• 







COURTESY 

COURTSHIP 

AND 

MARRIAGE 
A Collection of Sixteen Maqazine 

Articles and a Commencement. 

Address 

By 

AUSTIN J. APP. Ph.D. 

Published by the Author: 

A.J.APP 

San Antonio, Texas, U. S. A. 

$1.00 

OUR SUNDAY VISITOR LIBRARY 

HUNTINGTON, INDIANA 



Copyright, 19.7, by the author, Austin J. App, San Antonio, Texas. Permission to re-
print sections including whole chapters in serial form is granted provided due credit is 
given. Similarly, permission is granted to translate and use sections up to whole chapters 
in serial form. But to print more than individual paragraphs in book form, special per-
mission is required from the author. 

PRINTED IN THE U.S. A. 

AUTHOR NOTE 

Until drafted into the army in 1942, the writer was head of the English 
department, University of Scranton, Scranton, Pa. He is now professor 
of English at Incarnate Word College, San Antonio, Texas. In 1939 he 
was awarded the University of Scranton Faculty Medal as "outstanding 
educator of men." Born in Milwaukee; B. A., 1924, St. Francis Seminary, 
Milwaukee, Wisconsin; M.A., 1926, Ph. D., 1929, The Catholic University, 
Washington, D. C. Spent four summers in Europe, 1927 (Spain and 
France), 1931 (Central Europe), 1923 (Great Britain and France), 1934 
(Ireland). Co-founder and former associate editor of Best Sellers, bi-
monthly review magazine. In add~tion to numerous reviews and some 
verse and fiction, has contributed over a hundred articles to various 
educational and Catholic magazines. In December, 1946, he published 
History's Most Terrifying Peace, Thirteen Reprinted and Original Ar-
ticles, vii, 109 pages. This summer he is conducting the graduate courses 
in English for the Catholic University Summer Session, Southern Branch. 

THREE REVIEW COMMENTS ON THE AUTHOR'S 

HISTORY'S MOST TERRIFYING PEACE 

First Printing, December, 1946, 2500 copies 
Second printing, February, 1947, 4000 copies 

THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY: "Insofar as this is a vigorous, even 
vehement, demand for a just peace in Europe based on a Christian 
conception of the human rights which even the vanquished peoples 
possess, we say Amen!" 

(February 12, 1947, p. 207) 

THE CATHOLIC WORLD: "History's Most Terrifying Peace has pro-
voked criticism both pro and con. While not exactly comforting, it 
is an excellent piece of work calling for widespread distribution." 

(April, 1947, p. 95) 

THE MAGNIFICAT: "The accumulated effect of this collection drives 
home with renewed vigor the author's main thesis: that there are 
no two rights, one for the victors, and one for the vanquished." 

(May, 1947, p. 53) 



FOREWORD 

As the Table of Contents outlines, COURTESY, COURTSHIP, 

AND MARRIAGE is the publication in book form of sixteen 

articles previously published in magazines, plus one commencement 

address. The fact that they were previously published in respect-

able magazines might be thought sufficient warrant for collecting 

them in book form. But some reason should be given for under-

taking to publish them myself. 

Because these articles were written for different types of mag-

azines, they are uneven in length and varied in tone-from popular 

to scholarly. Furthermore they are not as mutually unified and 

coherent as one title and one book usually imply. For that reason, 

only much rewriting and expanding could have made them fully 

suitable for a regular publisher. 

But I did not wish to revise them. I believe that in their own 

way and present form, they serve their purpose very well. Another 

time I will write another book on these themes, and then I will 

write it differently and in a different tone, and above all, more 

comprehensively. But now, possibly with an author's customary 

self-assurance, I believe these essays to be not only quite readable, 

but very much needed reading. I also think that they are sufficiently 

related in theme for most readers interested in any, to be interested 

in all. 

Their greatest shortcoming as a unit is that they do not include 

articles on all phases suggested by the big title of courtesy, court-

ship, and marriage. For example, the thorny problem of love-

making in courtship is not treated or that of "planned parenthood" 

in marriage. In short, it is a collection of essays on the themes of 

the title, not a comprehensive treatise. But that ought to make 

them more, not less, stimulating and interesting. 



Publishing them myself in this book form came about as follows. 

For a long while the injustices committed by the victors of this war 

had outraged my soul. What, if possible, outraged me still more 

was the comparative silence about these injustices in the very 

press and publicity agencies which used to shriek to high heaven 

every real or invented and usually much smaller German or Jap-

anese crime. About a year ago I could no longer watch the crim-

inal Morgenthauistic peace policies in silence. Determined to do 

my bit for justice and truth, I began publishing things myself. 

One of my earliest efforts, to my glad surprise, swept on to a 

circulation of 15,000 copies to date. Also, however, the mailing 

problems were not only overwhelming, but, as I soon noted with 

anxiety, continuous. No longer could I simply lock the doors and 

go off on a vacation trip when not teaching. I now had to make 

difficult provisions for taking care of my mail and orders and new 

printings. 

And I soon found that the time and expense of taking care of 

any publishing was almost as great as taking care of more of it. 

For that reason I am risking the present publication, in a field 

altogether different from my former efforts, which were confined 

to rectifying the crimes of this peace. Naturally, it is a financial 

risk. I hope that all those who are inclined to be sympathetic and 

who find the book valuable will do what they conveniently can to 

help its distribution. 

Since the articles were originally written for Catholic magazines, 

non-Catholics must expect a certain Catholic flavor. They must, 

for example, expect a fixed attitude against re-marriageable divorce. 

But otherwise these articles are not polemic, they are culturally 

ethical. As the dominant aim of religion, according to Matthew 

Arnold, is to make "human nature perfect on the moral side," the 

general aim of these essays is cultural, which, according to Arnold, 

is to make "human nature perfect on all its sides." For that reason, 

they should on the whole prove as interesting and useful to non-

Catholic as to Catholic readers. After all, Dante, the Catholic, is 

read by Protestants, and Bacon, the Protestant, is similarly read by 

IV 



Catholics! One other reader qualification should be added, namely, 

that the articles in general are slanted more for girls and women 

than for men. 

I want to express my gratitude to the editors of the following 

magazines for permitting me to republish these articles from their 

pages: To The Catholic Home Journal for five, The Magnificat for 

one, The Queen's Work for four, The Sign for one, and The Vic-
torian Magazine for five. I am also grateful to Incarnate Word 

College, San Antonio, Texas, for having invited me to give the 

Commencement Address here published for the first time. It is 

important to emphasize that the preliminary introductions and the 

sub-heads are editorial additions to this book version, and were not 

in the first serial or oral version. 

I also want to state very especially that I am grateful to many 

authors and publishers for incidental quotations and allusions. They 

are properly credited in every instance. Unfortunately, however, 

I absolutely lacked the time and money to write to the author or 

publisher of every incidental quotation used. I am sorry I could 

not do so. I never, however, quoted so lengthily as to offend the 

ordinary customs of copyright. 

In conclusion, if I may be a little playful, I have taught thous-

ands of college students in my life. Nearly every class of them at 

some time or other, when in the spirit of poetry studied I digressed 

a bit on "courtesy, courtship, and marriage," would say, half in 

jest and half in earnest, "Doctor, why don't you write a book about 

that!" Well, now I say to them, equally half in jest and half in 

earnest, "Here is the book. Go and read it. I hope you can get it at 

any book store. But if you can't, inclose a dollar to me and you'll 

get a copy-autographed! 

San Antonio, Texas 
July 4, 1947. 

! r- -

A. J. App 

v 





TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 
FOREWORD ------------------------------------------ i i i 

I SAYING THINGS THE TACTFUL WAY------------ 1 
("A Soft Answer Turneth Away Wrath," The Queen's 
Work, January, 1945) 

II FORGIVING OUR FRIENDS AND 
KEEPING THEM --------------- ------------ 7 

("Don't Lose Your Friends: They Are Not Expendable," 
The Queen's Work, April, 1945) 

III COURTESY AND KINDNESS BEGIN IN 
THE HEART -------------------------------- 13 

("Is Your Heart in the Right Place," The Catholic 
Home Journal, July, 1944) 

IV THE REAL REASON, OR MERELY 
A "GOOD REASON" -----~------------------- 19 

("Do You Give Real or Phoney Reasons?" The Queen's 
Work, May, 1944) 

V WHEN A GIRL WANTS TO DECLINE A DATE _____ 25 
(The Queen's Work, May, 1946) 

VI HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY- ALWAYS ________ 32 
("Are We a Nation of Liars?'' The Victorian Magazine, 
June, 1942) 

VII THE FIRST THING A GIRL SHOULD ASK _________ 36 
(The Victorian Magazine, September, 1943) 

VIII HOW NOT TO CHOOSE A MATE ______ ___________ 39 
(The Catholic Home Journal, September, 1946) 

IX IF HE DOESN'T PROPOSE ----------------------- 46 
("Why Doesn't He Propose?'' The Victorian Magazine, 
February, 1942) 

X THE HELPMEET FOR LIFE ---------------------- 49 
(The Catholic Home Journal, July, 1945) 

,· ., . 



XI THE UNIQUE FUNCTION OF MARRIAGE --------55 
("Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery," The Victorian 
Magazine, June 1944) 

XII THE FIRST SPOUSE IS THE BEST SPOUSE ________ 58 
(The Catholic Home Journal, November, 1944) 

XIII PARENTS ARE THE BEST MODELS ______________ 64 
(The Victorian Magazine, January, 1945) 

XIV FAMOUS WRITERS FROM LARGE FAMILIES _____ 67 
(The Sign, January, 1932) 

XV A CULTURED PERSON AND A 
CULTURED NATION----------------------- 74 

(The Catholic Home Journal, September, 1945) 

XVI WOMAN, WHERE CHRISTIANITY IS NOT -------- 81 
(The Magnificat, November, 1941) 

XVII YOU AND I AND A BETTER WORLD ______________ 90 
("Commencement Address" Incarnate \-Vord College, 
May 31, 1945) 

INDEX -------------------------------------------------- 99 



CHAPTER I 

SAYING THINGS THE TACTFUL WAY 

This article is reprinted from THE QUEEN'S WORK, 
January, 1945, where it was entitled, " A Soft Answer 
Turneth Away Wrath." Under the title, "Tact," subtitled, 
"Truth and beauty meet in unction:' it appeared in THE 
CATHOLIC DIGEST, March, 1945. The article assumes that 
life is full of occasions when, if one has principles, one 
must say what is not naturally agreeable to another, but 
that it can usually be said in such a way that the heal is 
greater than the hurt. Tact in speech, like virtue, needs 
constant watching and practice! 

"Just the Way a Thinq Is Said" 

"'None critical, diplomatic occasion, Queen Victoria showed 
Vher husband, Prince Albert, a note she had prepared to dis-

patch to some foreign government. According to Laurence 
Housman's play, Victoria Regina, Albert said to her: 

"Alter a few words ... Say it but say it differently. 
Often. it is just the way a thing is said that decides whether 
it shall be peace or war. It is the same when two people 
quarrel. You and I, Weibchen, might often have quar-
reled, had we said the same thing that we did say-differ-
ently." 

Every day, at home, at work, at play, we talk and comment and 
discuss and "Often it is just the way a thing is said that decides" 
whether our notes are sweet or sour, whether we make a point or 
muff it, whether we force our point or make it welcome. 

Framinq the "No" Softly 

Life is almost a continual give-and-take. Often we want some-
thing of someone and the problem is how to frame our request so 
that it will make a yes easy and a no not painful. More often we 
are asked for something we cannot grant, and then the problem 
is to frame our no so it will fall soft and gentle, and still be honest. 

III the give-and-take of life the softer word can make the 
"taking" easier. It can prevent a strained friendship or even a 
broken one. "Alas, they had been friends in youth," says Coleridge, 
but 

"Each spake words of high disdain 
And insult to his heart's best brother: 
They parted-ne'er to meet again!" 



2 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

Usually it is not so much "words of high disdain" that strain 
friendships, but words of bad choosing. Once my best school 
friend was displeased with a club talk I had given. He came to 
me and said, "That speech of yours was mostly ranting." This hurt. 
Years have passed, and of course we remained friends, but even 
though he is now dead and I pray for him, I still unhappily re-
member that comment. I believe if he had said, "Your speech today 
sounded somewhat too loud and unrestrained to me," I would have 
felt no hurt at all and would have liked him more than ever for 
saying it. 

People's Face Must Be Saved 

In home and shop, in school and camp, virtually no trait is more 
valued and rewarded than the gift and habit of saying things the 
most pleasant, the least offensive way. Saving face is said to be 
the indispensable passport for social intercourse among the Chinese. 
But for real peace and good will it is important everywhere to 
help others save face as much as possible. Metaphorically speak-
ing, the opposite of saving someone's face is slapping it. That is 
what the wrong word can do. 

When we stop to think about it, it is really surprising how ~?ften 
even the meekest person has to try to influence people. During 
every meal we ask to have this passed and that, and the manner 
in which we do it is taken as some index of our breeding. Every 
invitation-to talk, or walk, or dance, or dine, or go to a play-in 
making or accepting or declining, is a matter for pleasing and tact-
ful phraseology. 

No Need for Contradicting Flatly 

It is said that eve1y virtue has a negative. The most important 
negative for tactfulness is, "Don't contradict anyone flatly." This 
rule ought to be followed even toward one's closest friends and re-
latives and in the lightest matters. If he says casually, "This is a 
fine snapshot," and his wife replies, "No, it's vile," even in this case 
her flat contradiction leaves some little sting. If sister says, "Gee, 
that was a good (radio) program," and brother answers, "It was 
lousy," there is some little unnecessary hurt. If mother suggests 
that tl1ey all go to eight o'clock Mass this Sunday, and the children 
cry, "Gosh, no, that's too early,' there is at least a little discomfiture. 
This could have been minimized or avoided had they answered, 
"Don't you fear, Mother, that it will be a little hard for us to make 
it that early?" 



SAYING THINGS THE TACTFUL WAY 3 

Among persons only slightly acquainted, and among large 
groups, and in important matters flat contradictions lead to serious 
embarrassments, ill feelings, and often ruptures. If a recent ac-
quaintance invited you to have an ice cream and you declined 
bluntly with, "No, thanks," instead of, "It's nice of you to ask me, 
and I am sorry I can't go with you today," your new friend would 
not readily ask you again and in any case would feel pointedly 
rebuffed. As an important matter, if a man proposed marriage, and 
the girl answered bluntly, "No, I won't," he would not only be hurt 
but angry. Whereas if she emphasizes how honored she feels that 
he should propose to her, and how sorry that she cannot say yes, 
he will, of course, not feel happy, but he will go away feeling 
friendly. The story is told of an English writer that when he pro-
posed to a lady she bluntly rejected him. Subsequently the lady 
exercised her feminine privilege and sent a servant who announced 
his message to the writer by saying, "Sir, the lady has changed her 
mind." The writer answered laconically, "So have I, boy, so have 
1." 

Parliamentary Rules for Not Offendinq 

The fact that it was thought necessary to erect elaborate in· 
directions in parliamentary procedure is pointed proof of the danger 
of sharp and flat contradictions in large groups. At class, club, 
church, and Sodality meetings, every speaker owes it to himseU 
and the group to avoid sharp contradictions and to introduce his 
objections in the least offensive mariner. Such openings as, "Mr. 
Chairman, I don't agree with the last speaker," or, "The last speaker 
is wrong in his estimate," or "The motion, made and seconded, is 
foolish," are entirely unforgivable. No matter how definitely one 
has to differ with, or object to, a matter proposed, one must some-
how soften one's contradiction. The best and most honest way to 
do it is to open one's remark with a recognition of something 
favorable in the previous speaker or in his proposal. 

How to Soften Opposition 

Some such openings as the following are necessary: "Though 
the last speaker was very plausible, yet I think one can point out ... " 
"The last objection is a sound one but, in my opinion, it is not so 
weighty as ... " "The opposition's statistics are correct and repre-
sentative, but I would give them a different interpretation." "The 
motion clearly shows a good intention. Nevertheless ... " Surely, 
with a little bit of careful thought and analysis, one can find some-
thing to commend in every motion or suggestion before attacking 



,,, 

4 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

it. Doing so is not compromising our point; it is making it more 
effective by making it less painful. 

The Humble and Modest Approach 

Never contradicting anyone flatly is the great "don't" in the 
habit of saying things the most pleasant way. Being modest, pre-
senting one's view modestly, is the great "do." Alexander Pope 
recommends that one "speak, tho' sure, with seeming diffidence." A 
humble manner makes people want to agree with you, whereas, 
according to Benjamin Franklin, "a positive, assuming manner, 
that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition." Boys like 
to throw snowballs at a silk top hat and objections at a cocksure 
speaker. Lord Chesterfield says, "Be wiser than other people, if 
you can; but do not tell them so." 

Franklin in his Autobiography presents the clearest case for the 
modest approach. He says he dropped his "abrupt contradiction 
and positive argumentation," and acquired and retained the habit 
of expressing himself "in terms of modest diffidence." His method 
is so well described and so practical for everyone that it deserves 
to be quoted. It is as follows: 

" ... never using, when I advanced anything that may 
possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, 
or any others that give the air of positiveness to an opin-
ion, but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be 
be so and so; it appears to me, or I should think it so or 
so, for such and such reason; or I imagine it to be so; 
or it is so, if I am not mistaken . . ." 

Such a habit of modesty in presentation becomes everybody 
and would help to make the family circle more amiable and 
international congresses more peaceful. 

Saying Thi.t1gs c:s Ofuers See Them 

Modesty of viewpoint and avoidance of bald contraditions must 
in a really courteous and tactful person be supplemented by a 
regular talent and habit of saying things as others hear them. 
Secretary Lansing once related how a gallant French official, re-
quired to make out a passport for a lady who unfortunately had 
only one eye, wrote, "Eyes, brilliant, brown and expressive, only 
one missing." Here was a case of choosing the words which had 
the best possible sound for the other person. In like manner, a 



' 
SAYING THINGS THE TACTFUL WAY 5 

shoe clerk will say to a lady who asks which of her feet is larger 
that her left foot is smaller. 

A moment's thought as to the other's viewpoint will often en-
able one, without dishonesty, to change the emphasis so as to sound 
less harsh. A verse by Elinor Powell in the New York Post in-
dicates this: 

" ... say I'm eccentric, but don't say crazy. 
My nose isn't large-my features are prominent. 
Oh, you can work wonders by watching your diction." 

