Page:Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son.djvu/359



, November 11, 189— Dear Pierrepont: If that's what, it's all right. And you can't get married too quick to suit the old man. I believe in short engagements and long marriages. I don't see any sense in a fellow's sitting around on the mourner's bench with the sinners, after he's really got religion. The time to size up the other side's strength is before the engagement.

Some fellows propose to a girl before they know whether her front and her back hair match, and then holler that they're stuck when they find that she's got a cork leg and a glass eye as well. I haven't any sympathy with them. They start out on the principle that married people have only one meal a day, and that of fried oysters and tutti-frutti ice-cream after the theatre. Naturally, a girl's got her better nature and her best complexion along under those