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the
bell-rope at the front door he has a rapid fire revolver in one pocket and
a bottle of carbolic acid in the other.
His intentions are honorable and he wishes to prove them so by
shooting his lady love if she renigs when he makes a play for her hand.
I think the old style was the best, because when young people quarreled
they didn't need an ambulance and a hospital surgeon to help them
make up.
In the old days Oscar Dobson would draw the stove brush cheerfully
across his dog-skin shoes and rush with eager feet to see Lena Jones,

the girl he wished to make the wife of his bosom.
"Darling!" Oscar would say, "I am sure to the bad for love of you. Pipe
the downcast droop in this eye of mine and notice the way my heart is
bubbling over like a bottle of sarsaparilla on a hot day! Be mine, Lena!
be mine!"
Then Lena would giggle. Not once, but seven giggles, something like
those used in a spasm.
Then she would reply, "No, Oscar; it cannot be. Fate wills it
otherwise."
Then Oscar would bite his finger nails, pick his hat up out of the
coal-scuttle and say to Lena, "False one! You love Conrad, the
floorwalker in the butcher shop. Curses on Conrad, and see what you
have missed, Lena. I have tickets for a swell chowder party next
Tuesday. Ah! farewell forever!"
Then Oscar would walk out and hunt up one of those places that Carrie
Nation missed in the shuffle and there, with one arm glued tight around
the bar rail, he would fasten his system to a jag which would last for a
week.
Despair would grab him and he'd be Oscar with the souse thing for
sure.
When he would recover strength enough to walk down town without
attracting the attention of the other side of the street, he would call on
Lena and say, "Lena, forgive me for what I done, but love is blind--and,
besides, I mixed my drinks. Lena, I was on the downward path and I
nearly went to hell."
Then Lena would say, "Why, Oscar, I saw you and your bundle when
you fell in the well, but I didn't know it was as deep as you mention."
Then they would kiss and make up, and the wedding bells would ring
just as soon as Oscar's salary grew large enough to tease a pocketbook.

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.
"Wie gehts, Imogene!" says Gonsalvo.
"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.
Besides, this furnishes the local color.
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 top-knot,
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.
What do you think?

JOHN HENRY ON SUMMER RESORTS
Me for that summer resort gag--Oh! fine!
I fell for a Saratoga set-back this summer but never no more for