It is more painful to be called too old for a job than not young 
enough for it; too fat for a part than not slender enough; too clumsy 
than not handy enough. A mother would rather be told that her 
child is backward than a moron. An English teacher was right in 
telling his pupils that "Horses sweat, men perspire, but ladies 
merely glow." 

The Compliment Is Mighter Than the Command 

Nice words are more irresistible than good looks. Soft talkers 
win more hearts than rude Adonises. A mother, anxious for her 
daughter, fears more a man's so-called line than his wavy hair. 
Most of us recognize the power of the soft phrase in love. But we 
don't realize quite so well that in controversy, too, the fair analogy 
wins faster than the harsh syllogism. The Bible says of the serpent 
that tempted Eve that it was "more subtle than any of the beasts 
of the earth." And the first thing the serpent said to Eve was not 
an abstract argument but something which touched her own per-
sonal vanity. "Why," asked the serpent, "hath God commanded 
you, that you should not eat of every tree of paradise?"- as much 
as to imply that surely one should expect that a fair and wondrous 
creature like herself should have the right to eat of every tree. 

In Words "Be Ye Wise Ass--__; 

The subtlety of the words the serpent employed for an evil 
purpose, good men will employ for good purposes. "Be ye wise as 
serpents," said the Lord. The debater who instead of saying. ''Your 
hospitals are only one third as modem as ours," said, ''Your hos-
pitals are three times as backward as ours," made everybody mad. 
When Louis XIV, instead of saying, "I speak for the State," said, "I 
am the State," he built the first steps up the guillotine that behead-
ed his successors. When Bethmann-Hollweg in 1914 referred to the 



6 COURTESY, COURTSIDP, AND MARRIAGE 

treaty guaranteeing Belgium's neutrality as "a scrap of paper," he 
unwittingly did a lot to change a European war into a world war. 
And some say that the farmers of Iowa have never been quite 
tractable since the late Vice-President Curtis said that they "were 
too dumb to understand national issues." Yes, Queen Victoria's 
husband was right when he advised her that "Often it is just the 
way a thing is said that decides whether it shall be peace or war." 



ar. 
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CHAPTER II 

FORGIVING OUR FRIENDS AND KEEPING THEM 

This article, originally entitled, "Don't Lose Your Friends: 
They Are Not Expendable," is also reprinted from THE 
QUEEN'S WORK, April, 1945. It describes what seems to 
me the very heart of the Christian moral order, that we 
must love even our enemies and forgive all human beings, 
not ;because they deserve it, but because they are our 
brethren in Christ and because it is necessary and good for 
us to forgive them. It maintains that forgiving our friends 
is the chief secret of keeping them. 

Our Best Friends Sometime Let Us Down 

One thing you can safely predict about your friends is that 
some time or other they will let you down. It may be only in a 
small matter. He assured you he would pick you up at such a 
spot exactly at five; you are there at five, and it also starts raining 
at five, but your friend doesn't come until five-thirty. In big things 
or small, it is a safe bet, your friends will sometimes disappoint 
you. 

The best man in all the world, Our Lord Himself, was some-
times let down by his friends. One of the Twelve betrayed Him 
with a kiss, and the great Peter, in the 'hour of Christ's greatest 
trial, denied his Master three times. 

Forgiving "Seventy Times Seven Times" Seemed Impossible 

Whenever, as a boy, I thought of Christ's order to forgive an 
offending brother "seventy times seven times," I used to shudder. 
I felt somewhat like the little girl who, having been often warned 
that God didn't like this and the policeman would get her for that, 
said, "Wouldn't this be a jolly world if it weren't for God and 
policemen." It seemed to my boyish mind that Our Lord insisted 
upon this multitudinous forgiving of our brethren merely to beset 
the way to heaven with a lot of stiff hurdles. It was one of His 
especially ingenious devices, I thought, for making the already 
narrow path to heaven also bumpy. 

A Fellow Who VV'ouldn't Forgive His Girl Even Once 

It took the experience of a friend, years later, to make me see 
that the command to forgive is given us, not to make it hard to 
get to Heaven, but to make it easier to live on earth. This friend 



8 COURTESY, COURTSillP, AND MARRIAGE 

liked a girl so much that, while not yet formally engaged, he had 
got her to promise never to date anyone else any more. One day 
he learned that she had nevertheless had such a date. It seems 
a former boy friend had simply dropped in one evening, and she 
had found it simpler to go to a show with him than to tum him out. 

But my friend was furious. He denied that he was jealous. A 
principle was at stake, he declared. She had promised to have no 
other dates, and she had broken her promise. If a girl even before 
marriage can break such a promise, he told her, then obviously she 
cannot be trusted to make a good wife. No explanations, he argued, 
could alter the presumption that he who breaks a promise once 
will never keep promises. 

Now the Happy Husband of the Girl He Lonq Couldn't Forqive 

And so they broke off. Cutting his nose off to spite his face, 
he drove her into steady company with the man she would other-
wise have seen only once or twice. For himself, he was self-right-
eously miserable and lonely. He met one girl, as if on the pro-
verbial rebound, and dated her enthusiastically for two months, 
and then suddenly tired of her-almost to nausea. The girl, o£ 
course, was hurt and could not understand. The process repeated 
itself with another girl. 

Since he was an honorable fellow, his fickleness added to his 
unhappiness. When, however, reproached for not trying to make 
up with the first girl, he still vehemently insisted that no making 
up was possible with a girl who had once let him down. It took 
him two more years along the hard and bitter road of experience 
to learn what Christ wanted to tell him in one sentence. 

Luckily for him, though not for the men who had wasted their 
time on her, the girl had likewise not found another "To free the 
hollow heart from paining," as Coleridge says, and so was able 
to take him back. Today, he is the happy husband of the girl he 
long shunned as never to be trusted again because she had once 
under stress broken one promise. Three children now think the 
mother he picked is wonderful! 

Our Happiness Requires That We Learn to forqive 

Observing the misery these two young people brought upon 
themselves and others because one of them self-righteously re-

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FORGIVING OUR FRIENDS AND KEEPING THEM 9 

fused to forgive the other's real if small offense made me see that 
Jesus told us to forgive "seventy times seven times" because He 
loved us so much and hated to see us go through life along a trail 
of bruises. The old Roman Stoic, Epictetus, I became convinced, 

was right. He said, 

"If anyone will take these two words to heart and use 
them for his own guidance and regulation, he will be al-
most without sin and will lead a very peaceful life. These 
two words are bear and forbear." 

We must learn to forbear, to forgive, if we want to be happy. 
Human beings are weak, and our nearest and dearest will often dis-
appoint us. "To err is human," says Pope, "to forgive, divine." It 
is more than divine; it as a social necessity. St. Augustine spoke of 
mankind as a mass of sin. Just as we quite literally have daily 
cause to ask God to "forgive us our trespasses," so we also have 
frequent need to forgive one another our trespasses. 

The Best of Human Beings Often Are Weak 

The beginning of charity is realizing how weak and foolish and 
irresponsible human beings really are. "Know all," says Thomas 
a Kempis, "and you will pardon all." When an American said re-
bukingly that the French don't trust their wives, a Frenchman re-
plied, "We trust our wives perfectly; what we don't trust is human 
nature." 

A fine, religious girl was engaged to be married in a month to 
an equally fine man, a doctor. When an old boy friend came to 
town and called her up, she felt an irresistible urge to see him 
again. Telling her fiance she was attending club meetings, she had 
several dates with this man. Mter a few dates the novelty wore 
off, and she married the doctor on schedule-and was overwhelm-
ingly happy. Yet who will gauge the tragedy that could have re-
sulted if her fiance had discovered her deceit. Few would have 
blamed him for breaking the engagement. Yet here, too, the path 
of happiness lay alcr.g Christ's words and a patient understanding 
of human weakness. 

Once I was shocked to learn from a girl that a most gentlemanly 
boy, a few weeks before he married his regular girl friend of years 
standing, had asked her for a date. Since he was handsome, this 
girl was attracted to him. But she was also an exceptionally fine 



10 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

Catholic, and reminding him gently of his obligation to the girl 
he had gone with for years, declined the date. He then married his 
regular girl friend and now has a happy family. Had she learned 

of his attempted disloyalty, many would have justified her in dis-

carding him. Yet here, too, their path of happiness lay along 
Christ's words: 

Boys Disappoint Girls 

It is often said one should hope for the best and expect the 
worst. Towards our friends and acquaintances, this is too strong, 
too cynical. Nevertheless, the sooner one learns not to expect too 

much of one's friends, the better it will be for everybody. Young 

people especially are inclined to expect idealistic perfection on 
the part of those they love. Every boy likes to think his father can 

lick every man coming, except maybe Joe Louis. Every little boy 
is hurt when his older sister suddenly seems to prefer some beard-

ed stranger to him, and every kid sister is alarmed when her older 

brother brings some sophisticated "woman" to dinner. A girl who 
has met her first "one and only" is crushed to have him call for her 

late, is shocked when she learns that he, too, takes a strong drink 
once in a while, is humiliated when she finds him at times lying 
and boastful, is bewildered and sick when she is forced to realize 

that, when he sees someone else with a beautiful girl, he directly 
maneuvers, in spite of his regard for her, an exchange of dances. 

Girls Disappoint Men 

Similarly a boy who has just decided to devote his every sigh 
to the "one perfect and beautiful angel" is surprised to find her 

seldom ready on time, perturbed to have her often put him off 
with dubious headaches and too-busy pleas, disillusioned to learn 
that she has had dates with several other men in her life, shudders 

to think that she has possibly even been kissed before, is pained 

to see her dance almost cheek to cheek with precisely the hand-

somest of his friends, and finally burns with a jealous fury when 

during one exchange-dance she and her temporary escort walk 

out to the balcony for two minutes. 

Both Men and Women Are Foolish 

One young husband raised such a row because after a dance 
the escort held the wife's hand a moment longer than necessary 

that she vowed never to attend another dance-and kept it. The 

great Russian writer, Dostoievski, once stalked away angry from 

a receptior 

someone tc 
students a 

them as a : 
of the one, 

mittee and 

the classm 
Every year 

because the 

reply is lat 

When' 
love, atten1 

beings are 
says to Ge( 

perfect," a1 

That men 

one is perf 

are growin 
needed agt 

"As . 

am rea 

than I 

Lucky i 

to wink at 

The poet< 
thyself." 

Every or 

others, sho 

parents, fri 

self. But tt 
"forgive us 

us." This : 

But the 

sweetheart 
of a crime, 

covered hi1 



FORGIVING OUR FRIENDS AND KEEPING THEM 11 

a reception because, he later explained, his wife had permitted 

someone to kiss her hand "too passionately." Between two college 
students a long friendship was forever disrupted because one of 

them as a stag failed to return the girl after two numbers, instead 

of the one, as had been agreed. One chairman of the picture com-

mittee and his classmate became permanently estranged because 

the classmate failed to get his picture taken for the yearbook. 
Every year hundreds of friendships are strained and even wrecked 

because the more ardent letter writer cannot forgive the one whose 

reply is late. 

Don't Expect Perfection From Others 

When we are young we tend to expect from our friends such 
love, attention, and devotion as angels could give us, but human 

beings are sure to fail in. In Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Emily 
says to George, both in high school, "I always expect a man to be 

perfect," and George answers, "I feel it's the other way around. 

That men aren't naturally good; but girls are." Realizing that no 

one is perfect, and not expecting so much, is a sure sign that we 
are growing in wisdom. Samuel Johnson, a great and good man, 
needed age before he was wise enough to say, 

"As I know more of mankind 1 expect less of them, and 

am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms 
than I was formerly ." 

Lucky is anyone who learns young as Addison phrases it, "how 

to wink at human frailty, o~ pardon weakness that he never felt." 
The poet George Herbert says still more wisely, "Pardon all but 
thyself." 

Everyone should obviously try very hard never to disappoint 
others, should strive neither in big things or small to "let down" 

parents, friends, or sweethearts. He should not easily pardon him-
self. But toward others the mandate of the "Our Father" is clear, 

"forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against 

us." This is not a counsel of perfection; it is an elementary duty. 

If a Sweetheart is Seriously Wrong 

But the question arises as to what we must do if friend or 
sweetheart is guilty, not of a frailty, of a venial sin, but of a vice, 

of a crime, of a mortal sin. A girl, formally engaged to a man, dis-

covered him to have had an affair with another girl. What was 



12 COURTESY. COURTSIDP, AND MARRIAGE 

her right or duty here? She had the right, it seems, to marry him 
anyway. But certainly she also had the right to break off the en-
gagement, as she did. The meaning of forgiveness is difficult in 
such cases. She is required to forgive him in the sense of not wish-
ing him ill or bearing him a grudge. 

Forgiving Does Not Mean Marrying 

But one · does not need to marry everyone whom one forgives, 
or to take into one's home all the neighbors that Scripture enjoins 
us to love. If a girl finds that her boy friend is a chronic drunkard, 
surely religion permits and wisdom dictates that she refuse to 
marry him. If my friend slips from frailty into vice, into consort-
ing with thieves, drunkards, atheists, libertinists, I ought to pray 
for him; I have no right to abuse him or break his neck; I ought to 
feel sorry for him, not hateful towards him. But certainly also I 
have a right to disassociate myself from his friendly company. I 
need no longer welcome him as a personal friend. 

A good rule is to avoid people who are so wicked or so weak 
as to do the sort of things which objectively are mortal sins. If a 
friend or loved one sinks to th~t level, sorrowfully but firmly turn 
away and find someone better. But if the wrongs done, even if 
they greatly hurt your vanity or convenience, are really at worst 
only venial sins, not only forgive them, but forget them. Better still, 
take practically no notice of them. Let them not disturb the course 
of your friendship. Even a more serious trespass, if it is but a rare, 
an occasional lapse of weakness, had better be gracefully forgiven 
and forgotten. 

A Girl Forgives a Fellow Who Got Drunk 

One young fellow, after staying on the water wagon two years 
to establish his worthiness, was finally accepted. At ten Saturday 
morning the girl was to wait for him in the courthouse to get the 
license. The night before, his friends gave him a bachelor party. 
Mter two years, it happened. He had to be carried home. He had 
not told his friends of his all-important appointment. The girl 
waited for two hours. At three in the afternoon a sick-looking in-
dividual begged her mother to arrange that he might see her. · I 
am happy to report that she agreed to repeat the appointment, on 
condition that he spend the preceding Friday night with her 
mother! They have two children now. He thinks that all this in-
sistence on forgiving trespasses in the "Our Father" is exactly what 
the world needs! 

COi 

T 
Rig 
JOl 
to 1: 
wht 
to 1 
wor. 
thai 
prOI 
wha 
and 
hav. 
we1 

How 
has mor. 
you say 
with a 1 
and pail 

chile 
acts vel') 
will at i 
really hE 

Evel') 
it. We h: 
yet to ou 
bite the 
children 
really lm 

When 
a thorn i 
beast, re< 
pulling t1 
and mad< 
the lion, · 
saw there 
gentle, to• 



CHAPTER III 

COURTESY AND KINDNESS BEGIN IN THE HEART 

This article, originally entitled, "Is Your Heart In the 
Right Place," is reprinted from THE CATHOLIC HOME 
JOURNAL, July, 1944. It enforces the truism that the way 
to be loved is to love, (meaning affecton, not romantic love, 
where luckily it does not always work). Most people aJbout 
to meet someone important to them say to themselves, "I 
wonder, will he (or she) like me?" According to this article, 
that is exactly wrong, for it implies a kind of fear, and fear 
produces antagonism. The right approach is, "I don't know 
what he will be like, but from, all I have heard about him 
and considering all his responsibilities, one would almost 
have to like him (or her)." So, being sympathetic ourselves, 
we ourselves can hardly help being liked. 

Children and Animals Sense Who Likes Them 

How, way down deep in your heart, you feel towards people 
has more to do with making them like you or dislike you than what 
you say to them and often even what you do to them. A mother 
with a heart full of live can spank a child, and the child in tears 
and pain will yet throw her arms lovingly about the mother. 

Children by instinct or intuition will not take to a person who 
acts very nice but who is really callous and indifferent at heart, yet 
will at the same time take to an apparently gruff person who 
really has "a truly kind mind hidden beneath the rough surface.'' 

Everybody has this intuition to a degree. Even animals have 
it. We have often seen children abuse a pet dog most cruelly and 
yet to our amazement the dog, though howling with pain, will not 
bite the children. The reason is that he instinctively sees that the 
children love him. And even an animal doesn't bite someone who 
really loves it. 

True Kindness Tamed a Lion 

When Androclus in the old story saw the lion suffering from 
a thorn in its paw, he felt sympathy for the lion. And the fierce 
beast, recognizing this sympathy, submitted gently to Androclus' 
pulling the thorn out. Later in the arena, this same lion, starved 
and maddened, was let loose upon Androclus to devour him. But 
the lion, catching the same kindly look in Androclus' eyes that it 
saw there when Androclus pulled the thorn out of its paw, grew 
gentle, too, and refused to attack the saint. 



14 COURTESY, COURTSIDP, AND MARRIAGE 

Fear Makes Enemies 

Scienti~ts say that when a person encounters what he is afraid 
of his adrenal glands will give off an odor perceivable by any 
animal and arouse it to attack. The psychology of this seems to 
be that whatever we fear we dislike or hate. Fearing an animal, 
we hate it and the animal, instinctively perceiving this, dislikes, 
too, and sometimes bites. 

We Must Not Merely Act Kind But Tey to Feel Kind 

But just as an animal intuitively perceives that someone dis-
likes it, so human beings intuitively and often uncons~iously feel 
that someone really likes them or really dislikes them. Human be-
ings have the same basic intuitions animals have. Only with us 
reason has often overlaid intuition. 

No matter how nice we act towards people, if way down in our 
heart we do not really like them, they will intuitively feel it and 
dislike us, too. 

This fact is constantly giving rise to perplexity and grief. Many 
a mother-in-law says, "I don't see why John's wife is so nasty 
to me, when I am trying so hard to be nice to her." The question 
to ask is: Way deep down in your heart did you really want your 
son to marry her, do you really like her? If you do, you won't have 
to try to be nice to her, and if you don't you can't be really nice to 
her. 

