Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 71, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1901 — The Professor’s Wooing. [ARTICLE]

The Professor’s Wooing.

The experience known as “popping the question” is the bugbear of every man, however confident Of his charms or fluent of speech. Many original ways of asking young women to marry them have been resorted to by bashful men, but perhaps the most brilliant suggestion came to a learned German professor, who, having remained a bachelor till middle life, at last tumbled head over ears in love with a little flaxenhaired maiden many years his Junior. One day, after vainly endeavoring to screw his courage to the sticking-point, the learned man came upon his Gretchen as she sat alone, darning a stocking, with a huge pile of the family hosiery on the table. The professor aimlessly talked on general topics, wondering how he could lead up to the subject nearest his heart, when all at once a happy thought came to him. Leaning forward, he put his big hand on the little fist doubled up inside the stocking, and said, hesitatingly: “You darn very beautifully, frauleln. Would you like to darn my stockings duly?” Fortunately the frauleln was not so simple as she appeared. She grasped the significance of the question immediately, and lost no time in answering, “Yes.”