HOW PHIL PROPOSED.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 317, 3 December 1910, Page 2

HOW PHIL PROPOSED.

AREN'T WE. GIRLIE ? "My old friend Phil Harper's been married for only about two years and a half—not so long that he wouldn't remember the full particulars about his antenuptial days, so I felt sure he could shed some light on the subject of wedding proposals. " 'Phil,' says I—'tell me now—and this is no kid, understand—tell me what you said when you proposed to your present wife. Where were you and how did you get around to the subject,, and were you scared, and what did your wife, or rather your girl, say to you, and all that ? That's a lot of questions all strung together in one, I know, but tell me about it and I won't let it go any further if you say not to.' "'Phil looked at me and gave a little grunt of a laugh. 'Sorry I can't accomodate you,' he says, 'but to tsll the truth I never made a proposal. Oh, no, don't get the idea that my wife proposed. I shouldn't be so ungallant as to tell that even if it were so. I did whatever proposing was done, if you call it a proposal. As you may remember, after I got into the habit of goin? to see Maizie I always made it a point to declare that our friendship was just that and nothing more. " 'I intended never to get married. Maizie was well satisfied to have it that way. We used to laugh, abo.it the people in the neighbourhood who got married and led prosaic lives ever afterwards, and we were mighty glad that we weren't going to. But any habit is hard to break, as you know, and after I'd bsen calling on Maizie two or three times a week, and twice on Sundays for a couple of years, I found, even though I wouldn't have admitted it, that the Maizie habit had as much a hold on me as any drug habit could have, and what was more, I didn't know of any quiet little sanitorium where I could be cured of the habit.

" 'One evening a couple of girl friends of Maizie's strolled by the front porch and began to kid us. One of them allowed that she'd be willing to bet we were engaged even at that moment.

" 'Why, sure ws are," I says, acting on impulse. "Aren't we, girlie ?" And Maizie gurgled a little "Um huh." Within a month after that we had the date set and 15 to 20 addresses of flats to rent clipped out of the Sunday paper to be investigated. That's the way I proposed.' " —"Cleveland Leader."