Love Sinners the Way a Mother Loves a Sinful Son 

The place to start making friends is in your heart. If you can 
really get yourself to like people, to disapprove of their sins but 
to love the sinners the way you disapprove of your son's swearing 
yet love him in spite of it, then people will like you. And they 
can't help liking you. 

A man famous for friendship is Big Jim Farley. When on his 
fiftieth birthday he was asked how he was able to make so many 
friends, he replied: "I have made friends because I couldn't help 
it. I like people, and I like to meet new people, and the older I 
get the more convinced I am that on the whole the human race 
is pretty good." In that statement we have the essence of the 
matter: "I like people." He has many friends-because people just 
cadt ·help liking someone who deep down in his heart likes them. 

1 

b 
f~ 

e~ 

sa 

if 
lo 
fri 
on 
pe 

wa 
evE 
we 
hea 

it~ 

it h 
hare 
new 
sour 
with 
new 
that 
take 



id 
my 

to 

al, 

es, 

s-
el 

·-
IS 

COURTESY AND KINDNESS BEGIN IN THE HEART 15 

In Dorothy Canfield Fisher's novel, Her Son's Wife, a mother 

is upset because her son married what she thought a too ordinary 
and uncultured girl. But she determined for her son's sake to be. 

nice to her. She was mortified and shocked when the daughter-in-

law, though treated "nicely," was not grateful and nice in return. 

She need not have been surprised. What the young wife wanted 

was love, the mother's honest-to-goodness kindliness of heart. Had 

the mother converted her heart, instead of merely her external 

manners, so as to feel toward the wife's faults the way she felt 

towards any of her son's shortcomings, then the young wife could 
not have helped liking her. 

Love Does Not Necessarily Beqet Love But It Does Beqet Affection 

One can say that it is almost impossible for people not to like 

someone who sincerely likes them. If you really like someone it 
becomes almost a psychological necessity for her to like you. As 
far as friendship goes, the expression, "Love is mutual" is true. As 

regards romantic love, of course, though it is often true, it is not 
essentially true. John's falling in love with Mary does not neces-

sarily make Mary fall in love with John. It would be unfortunate 
if it were true, for John might be a married boss that has fallen in 
love with Mary! Love and sex are something over and above 
friendship, and should be. Romantic love should be for one, and 

only one person, and one should want it returned by only one 
person. 

It's Important to Learn to Like Certain People 

But friendly love we should feel for many people and should 

want it returned by many people. Ideally we should feel it for 
everybody and want everybody to feel it towards us. Practically 

we can make everybody like us whom we, deep down in our 

heart, sincerely like. 

Very often, however, we don't like precisely the persons whom 
it would be more happy and fortunate for us to like. In school life 
it nappens over and over again that the child that finds grammar 

hard will, even before she gets into the English class, dislike the 
new English teacher. Thousands of potentially happy jobs are 

soured by the fact that L~e new employees go to work the first day 
with a sort of fear and consequent dislike for their new bosses. A 

new recruit gets himself two strikes right off by feeling certain 
that the sergeant will mistreat him and that somehow he won't 

take it lying down. 



16 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

How to Learn to Like Your Future Mother-In-Law 

'A boy asks his best girl to meet his folks. She exclaims, "Oh, 
Tom, that's darling. Your mother, I bet, is a most charming woman. 
I am dying to meet her." So says Mary, and what she says she 
wants to mean. But actually, what begins to happen inside of 
Mary? 

What Mary Did Do 

Something deep down in her heart begins to speculate unhap-
pily. "I wonder what Tom's mother is really like. I bet she thinks 
Tom is marvelous. But I do hope she isn't like so many mothers 
who think no one is good enough for their sons. I'll have to behave 
extra well and be very, very nice to her. It would be terrible if 
she did not like me." And even now the evil seed is sown. By this 
time Mary deep down in her heart is no longer anxious to meet 
Tom's mother. Deep down, she now fears the mother, and whom 
we fear we do not like. 

When she meets Tom's mother, (who is just an ordinary human 
being with all the virtues and faults of ordinary people, not a 
saint or a wise and patient psychologist) the mother will in-
tuitively sense that Mary doesn't really like her even though she 
tries hard to act as if she does. And so a mutual dislike, silent of 
course, suppressed and frozen over, has nevertheless been hom. 
Both will suffer from it, and poor Tom will be bitterly perplexed 
to note that two such good people, both of whom love him so 
much, should somehow not like each other. 

What Mary Should Have Done 

However, if Mary had instead allowed herself to daydream 
somewhat as follows, everything would have been different: 

"I am glad to have a chance to meet Tom's mother. 
But naturally it will be a little difficult for both of us. 
Even though she is Tom's mother, I must expect her to 
be after all just an ordinary woman. Just like my mother, 
she will be worried whether the girl her son picked is 
worthy of him. Without her realizing it and though she 
would never be able to admit it even to herself, she will 
tend to be a bit fearful of anyone who is threatening to 
take her son from her. My mother would be the same 
way. Possibly she will even be a little afraid that I 

won 
not 
best 
they 
motl 
keep 
Tom 
how 
thee 
and · 

.ABd n 
gun to lik 
her; she · 

getting th 
introduce< 
of her ey· 
that mom 

motherly • 

Parents 
But there 
scold too 1 
doesn't lov~ 
like the ch 
red and bi 
tendency o 
irritated ar 
one mome1 
angry witl1 

When ¥. 
for doing it 
and when 1 
this rule is c 
it is astonis 
from someo 
scoldings ar 

Let y 

A custorr 
ticed among 



COURTESY AND KINDNESS BEGIN IN THE HEART 17 

won't like her, just as I tend to be afraid that she might 
not like me, and harden on that account. I'll just do the 
best I can do to sympathize with her unconscious feelings-
they are natural. I ought to be glad she is a natural 
mother, and I'll not be fearful or resentful about it. I'll 
keep remembering that but for her there would be no 
Tom, so what if she does hate to give Tom up. Heavens, 
how difficult my mother has often been. But somehow in 
the end she usually gives me what I have a right to want, 
and that's just the way I'll think of Tom's mother." 

An.d magically, Mary deep down in her heart would have be-
gun to like Tom's mother. She would be glad, not afraid, to meet 
her; she would look forward joyfully to the little strategies for 
getting the mother's real consent to Tom's release. On their being 
introduced, this feeling of deep-down kindliness would shine out 
of her eyes, and Tom's mother would feel it intuitively, and in 
that moment the feminine peck would be transformed into the 
motherly kiss. 

Don't Scold Anyone When Angry 

Parents are told not to punish a child in anger or scold in anger. 
But the reason is not that while angry one might hit too hard or 
scold too loud. The reason is that in the moment of anger one 
doesn't love. In that one moment of anger the parent doesn't really 
like the child. And therefore such angry punishment arouses hat-
red and bitterness and sullenness. Untold grief comes from the 
tendency of people to "speak their minds" precisely when they are 
irritated and angry. If a husband doesn't like his wife's hat, the 
one moment he shouldn't pick to tell her about it is when he is 
angry with her because she burnt his supper. 

When we want to correct someone, the right time and setting 
for doing it is a moment when there is sunshine in our heart for him 
and when the shadow of his fault is at its noonday smallest. If 
this rule is observed, then, like the pet dog whom the children abuse, 
it is astonishing what scoldings and punishments people will take 
from someone who sincerely likes them. This is so true that some 
scoldings and punishments have been accepted as tokens of love. 

Let Your Hard Words Never Hide Your Soft Heart 

A custom (not recommended to American husbands) is prac-
ticed among some Siberian tribes which makes pain a token of 



18 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

love. Husbands are said to keep leather tongs hanging on the 
bed post with which they administer weekly chastisements upon 
their wives, and the wives are said to consider this as proof that 
their husbands still love them as much as ever! In other words, 
just as scolding born of jealousy is taken to prove sexual love, so 
any scolding, if the heart is in the right place, can give the impres· 
sion of genuine regard. The way Jesus said to Peter, "Get thee be· 
hind me, Satan," made Peter a disciple forever. 

When that genuine regard shows through the eyes, the hardest 
words fall soft, and the hardest blows are merely physical. Even 

·Isaac, we gather, because he saw how deeply Abraham loved him, 
did not hate his father even when his father was placing him on 
the sacrificial altar. When Jephte iii the Old Testament told his 
daughter, while rending his garments from grief and love, that he 
would have to sacrifice her, "for I have opened my mouth to the 
Lord, and I can do no other thing," his daughter, feeling his great 
regard, told him not to hesitate, for, in the poet Byron's words, 

If the hand that I love lay me low, 
There cannot be pain in the blow! 
. . . forget not I smiled as I died! 

When a Loyal Soldier Called Lincoln a Fool 

During the Civil War a young Lieutenant Colonel, Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, was very proud to show his Commander-in-chief 
about the fortifications. But at an exposed point, the Commander-
in-chief somewhat recklessly got up from the trenches to see the 
enemy lines. In a second there was a flash of enemy musketry. In 
excited and affectionate urgency, the young officer grabbed the 
Commander-in-chief by the arm and pulled him under cover, cry· 
ing, "Get down, you fool!" A moment after he was appalled by 
what he had said. But Abraham Lincoln looked at the young of· 
ficer, and said, 'Tm glad to see you know how to talk to a civilian." 
Even a Commander-in-chief can't really be resentful when some· 
one rebukes him but rebukes him justly and with his heart in the 
right place! 

THE Ri 

This 
May, 1~ 
body s1 
of the 
true re 
selves t 
themse, 
mocrac. 
to crou 
Recogn; 
would l 

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blunder 
instruct 
reasons, 
reasons 
ary rea1 
wrong o 
effect w 
ness rea 
that teli 
assents , 
course. 

Am 

People, E 
trouble if the 
ly good reas 
the real reas' 

A lady a 
gether on Fr 
"Why are yo 

sons spring t' 
on Friday, tl 
fish is not ra 
among these 

1 

Her answt 
reason insteao 
classical The . 



CHAPTER IV 

THE REAL REASON, OR MERELY A "GOOD" REASON 

This article originally appeared in ' THE QUEEN'S WORK, 
May, 1944, a·s "Do You Give Real or Ph-ony Reasons?" Every-
body sneers at the person who cheats at solitaire. Yet one· 
ot the most prevalent vices is self-deception as regards our 
true reason tor doing things. Whole nations deceive them-
selves as to their true reasons tor going to war. They make 
themselves think they fight to make the world sate for de-
mocracy, and recognize too late that they fought selfishly 
to crowd a capafble competitor out of the world markets. 
Recognizing real as against phony or secondary motives 
would have prevented many wars. 

In individuals it would prevent many of life's greatest 
blunders and sins. This article, however, does not so much 
instruct as to how one can come to recognize one's real 
reasons, as that, recognizing them, one should give one's real 
reasons to others, rather than one's secondary ones. Second-
ary reasons often are "good" reasons, and it is not always 
wrong or dishonest to use them. Nevertheless, they are in 
effect usually phony. They are not the real honest-to-good-
ness reason why we did a thing. It is strongly suggested here 
that telling others our honest-to-goodness reason tor our 
assents and tor our refusals is generally rtly tar the wisest 
course. 

Among Several Reasons One Is The Real One 

People, especially young people, could save themselves much 
trouble if they made clear their real reasons and buried their mere-
ly good reasons. People too frequently confuse good reasons with 
the real reason. 

A lady and a recent acquaintance chance to have lunch to-
gether on Friday, and she orders fish. The friend asks casually, 
"Why are you ordering fish today?" Instantaneously several rea-
sons spring to her mind: that as a Catholic she may not eat meat 
on Friday, that fish is a wholesome food, that she likes fish, that 
fish is not rationed, or, playfully, that fish is brain food. From 
among these reasons she produces this c,me: "Oh, I like fish." 

Psychology on Good and Real Reasons 

Her answer represents what psychologists call giving a good 
reason instead of the real reason. James Harvey Robinson, in the 
classical The Mind in the Making, says, 



-: --~ 

20 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

"This distinction between good and real reasons is one 
of the most clarifying and essential in the whole realm of 
thought." 

The lady above gave the good reason that she likes fish instead 
of the real reason that as a Catholic she substitutes fish for meat 
on Friday. Now let's see what may well happen. A few Fridays 
later, the friend invites her and others to a lunch. Disarmingly 
she says, "You told me, Catherine, you like fish! But I have a sur-
prise for you. I have something even better than fish. I was able 
to get some quail!" Now the good reason has boomeranged. The 
lady will now either have to eat and sin, or blush and produce the 
real reason. And once exposed, any merely good reason looks 
phony; only the real reason is never phony. 

We Must First of All Make the Re.al Reason Clear to Ourselves 

Even the best of people unfortunately often confuse their good 
and their real reasons, and sometimes try to side-step an issue by 
giving a good instead of the real reason. Sometill1es and in some 
matters people don't even know their real reason. Robinson says, 
"The real reasons for our beliefs are concealed from ourselves as 
well as others." 

Not recognizing our own real reason is what we call wishful 
thinking and kidding ourselves. If it is silly to cheat at solitaire, 
then it is much more than silly to violate the integrity of one's 
own mind by nursing phony reasons. Here, however, we will con-
cern ourselves with cases where a moment's reflection makes the 
real reason clear to the speaker. 

The Real Reason Would Have Made a Boy Happy-

Perhaps the Girl Too 

Teenage girls, who want to seem older and more independent 
than they are, are particularly partial to good as against real rea-
sons. In going and coming, in drinking and smoking and dating, 
they are restricted specifically by what mother allows. But the 
reason these girls give for not doing this or that is not that mother 
forbids, but that they don't feel like doing it, or that they have to 
study, or that they don't like the person making the suggestion. 

A certain college boy at a social affair was greatly attracted to 
a girl who looked old enough to go out. When he asked her for a 

TI 

date, she sa: 
When he sa 
not liked hi 
few years t1 
again. Yean 
said no to h 
mother had · 
ly been sta) 
gave that as 
several year. 
but she was 
phony reaso 
happy, if se 
had she said 
But thank yo 

The hedg 
is pathetic. 
counter-reaso 
look naive ar 
She answers : 
may be a fac 
fore invited t 
either has to 
real reason a 
friends. He n 
with Sam Ha 
girl friends f< 
escape with, 
correctly ansv 
just a lunch. l 

By this tir 

will now stim 
after all. It's 
ried men; it de 
he would und( 

lunch with a rr. 
postponed the 
aesitant step t 



!d 

THE REAL REASON, OR MERELY A "Goon" REASON 21 

date, she said that she was staying in another city and couldn't go. 
When he saw her that Sunday in church he felt she had evidently 
not liked him at all and put him off with · a lie. During the next 
few years their paths crossed several times but they never spoke 
again. Years after and too late these facts transpired: She had 
said no to him because she was younger than she looked and her 
mother had absolutely forbidden her to have dates; she had actual-
ly been staying a few weeks with her aunt in another city and 
gave that as the good but not the real reason; she had then and for 
several years after been as much attracted to him as he to her, 
but she was too bashful and he too deceived to brush away the 
phony reason for the first refusal. One can easily imagine the 
happy, if sensibly delayed, romance that would have developed 
had she said: "My mother says I am too young to go out on dates. 
But thank you for asking." 

When a Married Man Asks for a Date 

The hedging girls will do when a married man asks for a date 
is pathetic. Every one of the good reasons suggests a smarter 
counter-reason to him until she is virtually committed to say yes or 
look naive and dishonest. He asks to take her to lunch Thursday. 
She answers she regretfully has an engagement for Thursday. This 
may be a fact but it is not the real reason for her no. He is there-
fore invited to say, "Too bad. What about Friday?'' Finally ~>he 
either has to say yes or shift her ground. She again sidesteps the 
real reason and says she prefers to lunch alone or with her girl 
friends. He naturally counters with, "But I saw you have lunch . 
with Sam Harris last week," or, "Surely you can do without your 
girl friends for one lunch." So she is cornered again and tries to 
escape with, 'Well, the fact is, I don't like you that way." He 
correctly answers, "But you don't have to like me that way. It's 
just a lunch. I am not asking you to love me." 

Her Phony Exuses Comer Her 

By this time she is dangerously cornered. Her predicament 
will now stimulate a dozen good reasons for perhaps saying yes 
after all. It's only a lunch; many girls go out to lunch with mar-
ried men; it doesn't mean anything; she really needs the good lunch 
he would undoubtedly buy her; there is really no sin in just having 
lunch with a married man, etc., etc. If she says yes, she has merely 
postponed the day for the real reason and has taken her first 
liesitant step towards scandal and adultery. 



22 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

One sentence containing the real reason would have saved her 
all this fencing on the losing side and would have won her instant 
respect, too. She simply ought to have said immediately and gent-
ly and firmly: 

·~u you weren't married r d be glad to go to lunch with 
you. But no matter how well you may mean it, I do not 
go out with married men, not even to lunch." 

If he is a particularly bad sort, some more side-stepping rea-
soning is possible. He may now say, "Why not? What's wrong with 
going to lunch with a married man?" If she now grasps for a good 
instead of the real reason, she will say, "Oh, your wife wouldn't 
like it," which corners her again when he says, "Oh, she doesn't 
mind at all," or, "She and I have been separated for months." In 
this, as in all cases, there is only one reason one can stand on and 
stand by and that is the real reason: "You are a married man and 
even a luncheon date starts something that can't honorably be 
finished. We won't start it." 

Phony Reasons May Get a Girl Into Sin 

A girl is asked for a date by a man whose character or inten-
tions she doubts but whom she otherwise likes. If, giving the 
real reason, she says, "Thanks for asking. But because I don't 
know you well enough or what you are like, I can't say yes," she 
gives him a chance to try to prove himself decent and worthy of 
an ev~ntual glad yes. But if she sidesteps the real reason and says, 
"We haven't been properly introduced," he can produce a casual 
introduction and so virtually commit her to go out with him. If 
she !Jays she is busy, he will either leave her as hopeless or persist 
in naming alternate dates until both feel resentful and humiliated. 

