattling of tilings generally that the parents of his love are preparing to retire to their bedroom, which joins tlie parlor, and is separated from it by a thin partition, which gives an easy passage to sound, and CQIIYeyS to ears maternal and paternal every 44 kiss of youth and love” he may give to Mary Jane, and the little feminine squeak which he knows will attend every such performance. And he revolves anxiously within his own mind what diabolical scheme of vengeance against lovers does possess the brains of the majority of house-carpen-ters in this world which induces them to construct houses with bedrooms for the old folks adjoining the parlors. He trembles every time he hears a door open anywhere, lest those enfanti terrible may be about to make their advent, and his heart goes up like the mercury in dogdays as he hears the noisy tread of their feet as they ascend to regions above for their nocturnal siesta. But in spite of all these minor troubles, and a legion of others besides, our young man is happy; for he is young, and the glamour of first love is over him, and we suppose he would not dispense with the pleasure of courting' for anything in the world. —Kate Thorn, inN. Y. Weekly.