But these days the idea is altogether different.
Children are hardly out of the cradle before they are arrested for butting into the speed limit with a smoke wagon.
Even when they go courting they have to play to the gallery.
Nowadays Gonsalvo H. Puffenlotz walks into the parlor to see Miss Imogene Cordelia Hoffbrew.
"Simlich!" says Imogene, standing at right angles near the piano because she thinks she is a Gibson girl.
"Imogene, dearest," Gonsalvo continues; "I called on your papa in Wall Street yesterday to find out how much money you have, but he refused to name the sum, therefore you have untold wealth!"
Gonsalvo pauses to let the Parisian clock on the mantle tick, tick, tick!
He is making the bluff of his life, you see, and he has to do even that on tick.
Then Gonsalvo bursts forth again, "Imogene! Oh! Imogene! will you be mine and I will be thine without money and without the price."
Gonsalvo pauses to let this idea get noised about a little.
Then he goes on, "Be mine, Imogene! You will be minus the money while I will have the price!"
Gonsalvo trembles with the passion which is consuming his pocketbook, and then Imogene turns languidly from a right angle triangle into more of a straight front and hands Gonsalvo a bitter look of scorn.
Then Gonsalvo grabs his revolver and, aiming it at her marble brow, exclaims, "Marry me this minute or I will shoot you in the topknot, because I love you."
Then papa rushes into the room and Gonsalvo politely requests the old gentleman to hold two or three bullets for him for a few moments.
Gonsalvo then bites deeply into a bottle of carbolic acid and, just as the Coroner climbs into the house, the pictures of the modern lover and loveress appear in the newspapers, and fashionable society receives a jolt.
This is the new and up-to-date way of making love.
However, I think the old style of courting is the best, because you can generally stop a jag before it gets to the undertaker.
When Aunt Martha gave friend wife that newfangled camera this Spring I had a hunch that the dealers in photographic supplies would be joyously shrieking the return of good times and hot-footing it to the bank with the contents of my wallet.
Peaches just grabbed that camera and went after everybody and everything in the neighborhood.