A Catholic girl, learning after some dates that an otherwise fine 
and attractive fellow was divorced, wanted to break off with him. 
This proved to be difficult to do. The chief cause was that she kept 
giving reasons which after some reflection (and ·another date) 
the man could logically brush aside. She said, ''I'm not really in 
love with you." He answered, "Mter enough dates you may come 
to love me." She said, "We belong to different religions." He an-
swered, "Even your church recognizes that some mixed marriages 
turn out well." She said, "I don't know anything about your 
family." He answered, "I am making arrangements to have you 
meet them." More and more cornered, she said, "I could never be 
happy married to a man who had been married before." He an· 

T l 

swered, "S• 
second mru 

At long 
she product 

"For 

solute!) 
with a 
how I 
each oi 

The Reo 

If a girl 
whatever, e 
Olivia in Sl 
page, does: 

"Your 
"Yet J 
"A gr; 

She should s 
tered that yc 
at all and th 
you, for I wi 
just like that 
understand a 
ing friendly. 

When It 

Giving th 
danger or sin 
drink more, s 
spent enough 
can all be ar 
the drink. I 
should say f1 
thanks, I mal 

moderately b 
thanks, I hav 
she can defen 
can simply st 
phony reason 



aved her 
er instant 
and gent-

with 
~not 

ping rea-
·ong with 
r a good 
wouldn't 
e doesn't 
nths." In 
l on and 
man and 
rably he 

THE REAL REASON, OR MERELY A "coon" REASON 23 

swered, "Some of the happiest marriages on record have been 
second marriages." 

At long last, repeatedly and ignobly forced to shift her ground, 
she produced the real reason: 

"For a Catholic like me, marrying a divorced man is ab-
solutely out of the question, and therefore even going out 
with a divorced man is pointless. That's why, no matter 
how I might like things to be otherwise, we won't date 
each other any more." 

The Real Reason When She Just Doesn't Want the Date 

If a girl is simply unable to like a worthy boy for no reason 
whatever, even then it is best courteously to say so frankly, as 
Olivia in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, speaking to the Duke's 
page, does: 

"Your lord does know my mind; I cannot love him. 
"Yet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble. . . 
"A gracious person: but yet I cannot love him." 

She should say, "You seem to be nice and all that, and I feel flat-
tered that you ask me, but I simply don't like you romantically 
at all and therefore please don't ask me any more to go out with 
you, for I will have to say no." Most men have often enough felt 
just like that towards girls who liked them and will therefore easily 
understand and go away, if they are reasonably civilized, still be-
ing friendly. 

When It's a Sin One Must Say No Because It Is a Sin 

Giving the real reason is obviously important where serious 
danger or sin hang in the balance. If he insists she drink or she 
drink more, such refusals as, "It doesn't taste good," or "You have 
spent enough on me," or "It's getting late," or "I have a headache," 
can all he argued down and leave her almost committed to take 
the drink. If she doesn't drink at all and doesn't want to, she 
should say frankly, "No, thanks, I never drink," or if truer, "No 
thanks, I make it a practice not to drink on dates." If she drinks 
moderately hut feels she has had enough, she should say, "No 
thanks, I have had as much as is good for me." These positions 
she can defend and in fact she does not need to defend them. She 
can simply stand on them and gentlemen will accept them. But 
phony reasons no one need accept. 



24 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

The more serious the temptation, the more important it is to 
state and insist on the real reason. Does he want to park the car 
in a lonely spot? Is he urging going to his apartment or to a hotel 
room? Is he attempting dangerous familiarities? Only the real 
reason for refusing stands the healthy chance of succeeding. 

Is he saying, "We can't get married now. But why must we 
wait to have fun? Everybody is doing it"? At such a point, when 
her own flesh would betray her soul, phony reasons would be her 
undoing. Answers such as, "I don't feel like it," or "Somebody 
would find out," or "There might be a baby," or "We might get 
sick," or "Mterwards you would loathe me," or "I don't love you 
enough," or "Let's wait for a better time and place," all such good 
reasons are little more than the front-line pawns to sin. The 
tempter will logically brush each of them aside. Their weakness 
will even make him feel justified-and, alas, sometimes her too. 

The Real Reason Is The Only Final Reason 

There is only one unassailable reason. One reason by which 
she can live and by which she can die, and which no man can 
argue down. And that real reason is: 

"Some things are right only in marriage. When I'm mar-
ried I will do them, and not till then. I am sure this is 
the last time you will make any such dishonorable sug-
gestion to me." 

Yes, there are good reasons and there is the real reason. The 
good reasons are phony reasons and they finally make a person 
either look silly or be sinful. Sensible people will stop long 
enough to know their real reason and then they won't side-step 
it-to lean on a mere good one. 

WH 

This 1 
THE Q'G 
is alwa'l! 
ters of l 
which si 
ly and c 

I kn01 
unwelco 
dishone1 
or sick o 
calling : 
say "Ye1 
even tea 
they are 
ever sm 
if God 1 
necessar 

This c 
feel har. 
America 
com para 
ethical l 
them. It 
conductt 
an easy i 
ly forces 
le conte: 
,ficult PI 
or atterr 

One of 

The othe: 
ly unexpecte 
and attitudE 
Usually I st: 
casion I act 
whenever th1 
by some rasl 
expense in IJ 

But this 
defense. In 1 
Count Orsini 



is to 

car 

to tel 
real 

we 
hen 

her 

ody 

get 

ou 

>od 
rhe 
ess 

o. 

ch 

an 

CHAPTER V 

WHEN A GIRL WANTS TO DECLINE A DATE 

This article, too, first appeared under the aJbove title in 
THE QUEEN'S WORK, May, 1946 .. It assumes that the truth 
is always desirable, even where it is most difficult, in mat-
ters of love and romance. It gives examples and illustrations 
which should help gir.ls turn down unwelcome dates honest-
ly and openly, yet not offensively. 

I know that girls feel that they simply cannot get out of 
unwelcome dates except by subterfuges and lies and petty 
dishonesties. They feel they have to say that they are busy 
or sick or taking care of their qrandmother, when, if the boy 
calling were the captain of the football team, they could 
say "Yes" immediately. I a.lso know that many parents and 
even tea·chers and clergymen justify these methods and say 
they are not rea.lly lies. But I insrist that they are lies, how-
ever small the fault of them may be. I also maintain that 
it God is the Truth, then any sort of dishones•ty, however 
necessary it seems, cannot be the wisest procedure. 

This article tries to help girls to be honest who do not 
feel happy about their subterfuges and "white lies." The 
Americantype of unchaperoned, free courtship is something 
comparatively new in the world .. lt brings with it a world of 
ethical problems. That of conducting it honestly is one of 
them. It has not been achieved. Courtship is still generally 
conducted in a web of dishonesties and d.eceptions. It is not 
an easy problem to solve. Nevertheless, when marriage final-
ly forces the truth, the marriage often goes sour. This artic-
le contends that honesty is the best policy-though a dif-
ficult policy-and should begin with the very first date, 
or attempt at one. 

One of Shakespeare's "Sweet Young Things" Tries to 

Sidestep a Date 

The other day in my Shakespeare class I got myself into a total-
ly unexpected bushel of trouble. I was trying to explain the ideals 

and attitudes of Twelfth Night to a class of junior college girls. 
Usually I stand by Shakespeare, come what may. But on this oc-
casion I accused him of a false, a negative ideal. Ordinarily 
whenever the old Bard is discovered to have nodded, or is accused 
by some rash critic to have done so, the whole class rejoices at my 
expense in mischievous glee. 

But this time there was an immediate and spirited rush to his 
defense. In this play Lady Olivia, though she admires and respects 

Count Orsino, feels that she cannot love him. However, he .loves. 



26 COURTESY, COURTSIDP, AND MARRIAGE 

her very much and keeps trying to see her, and, not being admitted 
himseH, sends messengers. When there is a knock at the gate, Lady 
Olivia orders the servant to see if the messenger is from Count 
Orsiao, and if so, to say, "I am sick, or not at home; what you will, 
to dismiss him" (Act II, Sc. iv) . 

"Here," I said sadly, "Shakespeare makes it seem right for 
Olivia to lie in order to get out of an unwelcome date. How un-
fortunate," I continued, "that this great poet, usually every bit as 
ethical as St. Thomas, should promote the universal vice of girls, 
that of lying when they don't want to go out with a man who calls 
them for a date!" 

My Students Defend the Lie to Evade a Date 

The spontaneous cry of protest that arose from every part of 
the classroom practically blew me behind my desk for safety. What 
was a girl to do, they exclaimed, when some drip calls for a date! 
Surely I didn't want them to say brutally, "I don't like you. I won't 
go out with you." After all one must save the boy's feelings. And 
the only way to do it, they protested, is by telling him that one is 
sick, or busy! 

After the first wave had subsided slightly, one very conscienti-
ous girl confessed, "I have trouble all the time when I try to be 
honest with boys. Even my mother gets disgusted with me and 
says, 'Why don't you tell 'em you're sick, or let me answer the 
phone and tell 'em you are out, or something'!" I looked horrified 
and cried, "What! Can it be you girls even get your mothers to lie 
for you to get out of unwelcome dates?'' Now they were just a bit 
discomfited, but it was clear their mothers did sometimes help 
them lie out of dates. 

They Ask How a Girl Can Possibly Evade a Date Honestly 

In a second, they were re-formed for battle. Seriously, they 
wanted to know what I had to suggest. What should they say to 
a boy who asks for a date but with whom they do not want to go 
out? 

Now I was discomfited. After some obvious confusion I sug-
gested haltingly, "Well, why don't you say to him, 'It's nice of you 
to ask me. But though I think you are nice too, I do not feel in 
the mood for a romantic friendship with you at this time'." An 
avalanche of laughter and protests greeted this. One usually quiet 

girl asl 
what si 
if you ~ 
yourselj 
you is 1 

We 

At t1 
a chanc 
came to 

getting · 
welcom€ 
telling f: 
you don' 
realized, 
with him 

But I 
lying to :b 
cannot bt 
him. I rer 
to a painl, 
harm and 

For on 
really dev~ 
one timet 
whom she 
foolish as t< 
plained tha 
swered tha 
Friday?'' Sl 
Friday too, 
tinued acco 
put her on 
tending to 1 
Sunday, am 
her to go or 
Finally to o· 
would have 
where to pu 



dmitted 
:e, Lady 
1 Count 
ou will, 

ght for 
ow un-
bit as 

,f girls, 
10 calls 

1art of 
What 
date! 
won't 
And 

WHEN A GffiL WANTS TO DECLINE A DATE 27 

girl asked archly, if I didn't think myself that that sounded some-
what stuffy. Another said, "He'd hate you for the rest of his life 
if you said that." A third said, "A boy would answer, 'Don't give 
yourself big ideas. Who said anything about romance. All I asked 
you is to go to a show with me'." 

We Admit That It Is Seldom Easy to Deny Any Requests 

At this point, happily, the bell rang. On my way home I had 
a chance to do some good hard thinking on the subject. Soon I 
came to my first conclusion. It is that no matter how you face it, 
getting out of an unwelcome date is not as easy as accepting a 
welcome one. It's not as easy as falling off a log. It's harder than 
telling father you got another "F" in deportment, or mother that 
you don't like the type of dresses she always picks for you. Yes, I 
realized, it wasn't easy to tell a boy you did not want to go out 
with him. 

Better a Painful Truth Than Any Kind of Lie 

But I felt more certain than ever that using Olivia's method, 
lying to him, deceiving him, could not possibly be the right way. I 
cannot believe that deceiving a person is being charitable with 
him. I remember Goethe's saying that he preferred a painful truth 
to a painless lie, because, he argued, the lie will sooner or later do 
harm and the truth cannot but be the best policy in the end. 

A Boy Put a Lying Girl On the Spot 

For one thing, in many cases, lying either fails or provokes a 
really devastating rudeness eventually. One girl complained to me 
one time that she had had a date with a foreign student towards 
whom she felt a particular dislike. I asked her why she was so 
foolish as to accept a date with him if she did not like him. She ex-
plained that when he asked for a date on Thursday, she gliby an-
swered that she was busy, whereupon he said, "Well, what about 
Friday?" She, of course, declared that unfortunately she was busy 
Friday too, and hoped surely that would end matters. Her con-
tinued account was amusing. It seems this boy was determined to 
put her on the spot-to make her either own up or put up. Pre-
tending to take her at her word, he suggested Saturday, and then 
Sunday, and so on ·until he got around to another Thursday. For 
her to go on saying that she was busy would have been ludicrous. 
Finally to own up and say that she just did not want to date him 
would have proved her a liar. Consequently, she was on the spot 
where to put up was easier than to own up. 



28 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

Because Most Girls Are Not Frank, Men Doubt All Excuses 

Then there was the modest and considerate boy who asked a 
girl to a very fine Sunday afternoon concert. He had picked a 
particularly refined occasion to bring about their first date. When 
she answered that she had to take her parents out for a Sunday 
afternoon drive, he quite logically concluded that she had given 
him a typical feminine "white lie" and that a date with him was 
undoubtedly disagreeable to her. Being gentlemanly and sensitive 
to others' wishes, he never called her up again.· Years afterwards 
he learned that the girl had not lied, did not consider his invita-
tion unwelcome at all, but was in the habit of taking her parents, 
who were not very well, for a drive every Sunday afternoon and 
did not want to fail them just for what looked like a casual date. 
But when girls so generally get out of unwelcome dates by lying, 
how is a gentlemanly boy to know whether a girl's no is sincere 
and honest or is just a dishonest, and therefore really insulting, way 
of putting him off? Declining an invitation with a lie is really an 
insult because it implies tl1at one does not consider the boy gentle-
manly and cultured enough to accept and respect an honest no. 

When a Girl Is Engaged · 

Somehow girls must find an honest way of declining an unwel-
come date. Obviously, if a girl is married and a man invites her, she 
should, if he did not know her married, thank him for the honor 
and directly tell him that she is married. To a gentleman, no more 
need be said. If a girl is engaged to be married her answer should 
be similar. She should say, "I feel flattered that you should invite 
me. But because I am engaged, I do not accept other dates. Thank 
you for calling." 

When a Girl Is "Out of Circulation" 

If a girl is going steady with a boy under an agreement that 
neither is to date anyone else, but if nevertheless the possibility 
exists that they may shortly "break up" and that then she may very 
much want another invitation from the boy calling, then her an-
swer should be negative but not quite final. She should say, "It's 
nice of you to invite me. But since March (or whatever time) I am 
going steady with a boy and we agreed not to date anyone else. 
Otherwise I should like to go with you. But for the present, you 
understand, I am sure, I must say no. But I do want to thank you 
for asking." Such an answer, honest and to the point, will raise a 
man's respect for the girl and also make him want to call her again 

should he eve 
stead of usin1 
they are out 
and for the ti 

When a G 

It seems t< 
most other c; 
calls a gir 1 w 
were the last 
her with whOJ 
were no othe 
enough to en 
place of one t 

When sud 

tactfully decl 
Jones), it's gc 
accept your ii 
time for ( or a 
to start going 
I appreciate : 
somewhere 01 

A F1 

I am com 
appreciate suo 
no cannot bri 
and potential 

either fail in 
cognized by 1 
and angry. It 
has been lied 

the girl. 

Finally, w 
wouldn't wail 
Fortunately s 
married man 



a 

!1. 

il 

WHEN A GffiL WANTS TO DECLINE A DATE 29 

should he ever learn or suspect that she is again in circulation. In-
stead of using the words, "going steady," some girls simply say 
they are out of circulation just now, and the man understands-
and for the time being files her name away, for future reference. 

When a Girl Doesn't Like to Sacrifice Tried Boyfriends For 

a New One 

It seems to me an almost similar answer is honestly possible in 
most other cases of unwelcome invitations. Occasionally a man 
calls a girl with whom she would not want to go out even if he 
were the last man on earth. More often, however, someone calls 
her with whom she would not particularly mind going out if there 
were no other men around, but in whom she is not interested 
enough to crowd into a sufficiently full schedule or to give the 
place of one of her better-known friends. 

When such a boy calls, it seems to me, she could honestly and 
tactfully decline his invitation as follows: "Why, John (or Mr. 
Jones), it's good of you to call me. Ordinarily I'd be delighted to 
accept your invitation. But I am going out as much now as I have 
time for (or as mother allows me to), so that just now I prefer not 
to start going out with anybody new. But I do want you to know 
I appreciate your calling, and I hope we'll meet now and again 
somewhere or other." 

A Frank "No" Hurts Less Than a Lyinq "No" 

I am convinced that the average boy would understand and 
appreciate such an answer. While to a boy who likes the girl, any 
no cannot bring joy, yet this answer would keep him as a friend 
and potential date much better than putting him off with lies. Lies 
either fail in preventing the unwelcome date or are finally re-
cognized by the boy as lies, in which case he will feel humiliated 
and angry. It is practically impossible for a man to find that he 
has been lied to without becoming angry and losing respect for 
the girl. 

When a Married Man Calls 

Finally, what will a girl say when a man calls with whom she 
wouldn't want to go out even if he were the last man on earth? 
Fortunately such cases, it seems to me, are rare. Obviously, if a 
married man invites her, she should firmly and not apologetically 



30 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

tell him that she is shocked that he as a married man should ask 
her for a date and that of course she does not go out with mar-
ried men. Nor should she suggest that his wife wouldn't like it. 
That is ultimately largely beside the point. A married man has 
no right to date other women, and a girl has no right to date him 
-no other consideration is necessary. 

When a Divorced Man Asks for a Date 

If a divorced man asks her for a date, her negative should be 
firm but kindly and sympathetic. She should thank him for the 
honor of his invitation. Then she should add firmly: "But my re-
ligion (and my family) forbid my dating a divorced man, and 
consequently, even though yours is just a friendy invitation, I pre-
fer not to go out with a divorced man, even if he is very nice." 
Such an answer insults no man. Should he act insulted, he proves 
himself not only divorced but unrefined and unworthy as well. 

When a "Bad Egg" Calls 

If a notoriously fast or wicked fellow asks a girl for a date, I 
think she can well say, even should say, "I might be flattered at 
your interest, but unfortunately, you know your reputation is not 
such as any girl's mother should approve. So I am sorry I can't at 
all consider accepting your invitation." I don't think a girl should 
feel honored when a rake asks her for a date, and I think she should 
in declining make it clear that she does not feel honored and 
why. I am presuming that a girl knows the difference between the 
bad repute from immorality and the false social stigma a person 
sometimes suffers for his race or color or pacifism. 

