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 Simpson Green 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!" Simpson 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, Simpson; it cannot be. Fate wills it
otherwise."

Then Simpson 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 Simpson would walk out and hunt up one of those places that can't
get an all-night license and there, with one arm glued tight around the
bar rail, he would fasten his system to a jag which would last a week.

Despair would grab him and, like Dike, he'd be Simpson 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 Heligoland."

Then Lena would say, "Oh, Simpsey, I wanted you to prove your love, but
I thought you'd prove it with beer and not red-eye--forgive me,
darling!"

Then they would kiss and make up, and the wedding bells would ring just
as soon as Simp'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 geht's, Imogene!" says Gonsalvo.

"Simlich!" says Imogene, standing at ri