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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 mine.
At night I used to sit up with the rest of the social push and drink highballs to make me sick, so I could drink Saratoga water in the morning to make me well.
That's what is called reciprocity, because it works both ways against the middle.
Isn't it the limit the way people from all over the country will rush to these fashionable summer resorts with wide open pocketbooks and with their bank accounts frothing at the mouth!
The most popular fad at every summer resort I've ever climbed into is to watch the landlord reaching out for the coin.
Husbands make bets with their wives whether the landlord of the hotel will get all their money in an hour or an hour and a half.
Both husband and wife loose; because the landlord generally gets it in ten minutes.
At some of the hotel diningrooms it costs six dollars to peep in, eight dollars to walk in, and fifteen dollars to get near enough to a waiter to talk soup.
You can see lots of swell guys in the dining-rooms who are now using a fork in public for the first time.
This reminds me of an experience I had in a certain summer resort dining-room not long ago.
At a table near me sat Ike Gooseheimer.
Ike is a self-made man and he made a quick job of it.
Ike was eating with his knife and doing it so recklessly that I felt like yelling for the sticking plaster.
After I had watched him for about five minutes trying to juggle the new peas on a knife, it got on my nerves, so I spoke to him.
"Ike," I said, thinking possibly I might cure him with a bit of sarcasm, "aren't you afraid you will cut yourself with the sword?"
[Illustration: "Aren't you afraid you will cut yourself with the sword?"]
"Oh! no, no,"