When Her Girlfriend's Boyhi.end Calls 

If a boy calls her who is going with her girl friend or is supposed 
to be going steady with some girl, she should say frankly, "John, you 
are going out with my girl friend (or you are supposed to be go-
ing steady with a girl). Under the circumstances my going out 
with you would cause ill feelings. Otherwise I would be glad to 
go with you, but this way, no." She should not say this, however, 
unless were he free she would like to go out with him. If not, she 
should say, "John, you have a girl friend, and my feelings for you 
are not such as would make it right for me to give you or promise 
you a date." This will discourage the boy from breaking off with 
the other girl under a false hope. 

When a G 

But wh 
morally an 
not want t< 

or too stu1 
honesty is 
keep from 
with favor 1 
by lies. Oli 

When s 
does not w 
with h,im, ! 
awfully nio 
But I am s 
should feel 
or wise) f01 
happen to J 
you. For.tl 
to call, eve 

This sai, 

"Good nigh 
contrary no 
an answer ( 

before tryin 
answer a b: 
when the I 
for the time 
not hurt or 
an angelic t 
and Beelzel 



WHEN A GffiL WANTS TO DECLINE A DATE 31 

When a Good Boy Calls Whom She Nevertheless "Can't Stand" 

But what will a girl say to a man who is perfectly all right 
morally and socially, only she can't stand him or absolutely does 
not want to go out with him. He is, let us say, too short or too tall 
or too stupid or just not good-looking enough. In such a case 
honesty is difficult. Most girls insist that only by lying can they 
keep from hurting the boy's feelings. Nevertheless, I cannot look 
with favor upon any social intercourse that can only be kept smooth 
by lies. Olivia's way cannot be the right way. 

When such a boy asks a girl for a date, and if she is sure she 
does not want to go with him, that she never will want to go out 
with him, she should say gently and sympathetically: "John, it is 
awfully nice of you to ask me to go out (or to invite me to a show). 
But I am sorry, John, I just don't feel toward you the way a girl 
should feel for accepting a date. I don't think it is right (or smart 
or wise) for a girl to start going out with a fellow, when she doesn't 
happen to feel like it at all. I would just be wasting an evening for 
you. For. that reason I must say no. But, really, it was nice of you 
to call, even though I don't accept." 

Saying "No" Honestly and Gracefully Requires 

Effort and Training 

This said, she should stand by it firmly and say "Good-by" or 
"Good night'' and not "Call again!" My Shakespeare class to the 
contrary notwithstanding, I don't want any girl to protest that such 
an answer or a similar one won't work until she has tried it! And 
before trying it, she should imagine the situation and rehearse her 
answer a bit. After all, every girl rehearses how she will say yes 
when the right man proposes. Why shouldn't she also rehearse 
for the times when she must say no, when she must deny, yet should 
not hurt or insult. Saying no honestly and tactfully is a hard and 
an angelic thing. It needs effort and study. Yes requires no study, 
and Beelzebub himself prompts the lies. 



CHAPTER VI 

HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY - ALWAYS 

This article first appeared in THE VICTORIAN MAGA-
ZINE, June, 1942, under the title, "Are We A Nation Of 
Liars?" and sub-titled, "Truth Takes a Beating Every Min-
ute of the Day at the Hands of the 'Every-Day' Lie." This 
short article really applies the principle of never lying to 
all the affairs of life, whereas the previous one considered 
merely one phase of courtship. 

Everybody says that honesty is the best policy. And 
everybody gets angry, very angry when anyone says he lied. 
Yet, I beg the readers of this article to pause a moment now 
and ask themsPlves whether there aren't some things about 
which they habitually tell, if not big, at least petty lies. Then 
after they have read the article, I should like them to 
make the same review. They will probably find that they 
have been habitually telling petty lies but have taken them 
so much tor granted that they did not even recognize them 
as lies. 

Honesty is one of the hardest virtues in the world. Just 
as no one ever attains complete sinlessness, so very jew 
people ever re·ach a point where they never tell lies. But 
this article begs them at least to try not to lie-to try never 
to lie about anything~ecause "Honesty is the best policy"! 

Most People Lie But Who Calls Them Liar Offends Them More 

Than If He Called Them Murderer 

Even "a just man shall fall seven times," says the Bible. It has 
always seemed to me that the greater portion of these falls must 
be against the Eighth Commandment - Thou shalt not lie. For 
sinful though mankind is said to be, the only sin I see people com-
mit frequently, eve1y day as it were, is that against the truth. 

"Mother, you answer the phone. If it's that Jones boy again, 
tell him I'm in bed with a cold." "Oh, there is that insurance col-
lector coming. Susan, go tell him I am out for the afternoon." 

· "Got in at three this morning, ugh. Sis, go call the office and tell 
them I'm sick and can't come to work today." "Oh, that bridge 
party. I hate :lt. Darling, you simply must call and tell them I 
have a headache and we can't come." And so it goes - the whirl-
ing round of small, everyday lying. 

Who Lie 

' Of COUTS 
are only th~ 
" ... there i 
for the time 
ly if people 
or an escap~ 
save their lif 
If a student 
ing is involv· 
of having cl 

Wic 

Obviousl 
for a dollar 
quarter whi< 
beer, would 
meeting" on• 
"Sin has mm 
"but a lie is 

The trutl 
ford it. ThE 
murderer th 
that told thE 
the truth is 
honest at th· 
derer; but i 

It Is a Pity 

That is ' 
that is why 
?eople. Peo1 
out of the < 

That, to 
when peopl« 
varicate. It 
nocent mat1 
weapon of t 



HONESTY IS THE BEST POUCY-ALWAYS 

Who Lies About a Small Matter Will Even Move Surely 

Lie About a Big Matter 

33 

· Of course, these are not grave matters. Quite probably they 
are only the smallest kind of sins. But Cardinal Newman says, 
" ... there is a way of winning men · from greater sins by working 
for the time at less." And that seems especially hue of lying. Sure-
ly if people · will lie for so unimportant a thing as an hour of sleep 
or an escape from a bridge game, one must expect them to lie to 
save their life - or their job, or to keep their wife or their husband. 
If a student will lie about coming late to class when a mere scold-
ing is involved, how can I expect him not to lie when I suspect him 
of having cheated in a final examination involving expulsion? 

Wicked People Need The Lie to Escape the Law 

Obviously, who will lie for a penny will much more likely lie 
for a dollar. The husband who will lie to his wife about that 
quarter which should have gone for cough medicine but went for 
beer, would certainly also lie to her if his "important business 
meeting" one evening had been with a blonde instead of a broker! 
"Sin has many tools," says Oliver Wendell Holmes in the Autocrat, 
'but a lie is the handle of them all." 

The truth is so precious a thing that the bad simply cannot af-
ford it. The lie is the indispensable passport for all evil-doers. The 
murderer that told the truth is in the electric chair. The adulterer 
that told the truth is paying alimony. The unfaithful wife who told 
the truth is a divorcee! One simply cannot be seriously bad and 
honest at the same time. One can be a thief without being a mur-
derer; but if one is a thief one must be a liar also. 

It Is a Pity When Decent People Use the Gangster's Stand-by 

That is why honesty is really the guarantee of goodness, and 
that is why one simply cannot expect honesty from really bad 
'eople. People that break the law will have to lie to try to keep 
out of the clutches of the law. 

That, too, is why it is somewhat pathetic and demoralizini 
when people who are not really bad, like those quoted above, pre-
varicate. It shows them stooping in unimportant and even in-
nocent matters to the same tool that is, after the gun, the first 

weapon of the criminal. Use of the lie in everyday matters is as if 



34 COURTESY, COURTSIDP, AND MARRIAGE 

the ordinary citizen were caught walking about like a gangster 
with a tommy gun. 

The Small Lie Paves the Way for the Larger Lapse 

It isn't that the common house lie, as it were, is so black a sin. 
But neither is snapping "damn" or "helf'; yet it is crude. Neither 
is the common cold a dangerous sickness; yet it sometimes slips 
into pneumonia. And so the everyday lie is at least cheapening. 
It is a slow poisoner of self-respect. It is a weakener of mental 
and moral fiber. It may be a way-paver for graver sin. The girl 
who lies to her mother about smoking during a week-end visit will 
also one day expect to lie to her, if during another week-end party, 
she drinks too much! The little lie does not produce murder, but it 
makes the way easier. It prepares the pit if the great temptation 
should come! 

The Quakers So Honest They Don't Need an Oath 

Charles Lamb, in his charming essay, "Imperfect Sympathies," 
says that the Quakers were known to be so truthful in all the af-
fairs of life that no oath was required of them in the law courts. 
By contrast people of other denominations, he says, were wont to 
indulge in a double second-rate sort of honesty in everyday affairs 
that on~ had to put them upon oath to be reasonably assured of 
the truth. This is a great compliment to the Quakers. I should 
like Catholics to acquire the reputation of being in all matters the 
most honest imaginable people! 

Honesty Is Said To Be Not a Conspicuous Virtue 

Among Catholics. 

They are not thought to be so now. Catholics are thought by 
many to be using the teaching about mental reservations as a 
cover for white and other lying. This accusation once inspired a 
famous book. A brilliant English clergyman and nove1ist, Charles 
Kingsley, once wrote, directing himself to the great Newman: 

"Truth for its own sake had never been a virtue with the 
Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need 
not, and on the whole, ought not to be . . ." 

Newman, to refute this charge, which reverberated throughout 
the British Isles, wrote his famous Apologia Pro Vita Sua. I should 

. ~ 

~ . 4--. -~ --_--___ - --

like to s 
things c 

Bein 
reward . 
that the 
on any 
it were, 
to lie. 

"The 

in Qual 
imposed 
coward! 
plined l 

If Got 

Peo:r: 
of COUTS 
make th 
it neces 
lie and 
amount 
dangero 

One 
verbal t 
so well. 
distincti 
when 01 
order to 



gster 

sin. 
ther 

1lips 
fin g. 
ntal 
girl 
will 
r:y, 
.t it 
lion 

af-
!ts. 

to 
irs 
of 
tld 
he 

HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY-ALWAYS 35 

like to see every Catholic by being honest, first of all, in the little 
things of life, refute it for all to see all the time! 

Honesty .. Makes .. For Quick-Wittedness 

Being honest in the everyday questions of life brings with it a 
reward right here and now. To cite Charles Lamb again. He says 
that the Quakers, because they are scrupulously careful not to lie 
on any occasion, acquire a unique mental quick-wittedness, for as 
it were, they have to be quick on the verbal trigger not to have 
to lie. 

"The adinirable presence of mind," he says, "which is notorious 
in Quakers upon all contingencies, Inight be traced to this self-
imposed watchfulness" never to fall into ·a lie! In a way, only the 
cowardly or the stupid need to lie - and the Quaker has disci-
plined himself so that he is too smart to lie! 

If God is the Truth, the Lie Cannot Be His Recommendation 

!For Not Givinq Pain 

People often use the lie as a device to avoid giving pain. This 
of course cannot really be right. God could not be so cruel as to 
make the lie wrong on the one hand and on the other hand make 
it necessary to avoid hurting fellow beings. Nevertheless, not to 
lie and yet in certain instances not to give pain requires a great 
amount of verbal tactfulness and of nimbleness in side-stepping 
dangerous questions. 

One reward of habitual honesty in the small things of life is a 
verbal tact and mental quickness which nothing else can give one 
so well. But m0st of all, avoidance of the everyday lie gives one a 
distinctive self-respect. It is a great thing for one's personality 
when one no longer needs to slap God in the face with a lie in 
order to spare a neighbor a dig in the ribs! 



CHAPTER VII 

THE FIRST THING A GIRL SHOULD ASK 

This .article was reprinted from THE VICTORIAN MAGA-
ZINE, September, 1943, under the same title. Though it 
will seem somewhat simple to the sophisticated and mean-
ingless to those who believe in divorce, it has important im-
plications tor the better conducting of the chaotic Ame-
rican manner of courtship. It is well to caution that what 
here is declared to be the first thing the girl should ask 
does not thereby become something the parents need not 
ask. It always remains the duty of parents, when and 
how they can, to keep their children from being courted 
by improper persons through ignorance. 

Girls Now Usually Must Find Out for Themselves What 

Parents Used to Find Out for Them 

In the good old days, if a fellow dropped in of an evening 
and seemed more interested in the daughter than in the table 

talk, the father promptly asked him what his intentions were. 
Before there was e':'er one date between boy and girl, parents 

found out for the girl if the fellow was eligible - free, married, or 

divorced. 

But times and customs have changed and girls often live alone 

and far from home, and now it is a girl's duty to do for herself what 
parents did for her in those good old days. Yet, the one and first 

thing a girl should find out before considering a "date" she usually 
does not do. The modern girl who is not too bashful to wear the 

scantiest bathing suit is apparently too bashful to ask the one 
needful question, "Are you free, good, and single?" Only a few, 
mostly college graduates, have the poise to ask it. 

A Girl Feared to Ask a Salesman If He is Married 

For a whole year a seemingly nice salesman kept asking one 

of the best and most intelligent of girls for a date. Though she 
wanted much to go out with him, she kept declining because she 
did not know if he were single or not. Finally one day, after she 
had just about decided to say "yes," she overheard him long dis-

tance telephoning his wife. When she then asked him about a wife, 
he simply said, "Yes, I am married. But what difference does that 
make?" 

This very 

every thought 

asked the firs 
Politely she n 
know enough 

your home tt 
know, sometiJ 

The 

A girl ca1 
factory answ1 

decent. A m: 
to and probal 
a girl to knov 

for then ther' 
pected to say 
she will get t 

The count 

with men ar 

married. Sorr 
shameless, de 

dance and a 
most girls, I ; 

fellows. 

AC 

Then why 

for a date if 1 
and lack of J 
worthwhile r 
Shrewd girls 
always wang 

Somehow me 
man also war 
If she doesn't 
without havi: 

as naively ha 
any ingratiat 

And he sl 



THE FIRST TIIING A GIRL SHOULD ASK 37 

This very fine but foolish girl could so easily have brushed 
every thought of this fellow aside right at the start had she simply 
asked the first time he suggested a date if he were free and single. 
Politely she might have said, "I am inclined to say 'Yes', but I don't 
know enough about you. Are you sure you don't have a girl in 
your home town - or perhaps even a wife? Married men, you 
know, sometimes do ask girls for dates?" 

The Quickest Way to the Truth Is to Question 

A girl can follow up such a question until she gets a satis-
factory answer. It also serves useful notice to a man that she is 
decent. A married man could, of course, lie. But he won't like 
to and probably won't do it well. A philandering husband prefers 
a girl to know he is married, if he thinks he can get away with it, 
for then there won't be a "comeback'' afterwards. He can be ex-
pected to say, "Yes, I'm married, but what of that?'' At any rate, 
she will get the truth sooner than otherwise. 

The country is full of tragedies resulting from girls going out 
with men and learning too late that these smooth fellows are 
married. Some girls, whom we need not consider, for they are 
shameless, don't care to know if a man is married. They want a 
dance and a cocktail - paid for, no matter what the man. But 
most girls, I hope, want to go out only with decent, marriageable 
fellows. 

A Good !Man Does Not Fear The Question. 

A Bad One Doesn't Count 

Then why don't they find out from a man as soon as he angles 
for a date if he is married. I believe it is a queer sort of bashfulness 
and lack of poise. And also a fear that they might scare away a 
worthwhile man. The latter is precisely where girls are wrong. 
Shrewd girls will have observed that every kind of man nearly 
always wangles from them early whether they are single or not. 
Somehow men make it a point to find out. And the right kind of 
man also wants a girl to use her wits and caution even against him. 
If she doesn't, he tends to feel that the girl who went out with him 
without having learned if he is free, good, and single, would just 
as naively have gone out with him had he been married - or with 
any ingratiating scoundrel. 

And he shudders - is almost angry. A man hates to think that 



38 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

it was merely the grace of God, not her own sense and caution, 
that kept the girl he would like to admire from dating a married 
man as readily as him. 

Girls nowadays are on their own. Perhaps too much so. But 
while they are they have to do for themselves what parents and 
brothers did for them then. Before they go out with any man, they 
must take reasonable means to find out how proper and eligible 
a man is. This is not only a right; it is a duty. And the right man 

. will respect and love her the more for it - and the wrong man be 
hanged! 

This an 
CATHOLI 
but with, 
sisted on • 
mates as 
race wouz, 
Chapter j 
first publ 
finds tha 
religion r. 
marry hi< 
support t i 
having a! 
and kindl 
cerned I . 
chronic d: 
that wisd• 
best ones, 
seriously! 

That al. 
describing 
a bachelo: 
ness amo1 
given u: 
(Which I · 
ters on l1, 
slightes·t ; 
minded o1 
gray, seve 
there, she 
she ever • 
have nevE 
a novelist 

In buildin. 
a horse, or "pi 
the best "bar 
quite natural] 

In the rna 
and may be I 
says, "Don't 1 
two bedroom 
the net resul1 
Builders wou 
have the kine 



3ut 

Fe~ 
i>le 

an 
be 

CHAPTER VIII 

HOW NOT TO CHOOSE A MATE 

This article, entitled the same, is reprinted from the THE 
CATHOLIC HOME JOURNAL, September, 1946. It playfully 
but with a serious undertone suggests that if all people in-
sisted on marrying only such physically and morally perfect 
mates as the marriage counsellors prescribe t h e humap 
race would quickly die out. What worries me here is that in 
Chapter II, "Forgiving Our Friends and Keeping Them," 
first published way back in April, 1945, I wrote, "If a girl 
finds that h e r boy friend is a chronic drunkard, surely 
religion permits, and wisdom dictates that she refuse to 
marry him" (p.12). If the present article seems not to 
support that sentiment, my answer is, first, that I myself, 
having aged another year, have become more charitable 
and kindly, secondly, that, as jar a·s mere wisdom is con-
cerned I still think it USUALLY wise tor a girl to jilt a 
chronic drunkard but am glad that all girls do not exercise 
that wisdom, thirdly, that writers and preachers, even the 
best ones, like of course myself, should never be taken too 
seriously! 

