XII.     On Engagements and on Being Engaged

 

Chalepon to mae philaesai

Chalepon de kai philaesai

·        Anacreon.

 

 

Perhaps the pleasantest and most satisfactory period in a girl’s life is the time of her first youthful engagement:

Never is a girl more jubilant, never more buoyant, never so charming, so

blithesome, or so debonair, as when she is the gazetted about-to-be bride

of the man of her girlish choice.  For

During her engagement, a girl is owned and petted; and Ownership and petting are dear to women—whether young or old:

Ownership is proof, at all events, that she is of value to the man—else

the man would not sought to make her his; and

Petting is proof that the man properly appreciates the value.  Yet

meanwhile, anomalous as it may sound,

The engaged girl is still her own property, and is practically free.

Besides,

What more delectable to a girl than to have captured and kept a real man?

This flatters her, uplifts her, makes of her a woman at once: she holds

her head higher she carries herself with an air; she shows off her

capture. Besides, also,

The engaged girl is looked up to by her compeers, is congratulated y her

elders.  Even if she keeps the engagement secret, these compeers and

congratulatresses do not (sometimes, alas! To her detriment).—In

addition to all this,

What delight so unique as the preparation of the trousseau! 239 Trousseau!--‘T is a name of mystical import to man.

A woman’s trousseau is symbol of two things—and perhaps dimly indicative of a third:

(i) it proves—what needs no proof—that, such is the unselfish nature of Love, never can it give enough, never enhance too much the gifts it gives.  Accordingly the bride goes to the man appareled and bedecked to the best of her ability;

(ii)      It is a subtle tribute to the sensibility of man, of the man in love, who is stimulated and pleased by dainty, it may be diaphanous, raiment.  Lastly, since even that supernal thing Love is not unconcerned with matters practical,

(iii)     It bespeaks as prophetic suspicion of the little fact that perhaps it is well to go to her husband’s home abundantly provided with dainty raiment, inasmuch as the man not in love is not always so delicately sensible of their need.

 

* * *

 

A girl’s first engagement is peculiarly sweet: long does she remember,

long meditatively dwell upon, its pettiest incidents. For, if any man

dared give utterance to so outrageous an assumption,

The emoluments of a promise to marry are as sweet to the donatress as