That also goes tor the example I here make of myself in 
describing how ideas of marriage counselling have kept me 
a bachelor! The reader is invited to supect some fanciful-
ness . among the real facts .. Also when I s ay that I have 
given up, one must suspect some poetic exaggeration, 
(which I rise to explain merely because the previous chap-
ters on lying have committed me never to deviate in the 
slightest from the truth)! As to giving up hope, I am re-
minded of the lady I met at a Writer's Conference. She was 
gray, seventy-jive, and used a cane. Asked, why she came 
there, she said she was interested in writing. Asked, Had 
she ever written anything, she replied ingenuously, "No, I 
have never had time. But when I get it, I want to become 
a novelist"! 

It's Natural to Want the Best "Bargain" 

In building a house, buying a farm, choosing one's job, buying 
a horse, or "picking" a wife or husband, a person naturally looks for 
the best "bargain." And so those who teach prospective choosers 
quite naturally teach them how to choose the best. 

In the matter cf houses or horses this may do no harm at all, 
and may be productive of much good. If the teacher for example 
says, "Don't buy a house unless it has a full basement, at least 
two bedrooms, a modem bathroom, and rock wool insulation," 
the net result might be improved housing all over tl<e country. 
Builders would simply add the features, and everybody could 
have the kind of house the teacher recommends. 



40 COURTESY, COURTSIDP, AND MARRIAGE 

When it comes to horses, the advice presents more of a prob-
lem. If the teacher says, "Don't buy a horse unless it is strong 
gentle, tall, and healthy," the result may not be unmixed good. 
What about the horses that aren't tall, or strong, or healthy? The 
seller can't add an inch to them, or make them stronger. If every-
body follows the teacher's advice, then these horses may be sent 
prematurely to the soap factory. Still, in the end the country 
might be full of good horses, and even more full of horse soap. 

What Is The Best Bargain In Marrying? 

A bitter social revolution, however, would occur if the teachers 
who teach us how "to pick a mate" were hundred per cent effective. 
Recently, in a most interesting article entitled, "Who Shall It Be? 
What Youths Want in Their Mates," a professor acquaintance of 
mine described the results of a "choice-of-a-mate" questionnaire in 
a marriage instruction course (Gerald J. Schnepp, S.M., Family 
Digest, June, 1946). 

It was in a Catholic high school. The boys rated in the order 
of importance the following qualities they wanted in their future 
wives: Domesticity, Intelligence, Education, Beauty, Health, High 
Moral Character, Similarity of Religion, Cultural Similarity, Sim-
ilar Recreational Interests, Similar Economic Background, Wealth, 
and Mfection. They presented their rating before instruction, and 
then again after a week's instruction. 

First and second time, the boys rated Similarity of Religion first, 
and High Moral Character second as most important in their 
future wife. Mter a week, the boys were even stronger for these 
than before. In third place, the boys ranked Mfection on the 
first try. They used such expressions as, "Beauty is only skin deep; 
what is needed is love to hold marriage together," and "two peo-
ple should be in love with each other if they expect the marriage 
to last." 

Is Health More Important Than Love? 

Mter a week's instruction, Mfection dropped to fourth place, 
and Health jumped all the way from seventh to third. In other 
words, the teacher had impressed upon them not to marry an un-
healthy girl. He had warned them of ''hospital and doctor ex-
penses," and of the "possibility that continence might have to be 
practiced." 

Ifintl 
not marry 
heeded tha 

sings and' 

For L 

Exactly 
successful, 
jured, fort 
was not bE 
any man a 
tion" for h 

If ever 
ought to b 
the way tc 
fifteenth yt 
oouldn't e\ 
truthfully, 
Street, tha1 
marriage h 

"Why?" 
"For m1 

am a dyinl 

Browni1 

Instead 
Elizabeth, 
have had 
Consequen 
a bit neur( 
carried off 
British Au 
elopement 
of the hap] 

They h: 
And as wa 
band. But 
record," an 
ship and n 

Some 0 

Another 

··- ... ~ - --~---- /' 



lb-
[lg 

ld. 
he 
y-

nt 
ry 
p. 

rs 
e. 

!? 

HOW NOT TO CHOOSE ·A MATE 41 

If in the Christian era all teachers had taught that one must 
not marry anyone not healthy, and if all students had strictly 
heeded that teaching, one or two pleasant little romances the world 

sings and writes about would not have occurred. 

For Love Browning Happily Married a Sickly Woman 

Exactly a hundred years ago, Poet Robert Browning, healthy, 
successful, thirty-four, met Elizabeth Barrett, invalid, spinally · in-
jured, forty. She was somewhat neurotic; she was not rich; she 
was not beautiful; she was probably too sick and too old to make 
any man a father. But handsome young Browning felt an "Affec-
tion" for her, as the Questionnaire would put it. 

If ever a man, according to all recipes on how to pick a wife, 
ought to have grabbed his hat and run out of the sick room all 
the way to a Scotch Loch, that man was Browning. Since her 
fifteenth year, the girl had been sick, most of the time in bed. She 
oouldn't even walk! When he spoke to her of love, she answered 
truthfully, in Rudolf Besier's great play, The Barretts of Wimpole 
Street, that he is foolish to think of her that way, that love and 
marriage have "no place, and can have no place, in my life." 

"Why?" 

"For many reasons-but let this suffice. As I told you before, I 
am a dying woman." 

Browning, passionately, answered, "I refuse to believe it!" 

Instead of believing in health, Browning believed in love, and 
Elizabeth, though sick, really loved him too. Browning surely must 
have had the most wretched instruction in how to pick a wife. 
Consequently, sick though Elizabeth was, and elderly, and even 
a bit neurotic, since he loved her and she loved him, he had her 
carried off to the church and married her. The biographer in 
British Authors of the Nineteenth Century says briefly, "Their 
elopement followed in September, the beginning of sixteen years 
of the happiest marriage on record." 

They had one son, and as was to be expected, he was sickly, 
And as was to be expected, Elizabeth died long before her hus-
band. But they had "sixteen years of the happiest marriage on 
record," and the poets and dramatists are still singing that court-
ship and marriage! 

Some Other Great Men Married Happily, But Not "Wisely" 

Another very stupid but very happy marriage was that of 



42 COURTESY, COUI).TSIDP, AND MARRIAGE 

twenty-year-old Snitkina to Widower Dostoevski, a very unfortu-
nate epileptic and passionate gambler besides! But she loved him, 
and he her, and it was a very successful marriage. Another happy 
marriage was that of Samuel Johnson, but the widow who married 
him was foolish, too, for poor Johnson had a chronic face-distorting 
case of Scrofula. Another woman very happily but very foolishly 
married the consumptive Robert Louis Stevenson. If the how-to-
pick-a-husband manuals had their way, these sickly fellows would 
all have had to die in "single blessedness." 

The Author's Bitter Choice Between Love and Tone Deafness! 

In playful sadness, I sigh when I think of what can happen to 
a fellow when he has been taught not to marry anyone who isn't 
"healthy"! Once upon a time it happened to me for the first up-
setting time to feel for one particular damsel that "affection" the 
Questionnaire speaks of. At the beginning she seemed to have 
all the twelve qualities on our list. But lo and sadly, it developed 
that she was tone deaf, that she not only could not dance in 
rhythm, but that she could not carry a tune-and what was infinitely 
worse, that her children probably would not be able to dance or 
carry a tune either! Imagine a man growing old with five daughters 
who could not dance or carry a tune! So, better instructed than 
Browning in choice-of-mate matters, I sadly but resolutely turned 
the other way. 

The Author Meets a Perfect Creature Who Asks If He Is Perfect! 

The second time I felt that "affection," (for it can come several 
times in one's life) it was for someone apparently even more 
perfect than the first time. In fact the better I knew her, the more 
obvious it was that she was a perfect specimen, someone every 
marriage councellor would recommend. So, seeing a good bargain, 
I made my bid. But now the unexpected happened. It was . com-
pletely discountenancing. Apparently this creature had also had 
some courses on how to choose a mate. I had told her a good many 
things about myself. Most of them were not bad to tell. But one 
thing I hadn't told her. However, it seems one day when she kept 
insisting I tell her which of her several evening dresses I pre-
ferred she discove~ed it. 

The Perfect Creature Finds the Author ~ot Perfect 

The fact is: I am color blind. Perhaps she thought it would 
be terrible to grow old with five sons, none of whom could com-
pliment her on the shade of her dresses. Anyhow, I came out of 
that courtship, fully and safely single. 

In addi 
I was also 
been wise, 
ways and' 

So unf1 
casions fo 
aroused tl 
seemed to 
had them. 
months of 
herself, so 
which wa: 
began to ~ 

When 
that eveni 
her nose -v 
out, I erie 
perhaps se 
What can 

But in 

they are VI 

cried out~ 

hayfever. , 

powerfulh 

Well, tl 
one could . 
ing High~ 
than half t 
Army rejec 
one looks a 
eyes, and'· 
in their br: 
never pass 

- --- --~~- ------ ~ 



ilfortu-
1 him, 
b.appy 
arried 
orting 
•lishly 
w-to-
muld 

HOW NOT TO CHOOSE A MATE 43 

In addition to being color blind, I could not help realizing that 
I was also subject to migraine headaches. Really, the girl had only 
been wise, I had to admit, in saying that she hoped we would al-
ways and only b_e the best of friends, in spite of everything! 

The Author Has a Third Disappointment 

So unfortunately, after a suitable withdrawal from public oc-
casions following my discomfiture, I again met someone who 
aroused that certain "affection" in me. Surely, if ever anyone 
seemed to have all twelve of those choice-of-mate requirements, she 
had them. We knew each other merrily and happily through the 
months of spring. She had evidently not had proper instruction 
herself, so she lightly overlooked my migraine and colorblindness, 
which was very fine with me. All in all, this time, hope really 
began to surge violently in my breast. 

When along came the fifteenth of August. When I saw her 
that evening I hardly recognized her. Her eyes were swollen, 
her nose was red. Violently fighting an ugly suspicion down and 
out, I cried, "Annie, dear, has someone made you cry? Have I 
perhaps sent you a wrong letter in a right envelope or something? 
What can it be? What have I done wrong?" 

But in this world things are seldom better than expected, 

they are worse. Never suspecting what it would mean to me, she 

cried out almost happily, "Oh, you! it's nothing at all. It's just my 

hayfever. Always comes on the fifteenth of August. I have real 

powerful hayfever, I have. Got it from both my grandmothers." 

Convinced That the Human Race Is Too Imperfect to Marry 

the Author Gave Up Hope! 

Well, there I was again. This time I gave up. I figured that if 
one could only marry anyone who was healthy, not even mention-
ing High Moral Character or Intelligence, why certainly not more 
than half the people in the world could ever marry. If even the 
Army rejected one out of every four as a 4-F, and when after that 
one looks at those the Army accepted, the fellows with "corrected" 
eyes, and "corrected" teeth and with boils on their face and kinks 
in their brains, clearly more than half the men in the world could 
never pass the choice-of-a-mate health test! 



42 COURTESY, CO~TSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

twenty-year-old Snitkina to Widower Dostoevski, a very unfortu-
nate epileptic and passionate gambler besides! But she loved him, 
and he her, and it was a very successful marriage. Another happy 
marriage was that of Samuel Johnson, but the widow who married 
him was foolish, too, for poor Johnson had a chronic face-distorting 
case of Scrofula. Another woman very happily but very foolishly 
married the consumptive Robert Louis Stevenson. If the how-to-
pick-a-husband manuals had their way, these sickly fellows would 
all have had to die in "single blessedness." 

The Author's Bitter Choice Between Love and Tone Deafness! 

In playful sadness, I sigh when I think of what can happen to 
a fellow when he has been taught not to marry anyone who isn't 
"healthy"! Once upon a time it happened to me for the first up-
setting time to feel for one particular damsel that "affection" the 
Questionnaire speaks of. At the beginning she seemed to have 
all the twelve qualities on our list. But lo and sadly, it developed 
that she was tone deaf, that she not only could not dance in 
rhythm, but that she could not carry a tune-and what was infinitely 
worse, that her children probably would not be able to dance or 
carry a tune either! Imagine a man growing old with five daughters 
who could not dance or carry a tune! So, better instructed than 
Browning in choice-of-mate matters, I sadly but resolutely turned 
the other way. 

The Author Meets a Perfect Creature Who Asks If He Is Perfect! 

The second time I felt that "affection," (for it can come several 
times in one's life) it was for someone apparently even more 
perfect than the first time. In fact the better I knew her, the more 
obvious it was that she was a pedect specimen, someone every 
marriage councellor would recommend. So, seeing a good bargain, 
I made my bid. But now the unexpected happened. It was . com-
pletely discountenancing. Apparently this creature had also had 
some courses on how to choose a mate. I had told her a good many 
things about myself. Most of them were not bad to tell. But one 
thing I hadn't told her. However, it seems one day when she kept 
insisting I tell her which of her several evening dresses I pre-
ferred she discovez:ed it. 

The Perfect Creature Finds the Author Not Perfect 

The fact is: I am color blind. Perhaps she thought it would 
be terrible to grow old with five sons, none of whom could com-
pliment her on the shade of her dresses. Anyhow, I came out of 
that courtship, fully and safely single. 

In additi 
I was also s 
been wise, l 
ways and 01 

So unf01 
casions foil 
aroused th: 
seemed to b 
had them. · 
months of 
herself, so : 
which was 
began to st 

When~ 
that eveniJ 
her nose VI' 
out, I criet 
perhaps se1 
What can 

But in 

they are w 

cried out a 

hayfever. , 

powerful b 

Convinc 

Well, t 
one could 
ing High J 
than half 
Army rejet 
one looks ; 
eyes, and 
in their br 
never pas~ 



a, 
y 
(I 

g 
y ,_ 
tl 

HOW NOT TO CHOOSE A MATE 43 

In addition to being color blind, I could not help realizing that 
I was also subject to migraine headaches. Really, the girl had only 
been wise, I had to admit, in saying that she hoped we would al-
ways and only b~ the best of friends, in spite of everything! 

The Author Has a Third Disappointment 

So unfortunately, after a suitable withdrawal from public oc-
casions following my discomfiture, I again met someone who 
aroused that certain "affection" in me. Surely, if ever anyone 
seemed to have all twelve of those choice-of-mate requirements, she 
had them. We knew each other merrily and happily through the 
months of spring. She had evidently not had proper instruction 
herself, so she lightly overlooked my migraine and colorblindness, 
which was very fine with me. All in all, this time, hope really 
began to surge violently in my breast. 

When along carne the fifteenth of August. When I saw her 
that evening I hardly recognized her. Her eyes were swollen, 
her nose was red. Violently fighting an ugly suspicion down and 
out, I cried, "Annie, dear, has someone made you cry? Have I 
perhaps sent you a wrong letter in a right envelope or something? 
What can it be? What have I done wrong?" 

But in this world things are seldom better than expected, 

they are worse. Never suspecting what it would mean to me, she 

cried out almost happily, "Oh, you! it's nothing at all. It's just my 

hayfever. Always comes on the fifteenth of August. I have real 

powerful hayfever, I have. Got it from both my grandmothers." 

Convinced That the Human Race Is Too Imperfect to Marry 

the Author Gave Up Hope! 

Well, there I was again. This time I gave up. I figured that if 
one could only marry anyone who was healthy, not even mention-
ing High Moral Character or Intelligence, why certainly not more 
than half the people in the world could ever marry. If even the 
Army rejected one out of every four as a 4-F, and when after that 
one looks at those the Army accepted, the fellows with "corrected" 
eyes, and "corrected" teeth and with boils on their face and kinks 
in their brains, clearly more than half the men in the world could 
never pass the choice-of-a-mate health test! 



44 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

And from what I could guess, and from what doctors told me 
that they get rich only because so many women have chronic ill-
nesses, the percentage of healthy girls must be still lower. It 
would therefore be only a man who was very lucky who could find 
a girl really "healthy" enough to marry, and since luck was my 
particularly weak quality, I just gave up. So I am still single. 

Too Late, the Author Now Thinks Differently 

At long last-and too late-I have now wisely come to the con-
clusion that the human race would long ago have died out, if 
teachers had succeeded in making all people choose their mates 
selfishly, for their good points, such as health and character, as 
one chooses a horse. But now it is too late. "Gather ye flowers 
while ye may," and one may not very long! 

Everybody Can't Even Marry Someone With a High 

Moral Character 

Among those selfish good points, I mention even character. Of 
course it is great to marry someone with High Moral Character. 
But what about all the people in the world who do not have high 
moral character? They need marriage more than the saints. They 
need it particularly. Must people be taught not to marry them? 
Then what will become of them? Did Saint Augustine's father have 
a high moral character? Lincoln's father "seems to have been with-
out sustained industry . . . . Some hint that he drank." Bernard 
Shaw's father "was a ne'er-do-well and a notable drinker." Had 
the girls who married them refused to do so because they ~aed 
high moral character, the world would have lost a great saint, a 
great statesman, and the greatest modern dramatist. And if no 
girl had married these men, they might have become great crim-
inals, not merely ·drinkers and ne'er-do-wells. 

Most People to Marry Must Finally Marry Someone 

Not Very Well or Not Very Good 

No, the world is so full of sickly girls and sickly boys, and 
of not very moral girls and not very moral boys that most boys 
will have to marry either sickly or not very moral girls, and most 
girls will have to marry sickly or not very moral boys. The points 
to stress, therefore, in a marriage course would seem to be, first, 
that each who takes the course develop in himseU as much as 
possible all the desirable qualities rather than expect them in a 

mate; sec 
mutuallo 
for him; ; 
how to gt 
than how 

Everyl 

But hall . 
not very · 
to make 
be selfish 
generous 
weak. To 
quite mal 

One 
qualities 
matched 
dium, an 
get toget 
for eve!) 
ground, 
Catholic 
seek eac1 

In Gene 

Inm' 
as sickly 
much le 
a sober 
sume, o 
are und 
cases, o~ 
trained 

We< 

of me, l 
and girl 
Brownil 
sickly a 



HOW NOT TO CHOOSE A MATE 45 

mate; secondly, that the most important thing for marriage is 
mutual love, such as Browning had for sickly Elizabeth and she 
for him; and finally, that each who takes the course learn rather 
how to get along with an imperfect mate "for better or for worse" 
than how selfishly to avoid such a one. 

Everybody can selfishly refuse all bad houses and bad horses. 
But half the people must either remain single or marry someone 
not very healthy or not very moral. So, let them rather be trained 
to make the best of it, should that be their lot. Everybody can't 
be selflsh in choosing perfect mates. Somebody must be noble and 
generous like Browning and marry the sickly, and even the morally 
weak. To make that easier, God invented love, and if He did not 
quite make love blind, at least He gave it rose-colored glasses! 

In Cultural Matters Similarity Is Possible 

One may well, however, lay stress on such choice-of-mate 
qualities which God distributed in equal proportions and which, if 
matched wisely, benefit everybody. There are as many bright, me-
dium, and stupid men as there are such girls. Let the bright ones 
get together, and the medium, and the stupid. That will be good 
for everybody. The same is true of economic and cultural back-
ground, recreational interests, and religion. There are as many 
Catholic boys as girls. It is possible and beneficial for them to 
seek each other. And it hurts no one. 

In General, Mates Should Be Selected Generously, Not Sellishly 

In moral and health matters, this is not so. If Browning had been 
as sickly as Elizabeth, their chance of happiness would have been 
much less. If two heavy drinkers marry, it is much worse than if 
a sober one generously marries a drinker whom she loves. We as-
sume, of course, that people too sick or too immoral to marry 
are under medical or institutional care. But for the less extreme 
cases, of which the world is full, let healthy and good people be 
trained to get along with them in marriage. 

We aren't all big enough to be Brownings. Let no one expect it 
of me, for example! But we can at least teach and admire in boys 
and girls of our own generation, what we want them to admire in 
Browning: It is just as "cheap" to tum a girl down because she is 
sickly as it is to tum her down because she is poor, or homely! 



CHAPTER IX 

IF HE DOESN'T PROPOSE 

This article first appeared under the title, "Why Doesn't 
He Propose?" in the VICTORIAN MAGAZINE, February, 
1942. In courtship, as in other matters, problems fluctuate. 
During the depression, men had plenty time to court and 
not enough job to propose. During the war they had plenty 
work and very little time, so they proposed more and faster 
than they should. During the war this article could have 
seemed silly. If hard times come again, and especially with 
the quota of men somewhat cut down by the war, it will 
again be pertinent. 

Parties in power use all kinds of swindles to suggest that 
horses should n o t be c h a n g e d in mid-stream. So men 
throughout the ages have used all kinds of superstitions to 
maintain their dominance over women. One is that it is the 
man's prerogatzve to do t h e courting and the choosing. 
Shakespeare, the greatest genius Christendom has pro-
duced, had his chief romantic heroine, Juliet, do otherwise, 
and Desdemona is represented as "half the wooer." 

What of a Fellow Who Calls on a Girl for Ten Years 

Today a senior asked me what I think of a man he knows, who 
for almost ten years now has called on a girl every single evening 
of every week, has a bit of cake and coffee, and after two hours or 
so trudges home again. His question reminded me of a story a 
colleague tells. A couple had been going with each other for 
years and years and years. Finally one day in a desperate moment 
she said to him, "John, don't you think it might be best if we got 
married?'' 

He looked up at her innocently and said, "Yes, Susan, I suppose 

it might. But who in the world would have either of us now!" 

Romantic Dating Must Envisage Marriage 

My answer to the senior above was that the man is a fraud and 
the woman a fool. Courtship, I said, must be a front porch to 
matrimony, not a back porch for fun. Boys and girls do not have 
the right to continue to go with each other just to have a good 
time, even if it be not a grossly sinful good time. They have a right 
to go with each other romantically only to discover whether they 
might some day make a good husband and wife for eaeh other. And 
some day does not mean ten years from now. 

When 

Boys and 
even when tl 
one another, 
chaperoned 1 
when they~ 
they may no 
know they c: 
as is often tr 

And eve 
going with' 
will not mar 
any timetab 
association : 

u ' 

It is to 
this attitud« 
with a boy 
something 

But wh: 

hope and 
Church mt: 
the pedesb 
her stretch 

To me 
duly long 

Should 

anything? 
to me, wn 

Instea< 
a man. Or 
and Julie 
her, Julie 
love me 2 



, ,, 

who 

~ent 

got 

ose 

IF HE DOESN'T PROPOSE 47 

When and How Long May Persons Date Each Other 

Boys and girls do have the right to date each other occasionally 
even when they do not have any very serious inclinations towards 
one another, in order to attend school, club, or sodality dances or 
chaperoned parties. But they may not date each other romantically 
when they can't, or know they won't, every marry each other. And 
they may not date each other steadily and frequently when they 
know they can't consider marriage for another eight or nine years, 
as is often the case with high school students. 

And even more difficult than that is the obligation to stop 
going with each other if and when they find that they cannot or 
will not marry. The Church in general, while it has not proclaimed 
any timetable, suggests that two or at most three years of steady 
association are enough to find the altar-or the gate. 

If the Girl Is Willing, But the Boy Seems Blind 

It is to the credit of most girls that they realize the sense of 
this attitude of the Church. And most girls when they have gone 
with a boy for two or three years realize that they ought to do 
something about getting married. 

But what if the man does not propose? Should a girl hope and 
hope and wait and wait? Should she wait and wait until the 
Church must more and more frown upon their courtship and until 
the pedestal upon which he said at the beginning he was putting 
her stretches more and more into a shelf? 

To me the answer is very plain. She has no right to wait un-
duly long for his proposal. 

Should she then just refuse to see him any more without saying 
anything? Or abruptly take up with someone else? That, it seems 
to me, would be childish and unreasonable and unfair. 

Shakespeare's Juliet Puts Romeo on the Spot 

Instead, I th:i,nk, she should for one instance in her life act like 
a man. Or, rather, she should act like Juliet in Shakespeare's Romeo 
and Juliet. When Romeo keeps on protesting his vast love for 
her, Juliet finally says: If you mean what you say, if you really 
love me as you say you do, then let's look up the friar together! 



48 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

In other words, the girl to whom my senior alluded should 
long ago have talked to her Romeo somewhat in this wise: 

"We've seen each other for several years now. During this time 
I have come to like you more and more. And like is hardly the 
right word. What about you? Have you come to feel more and more 
that way about me, too? Do you think we could be reasonably 
happy together for the rest of our lives? Or do you think we ought 
to celebrate a last date together?" 

That's the way that leads up the aisle in the proper time-or to a 
friendly parting. And if it's the latter-take it "like a man." It is still 
much better than waiting and waiting-and hovering ever more 
nearly along the edge of sin. 

This 
CAT HI 
been e 
It is t 
should 
It is w 
article 
Words·. 
hope t 
be cret 
millin~ 
in thi: 
find a 
gested 
throu~ 

Whc 

A "ph: 

WordswOJ 
to make t 
light'' he< 
this phant 
In threes 

In the 
apparitior 
begins to 
at :first si~ 
He "loves 
does not l 

When 

it really s 
at this stf 
twilight. 

"A d. 
To h 

She is hi~ 
says that 
moment's 



i time 
¥the 
more 
nably 
mght 

·to a 

i still 
ore 

CHAPTER X 

THE HELPMEET FOR LIFE 

This article is reprinted with its original title from THE 
CATHOLIC HOME JOURNAL, July, 1945. It might have 
been entitled, "How a 'date' grows into a partner for life." 
It is t h e ideal picture of w h a t courtship and marriage 
should be--and, we hope, really is for a good many people. 
It is what we like to think of our mothers and fathers. The 
article in a manner is simply an interpretation of one of 
Wordsworth's poem. If some of the readers a·re teachers, I 
hope they will recognize this as the way every poem should 
be creatively read, and taught. Girls and boys who are still 
milling about, or anxiously waiting, for a life's partner can 
in this poem of Wordworth and its present interpretation 
find all the problems and temptations of courtship sug-
gested--and also feel guided and strengthened in we·aving 
through them honorably and clean. 

What She Is to Him When He Asks for the First Date 

A "phantom Qf delight" -that, according to the poet, William 
Wordsworth, is what a girl looks like to a boy when he is trying 
to make the first date with her. In "She Was a Phantom of De-
light" he describes beautifully and correctly how a girl grows from 
this phantom of delight into the helpmeet for life-and for eternity. 
In three stanzas he pictures three stages. 

In the first, the girl gleams upon the boy's sight as "A lovely 
apparition." From among a number of girls one overpoweringly 
begins to fascinate him. This experience is sometimes called love 
at fust sight. But what is it really? It is a fascination for externals. 
He "loves" her eyes, her hair, her teeth or her ankles-not her. He 
does not know her. 

When a man begins to feel this queer attraction for a girl, 
it really starts as something quite superficial. Wordsworth says that 
at this stage her eyes seem like stars to him and her hair like the 
twilight. 

"A dancing shape, an image gay, 
To haunt, to startle, and waylay." 

She is his perfect prescription for a "good time." Rightly the poet 
says that she is only a "lovely apparition" to him, "sent to be a 
moment's ornament." 



50 COURTESY, COURTSinP, AND MARRIAGE 

At this point the burning urge of the boy is not to attach to 
himself this apparition until death do them part, but to have a date 
with her. He may not even think of two dates or three. What he 
wants immediately is a date. He rushes to ask her to go to a movie 
with him, or a dance, or even just a coke-anything, just so he 
can see her again. 

Why the First Dates Are Especially Critical 

And his first date is a dangerous and critical one. Or better, all 
the earlier dates are. For, psychologically, the girl is still just "a 
moment's ornament" to him. He will of course want to kiss her 
as much as if he had known her for two years. But if she lets him, 
she will almost automatically switch herself into the lane of girls 
that men forget. She will remain-just a moment's ornament. 

His reverential love will be nipped in the bud. Sex will begin 
before love has got a good stmt. She will become pleasure for him 
instead of contentment. She will 'startle, and waylay" him. And 
really any "dancing shape" can do that-and very probably soon 
will. 

How to Become More Than a Moment's Ornament to a Man 

But if she is courteous to him and sympathetic, even grateful 
for his fascination, but modest and "nice," then the boy will "upon 
nearer view" see in her "A Spirit yet a Woman tool" If from the 
very first conversation, she will suggest Christian modesty, he 
will grow to think of her not merely as a "lovely apparition" but 
as a lovely presence. 

If the "lovely apparition" has him think of her as having moth-

er, father, brothers and sisters who value her, if she has him meet 

them, and if she knows where he is going before she agrees to go, 

and if there is no parking where parking is suggestive, then she 

,turns herself and him into the lane that is long as life, and just 

wide enough for two. 

He will develop a fixed habit of respectful desire for her. She 

will more and more be able to trust him and enjoy, as Wordsworth 

says, "steps of virgin-liberty." A time will come when she can lean 

her head on his breast, and he will know it is both love .and 

trust-and he would rather die than abuse it. 

Cou1 

This dev 
tian courtsh 
what Words 

"I saw . 

A Spiri1 
Courtship i 
both angeli 

"A crea 
For hu 

ChristiaJ 
of sex to r( 

passionate 
happy man 
dances, anc 

A man 

wrote, 

"Despi 
hand c 
the de1 
down 

It may 
develop se 
portant du 
psychologi 
prepare fo 

If com 
ities are n 
not neede• 
tractions 
easily bla( 
ple then 
enjoying 
similar pl 
ing seasOI 
ship is to 
mantic, 1 
kisses, te: 
liberty," : 



THE HELPMEET FOR LIFE 51 

Courtship as a Way from Modesty te Matrimony 

This developing trust is the flower and fruit. of a true Chris-
tian courtship. During this period each man can say of the girl 
what Wordsworth said, 

"I saw her upon nearer view, 

A Spirit yet a Woman toot' 
Courtship is the delicate trying time when a girl must remain 
both angelic-sugar and spice, and everything nice-and also 

"A creature not too bright or good 
For human nature's daily food." 

Christian courtship really req\}ires the constant sublimation 
of sex to romance, of a physical urge to a postponed hope, of a 
passionate desire to a sweet promise. That sweet promise is a 
happy marriage. Mter dozens and dozens of dates- of movies, and 
dances, and picnics-it is the hope fulfilled. 

A man in an advice article in a secular woman's magazine 

wrote, 

"Despite aU the foolproof arguments my sex is wont to 
hand out on why you should pet, I consider petting one of 
the deadliest enemies of romance" ( R. H. Reed, "The Low-
down on Kissing," Woman, April 1942, p. 8). 

It may seem paradoxical that courtship, which is supposed to 
develop sexual partners for life, must as its most difficult and im-
portant duty constantly keep sex restrained. Yet, there is a good 
psychological reason for this. The marriage, which courtship is to 
prepare for, must last for life. 

Love Grows on Desire Restrained 

If courtship is largely sexual pleasures, these long-as-life qual-
ities are never called forth or developed-simply because they are 
not needed. At the courtship stage sex is so powerful, and sexual at-
tractions are so active, that with any false indulgence they will 
easily black out all the other qualities and possibilities. Young peo-
ple then think they are in love when in reality they are merely 
enjoying sex gratifications - essentially not much different from 
similar pleasures among animals. And as we know, after the mat-
ing season animals part again, and go their separate ways. If court-
ship is to make a girl the helpmeet for life, courtship must be ro-
mantic, not sexual. There will be, as Wordsworth says, "love, 
kisses, tears, and smiles," but always within the "steps of virgin-
liberty," always far short of sexual fulfillment. 



50 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MAIUUAGE 

At this point the burning urge of the boy is not to attach to 
himself this apparition until death do them part, but to have a date 
with her. He may not even think of two dates or three. What he 
wants immediately is a date. He rushes to ask her to go to a movie 
with him, or a dance, or even just a coke-anything, just so he 
can see her again. 

Why the First Dates Are Especially Critical 

And his first date is a dangerous and critical one. Or better, all 
the earlier dates are. For, psychologically, the girl is still just "a 
moment's ornament" to him. He will of course want to kiss her 
as much as if he had known her for two years. But if she lets him, 
she will almost automatically switch herself into the lane of girls 
that men forget. She will remain-just a moment's ornament. 

His reverential love will be nipped in the bud. Sex will begin 
before love has got a good start. She will become pleasure for him 
instead of contentment. She will 'startle, and waylay" him. And 
really any "dancing shape" can do that-and very probably soon 
will. 

How to Become More Than a Moment's Ornament to a Man 

But if she is courteous to him and sympathetic, even grateful 
for his fascination, but modest and "nice," then the boy will "upon 
nearer view" see in her "A Spirit yet a Woman tool" If from the 
very first conversation, she will suggest Christian modesty, he 
will grow to think of her not merely as a '1ovely apparition" but 
as a lovely presence. 

If the "lovely apparition" has him think of her as having moth-

er, father, brothers and sisters who value her, if she has him meet 

them, and if she knows where he is going before she agrees to go, 

and if there is no parking where parking is suggestive, then she 

,turns herself and him into the lane that is long as life, and just 

wide enough for two. 

He will develop a fixed habit of respectful desire for her. She 

will more and more be able to trust him and enjoy, as Wordsworth 

says, "steps of virgin-liberty." A time will come when she can lean 

her head on his breast, and he will know it is both love and 

trust-and he would rather die than abuse it. 

Co uri 

This devt: 

tian courtshi: 
what Words\ 

"I saw h 

A Spirit 
Courtship is 
both angelic 

"A creat 
For hur. 

Christian 

of sex to ro1 
passionate c 
happy marri 
dances, and 

A man 

wrote, 

"Despit, 
hand ot 
the dea1 
down o 

It may! 
develop sex 
portant dut 
psychologic 
prepare for. 

If court: 
ities are ne 
not needed. 
tractions aJ 
easily blacl 
pie then tl 
enjoying st 
similar ple: 
ing season 
ship is to 1 
mantic, nc 
kisses, tear 
liberty," al 



TilE HELPMEET FOR LIFE 51 

Courtship as a Way from Modesty te Matrimony 

This developing trust is the flower and fruit of a true Chris-
tian courtship. During this period each man can say of the girl 
what Wordsworth said, 

"I saw her upon nearer view, 

A Spirit yet a Woman toor 
Courtship is the delicate trying time when a girl must remain 
both angelic-sugar and spice, and everything nice-and also 

"A creature not too bright or good 
For human nature's daily food." 

Christian courtship really req¢res the constant sublimation 
of sex to romance, of a physical urge to a postponed hope, of a 
passionate desire to a sweet promise. That sweet promise is a 
happy marriage. After dozens and dozens of dates- of movies, and 
dances, and picnics-it is the hope fulHlled. 

A man in an advice article in a secular woman's magazine 

wrote, 

"Despite aU the foolproof arguments my sex is wont to 
hand out on why you should pet, I consider petting one of 
the deadliest enemies of romance" ( R. H. Reed, "The Low-
down on Kissing," Woman, April 1942, p. 8). 

It may seem paradoxical that courtship, which is supposed to 
develop sexual partners for life, must as its most difficult and im-
portant duty constantly keep sex restrained. Yet, there is a good 
psychological reason for this. The marriage, which courtship is to 
prepare for, must last for life. 

Love Grows on Desire Restrained 

If courtship is largely sexual pleasures, these long-as-life qual-
ities are never called forth or developed-simply because they are 
not needed. At the courtship stage sex is so powerful, and sexual at-
tractions are so active, that with any false indulgence they 'will 
easily black out all the other qualities and possibilities. Young peo-
ple then think they are in love when in reality they are merely 
enjoying sex gratifications - essentially not much different from 
similar pleasures among animals. And as we know, after the mat-
ing season animals part again, and go their separate ways. If court-
ship is to make a girl the helpmeet for life, courtship must be ro-
mantic, not sexual. There will be, as Wordsworth says, "love, 
kisses, tears, and smiles," but always within the "steps of virgin-
liberty," always far short of sexual fulfillment. 



52 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

The Problem of Restraint and Losing Interest 

Courtship on the hope-deferred-sweet-promise level will force 

young people to develop and produce all their personality powers 
in order to make such courtship pleasurable enough to carry over 

a year or two into the liberty of matrimony. Of course, sometimes 

it doesn't carry through. And even in the best-suited couples it 
should not be expected to be enough for unreasonably long court-

ships. Mrs. Gibbs, the mother in Thornton Wilder's beautiful play, 

Our Town, says when her son wants to marry Emily rather than 
spend four years at college, 

"He might get into bad ways. It wouldn't be enough fun 
for him to come and sit by our stove,-and holding hands 
with Emily for a year mightn't be enough either. He 
might lose interest in her." 

Mother Gibbs here suggests a real problem and difficulty. 

Courtship must never be considered a substitute for marriage. 
Over too long a period any courtship will degenerate into sin or 
evaporate into disinterest. But as the only proper Christian link 

to marriage, a modest courtship, from one to four years, is prac-

tically the only way to store up enough romance to last for life. 

When He Wants to Make the Date for Life 

However, if the love-at-first-sight was the real thing, was 
more than "a moment's ornament," then this modest courtship 
has made the girl the climax to all the man's dreams and hopes 
the one thing that gives meaning to his life. He has found himself 
so reflected in her, and her in him, that he wants her for himself 
alone and forever. Of the billion other women in the world, all 

of them having some of the things she has, he has found only in 
her some unique magical partnership for which he is willing to say 

no to all other women. From the moonlight and roses of court-
ship he now urges and begs his girl, his phantom of delight, into 

the daylight and duties of marriage. He wants to convert his first 
date of an evening into a final date for life. 

They Pledge Each Other the Only Life They Have 

To the tunes of the wedding march, he takes her for better or 
for worse till death do them part-and she takes him. The wed-
ding is a glorious and an awe-inspiring event-two people pledging 

to spend a life-time together, the only one life-time they have. 

The girl · 

now bee< 
"phantom 
an icecre: 

he will s 

lot of lov' 
courtship 

million n 

And ( 

lane of l 

final apr 

"with eyt 

its little 

What to 

money f 

sickness 

Slowl 

hair is b 

he doesu 

moment' 

sourcefu 

she who 

falter. V 

the plan 

ness and 

TheMe 

As tl 

two anc 

that wi1 

when tl 

the beU 

Wha 

there w 

died, it 



wers 
over 
fmes 
s it 

~ay, 
han 

lY· 

THE HELPMEET FOR LIFE 53 

The girl who first burst upon him as "a moment's ornament," has 
now become for him "A traveler between life and death." The 
"phantom of delight," whom he first nervously asked to share 
an icecream soda with him, has now become his wife, with whom 
he will share the next forty thousands meals. It takes an awful 
lot of love and romance to face that. But during their brave-modest 
courtship they have banked enough romance to make even a 
million meals together look few. 

Together Among the Problems of Life 

And only now that he walks hand in hand with her down the 

lane of life, according to Wordsworth, does the real, the full and 

£nal appreciation of her grow upon him. Now he learns to see 

"with eye serene, The very pulse of the machine." Every day brings 

its little problems, its things to talk about, its tears and smiles. 

What to eat, where to live, how to dress, and where to get the 

money for everything! And there are big worries-child-bearing, 

sickness and grief. 

Slowly they grow old together. The gold or brown of her 

hair is turning to gray, and the white of her skin to wrinkles. But 

he doesn't really see all that. He only feels curiously that the fragile 

moment's ornament he dated years ago is an amazingly strong, re-

sourceful, firm creature. Whenever sufferings come he finds that 

she who seemed so weak and gentle can carry on where he would 

falter. When he courted her, he was the strong one; he did all 

the planning; he was the oak and she the vine. But now, in sick-

ness and in health, the whole household seems to revolve about her. 

The Moment's Ornament Has Become His "Tower of Strength" 

As they travel together down that lane just wide enough for 

two and for their children, this strong man more and more feels 

that without her he would be lost, that he needs her more now, 

when the bloom of her cheek is gone, than he did when she was 

the belle of the ball. 

What makes the home a home is she. If he were to die, he feels, 

there would still be a home. The home would go on. But if she 

died, it would be the end. He would then be merely a helpless, 



54 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, .AND MAruuAGE 

lonely old man. And so, as they go together into the last tum of the 
lane, he prays that God Who so kindly gave him this helpmeet 
for life may now add this further kindness-to let her be there to 
close his eyes when they must be closed for the last time, and to 
straighten things out after he has gone to the Reward she helped 
him deserve. That is the helpmeet for life: 

"A perfect Woman, nobly planned 
To warn, to comfort, and command: 
And yet a Spirit still, and bright 
With something of an angel-light." 

1 

This 1 
Adulter, 
June, l ! 
union 1 
aid par 
conside; 
human 
them u ·. 

Givin 
than tl1 
suppo 
his tam 
nubi), 
ot husb 
other, < 
teaches 
matrim 
restrict , 
and ed1 
ing of 
sharin9 

A Burle~ 

The otl 
Pistol Pack 
once. I wa: 
the uniqut 
carrying OJ 
along witl: 
shalt not c' 

Marria 

Theur 
that it thn 
other good 
as it is to 
ments. Li1 
it is to Go 
riage hush 
Thus mar 
easily. Mm 
only of Gc 
ting to he: 



CHAPTER XI 

THE UNIQUE FUNCTION OF MARRIAGE 

This article, originally entitled, "Thou Shalt Not Commifi 
Adultery,'' is reprinted from THE VICTORIAN MAGAZINE, 
June, 1944· Marriage is here represented not merely as a 
union tor creating and rearing children, but as a mutual-
aid partnership for getting to heaven. Marriage, rightly 
considered, of its own momentum tends to perfect two 
human beings and make them fit tor heaven. It also makes 
them unselfish, in a sense, cultured beings here on earth. 

Giving this civilizing function of marriage more emphasis 
than the child-bearing one is unusual. But it finds direct 
support in the following paragraph by Pope Pius XI, in 
his famous encyclical "On Christian Marriage" (Casti Con-
nubi) , December 31, 1930: "This mutual inward moulding 
of husband and wife, this determined effort to perfect each 
other, can in a very real sense, as the Roman Catechism 
teaches, be said to be the chief reason a:n d purpose of 
matrimony, provided matrimony be looked at not in the 
restricted sense as instituted. tor the proper conception 
and education of the child, but more widely as the blend-
ing of life as a whole and the mutual interchange and 
sharing thereof!' 

A Burlesque Song Suggests the Unique Quality of Marriage 

The other day, after having suffered a long time from the 
Pistol Packin Mama song, I finally let myself hear it through just 
once. I was surprised to find under its burlesque, a recognition of 
the unique quality of marriage. It seems that a husband was 
carrying on with other women at a cabaret when his wife came 
along with a pistol to remind him of God's injunction, "Thou 
shalt not commit adultery." 

Marriage as an Alliance with God to Get Both to Heaven 

The unique and usually overlooked quality of matrimony is 
that it throws each spouse into an alliance with God to keep the 
other good. In marriage the wife finds it as much to her interest 
as it is to God's that the husband live up to the Ten Command-
ments. Likewise the husband finds it as much to his interest as 
it is to God's that his wife live up to them. Consequently in mar-
riage husband and God become allies for keeping the wife good. 
Thus marriage helps both to get to heaven more surely-and 
easily. Marriage is a vocation in which the spouse has the help, not 
only of God, but of another vitally interested human being in get-
ting to heaven. 



56 COURTESY, COURTSIUP, AND MARRIAGE 

In the burlesque song, the Pistol Packin' Mama is as anxious 
to keep her husband free from adultery as God is and therefore 
she proceeds, (though of course in an unorthodox manner), to 
keep her husband straight. Which is what God wants, too. St. Aug-
ustine says that it's God's will that no wife on any account allow a 
husband to have another woman besides her. If the wife had 
gone to disport herself in the cabaret, the husband, though pos-
sibly quite a disbeliever otherwise, would suddenly have recog-
nized clearly and overpoweringly God's law in the matter of 
adultery, and would have carried his erring wife angrily back into 
the arms of the Ten Commandments. 

In Marriage Each Prescribes the Ten Commandments 

for the Other 

In marriage nearly every broken Commandment hurts the 
spouse. When an unmarried person, unless young enough to af-
fect the parents, breaks a Commandment, it often seems to hurt 
nobody directly except God. But when a married person breaks 
a Commandment it nearly always definitely hurts the spouse-
that's why marriage throws God and the spouse together to help 
keep the other good. 

When a bachelor at a party meets a girl who attracts him he 
is glad if she is flirtatious and not very loyal to her escort so that 
he can make a date with herself himself. As soon as she is his 
wife, however, he is the greatest enemy of her flirtatiousness and 
wants her to be proper and loyal at all times-which is just what 
God wants. When an unmarried girl meets a man at a party who 
attracts her, nothing makes her more happy than when he is 
flirtatious enough and forgetful enough of his girl friend to ask 
her for a date. But as soon as she has him married, and if at any 
party he is again trying to be flirtatious with anybody or every-
body, she promptly develops a fierce headache and makes him 
take her home. She and God have now become allies for keeping 
him decent. 

What Is Funny Before Marriage Becomes Painful After 

A man who spends all his money on cars and drinks and 
flowers is a girl's dream-but a wife's agony. A girl who spends 
all her money on gorgeous evening gowns and glamorous hairdoes 
and ravishing perfumes is a bachelor's creme de mint, but a 
husband's castor oil. "Oh, come on, another little drink won't 
hurt you," coos the bachelor, who wants to make ''headway:'. 

"Now, b 
enough?" 
body's sh 

A bm 
an indus 
dustrious 
tained h} 
band witl 

HeN. 

A free 
and adve1 
is a hus1: 
makes Gc 
and beau 
live up tc 

Likew 
she walk! 
preacher 
right on 
still in ne1 
looks to s 
And He i 

,.......- . . --...,..,... 
--- ~ ----· ·~....... - - -- -- ---------- ... 



THE UNIQUE FUNCTION OF MARRIAGE 57 

"Now, be careful, Annie, don't you think you've had about 
enough?" says the husband, who doesn't want her to droop on any-

body's shoulder, not even his own in public. 

A busy, hard-working bachelor has too little time for dates; 

an industrious husband provides a comfortable home. An in-
dustrious maiden washes the dishes while the bachelor is enter-

tained by the father; but the industrious wife provides the hus-
band with a good table and a clean house. · 

He May Like a Frivolous Girl But Never a Frivolous Wife 

A frequent communicant is not a bachelor's pick for a lively 
and adventurous Saturday-night date. But a frequent communicant 

is a husband's guarantee of a faithful and loyal wife. Marriage 

makes God and the for~er bachelor of one mind-that it is good 
and beautiful for the wife to go to the Sacraments often and to 

live up to the Ten Commandments as God wrote them. 

She Wants a Good Religious Husband 

Likewise, as to the wife, she is never more content than when 

she walks her husband into Church on Sunday, and when the 
preacher by a happy chance accidentally hits that particular nail 

right on the head which marks the spot wherein her hubby is 

still in need of a wee bit of reforming, she ecstatically knows (and 
looks to see if her husband knows too) that God is on her side. 
And He is-and He is on hubby's side, too! 

• 



CHAPTER XII 

THE FIRST SPOUSE IS THE BEST SPOUSE 

This article is reprinted with the same title from THE 
CATHOLIC HOME JOURNAL, November, 1944. It was liter-
ally suggested to me by a soldier who, married to a second 
woman, wished he could undo it all and be with his first 
wife again. I do firmly believe that psychologically, as well 
as moraUy, the first spouse is usually man's greater, as well 
as better need. However, I do not want to give the impres-
sion that from a personal standpoint some marriages are 
not mistakes and mis-matches and second ones never more 
satisfying psychologically. Sometimes they are, though not 
as often as those seeking divorce to remarry like to think. 
In the final analysis, it seems to me, divorce to remarry is 
an evil and a wrong, not because it cannot serve the indi-
vidual, personal welfare, but because its acceptance tends 
to destroy the essential social value of all marriage, 
namely, its security. If any new attraction can dissolve any 
old marriage, then the stability of all family life is under-
mined, and all of life can become a perpetual scramble tor 
better and better (richer an d r i c h e r, or younger and 
younger) mate·s. All of life would become the "shopping 
¢bout" tor a more desirable mate, or the jealous, fright-
ened securing of one, which now characterize and agonize 
the customary years of courtship. 

A Soldier, Married to a Second Woman, Wants to See 

His First Wife 

One day, in an army casual detachment where men were wait-
ing fo:r their discharges a soldier turned to another and asked, 
"Say, you are a Catholic, aren't you? :rell me, according to you 
Catholics, isn't it true that even though a man is divorced from 
his first wife and married to another, he is still really married to 
the first wife?" 

Somewhat surprised at the unexpected question, the Catholic 
soldier said, "Yes, I guess that's about it. 'Whosoever shaU put away 
his wife and marry another, committeth adultery: But how do you 
come to ask me that? I didn't know you were interested in Catholic 
doctrine." 

"'Oh, it's not exactly that," explained the soldier. "Only I'm in 
sort of a mess. In a few days I hope to have my discharge, and my 
wife and two children will, of course, expect me to come right 
home. But she is my second wife. My first wife and child live in 
Chicago." 

"Well 
doubt sti 

After SE 

"That 
happily 1 
I had fal 
a bit y01 
could thi 
about. I 

'Well 

"Well 
than a f€ 
yearning 
stronger 

'Wha 

"Wha 
didn't w~ 
away fro 
again wi 

"Did 

"The 
bearable. 

"Boy, 

''I'm j 
time of 
spend a J 

"In ol 

on Louis• 

"Isn't 

being a : 

"Yes, 

no heel. 
been, I l 



TIIE F1RST ~POUSE IS TIIE BEST SPOUSE 59 

'Well," said someone, "what of it? You got rid of her, and no 
doubt still want to stay as far away from Chicago as possible." 

After Seven Years of Marriage He Thought He Met His Affinity 

"That's just the trouble," answered the soldier, "I don't. I was 
happily married to Sarah for seven years. And then one day I felt 
I had fallen in love with Louise (that is my second wife). She was 
a bit younger, seemed prettier, and the way we felt, well, all I 
could think was that this was the mutual affinity I'd heard so much 
about. I like Louise and the children a lot." 

'Well, then what are you griping about?'' said several. 

"Well, the blasted luck of it is, I wasn't married to Louise more 
than a few months and happily rid of Sarah, when the goldarnest 
yearning to be with her began coming over me. And it kept getting 
stronger in spite of my desire for Louise." 

"What did you do about it?" 

Soon Wanted His First Wife Again 

"What could I? I was now legally married to Louise. And I 
didn't want to be a heel to both women. I had hopes that getting 
away from it all, joining the army, would kill that yearning to be 
again with Sarah." 

"Did it?'' 

"The deuce take it. No, it didn't. It just made it almost un-
bearable. I feel I've just got to see Sarah or die." 

"Boy, you are in a mess!" 

''I'm just thinking. If I won't wire my wife, that is, Louise, the 
time of niy discharge, I can go home by way of Chicago and 
spend a few days with Sarah." 

"In other words," laughed one of them, "you'll cheat a little 
on Louise the same way you formerly cheated on Sarah." 

"Isn't that," said a more serious one, "what you before called 
being a heel to both of them?'' 

"Yes, I'm afraid it is. But I've just got to see Sarah again, heel or 
no heel. I'll go crazy if I don't.No matter how nice Louise has 
been, I know now I loved my first wife. I know now I wouldn't 



60 COURTESY, COURTSIDP, AND MARRIAGE 

have ·married her if I hadn't loved her. And after you live seven 
years with a woman you love, a dozen other women can come 

between for a while, can come disastrously between, but no woman 
can permanently take the place of the first. That's what I know 
now. I was a darn fool." 

"But it's too late now. You made your mistake. Now you've got 

to suffer for it," said one. 

He Wishes His Religion Had Kept Him From Divorce 

"Well, I suppose so. But I was just thinking that as long as 
according to Frank over there, the Catholic Church says a man is 

never really divorced from his first wife, it won't be so awfully 
wrong if I see Sarah a couple of days. She too is still in love with 
me. I feel that maybe ethically it's just as wrong to be with the 
second wife." 

"You poor devil," said several. ''I'm glad I'm not in your shoes. 

You're between the devil and the deep blue sea." 

"This is one time, isn't it," said the Catholic smiling sympathet-

ically, "when it's too bad you weren't a Catholic. Had you been a 

Catholic you would have had to keep your first wife and no fool-
ing. And wouldn't you feel happy now!" 

"You ain't just sayin' that, fellow. And how, would I be happy! 
If religion had made me stick to Sarah, I would have forgotten 
Louise in a month. But my first wife I can't forget ever." 

"Secretaries come and go," laughed one, "but a wife goes on 

forever." 

Well, if the Church and the Bible have anything to say, the 

last witticism holds-a wife goes on forever. But what this soldier 
learned too late is that in spite of all temptations, in spite of di-
vorces, she goes on forever. 

People Must Realize That After Marriage Other Attractions 

Are Temptations, Not Affinities 

Psychologists and writers are discovering that, too. One of the 
most successful plays in recent years was Clare Booth Luce' s The 
Women. After Mary and Stephen had been married twelve happy 
years, Stephen suddenly finds himself infatuated with a gorgeous 
blond perfume girl. For the time being, like our soldier's Louise, 

she seemed 
vorced frorr. 
of a miseral 

What th 

is just an 
just the old 

of thing to 

In t] 

The mo 
gulated rna 
him or for . 
Love and r. 
attractions 

nities; they 

to heaven l 
day to the 

The gr• 
by a so-ca 
man can b 

was very c 
woman ca 
her fidelit 

marriage ' 
desiring a1 
that a wo 

man true 

Te 

She th 
result: if 
mutual af 
in his pa1 

other ma1 

This i~ 
of it on t 
misery. L 
or anothe 

or the wi 
tural and 



THE FIRST SPOUSE IS THE BEST SPOUSE 61 

she seemed his affinity, his "manifest destiny," until he is di-
vorced from Mary and married to the blonde. After several years 
of a miserable awakening, he wants Mary again at any price. 

What these people learn too late is that the so-called "affinity" 
is just an old-fashioned temptation dressed in decollete. It is 
just the old sting of the flesh St. Paul worries about. It is the sort 
of thing to run away from, not to get a divorce for. 

In the Best Marriages Other Attractions May Arise 

The most important thing to remember is that in the best re-
gulated marriages, in the surest mutual love, sooner or later for 
him or for her, or for both, some such temptation is likely to arise. 
Love and marriage are no insurance against other attractions. Such 
attractions do come, can come any time. But they are not affi-
nities; they are temptations. They are the things that make getting 
to heaven hard work. They are the things that make us pray every 
day to the Lord, please, not to lead us into temptation! 

The great Catholic convert author, Sigrid Undset, was asked 
by a so-called "emancipated" woman whether she believed a wo-
man can be faithful to a man in marriage. Sigrid Undset's answer 
was very outspoken. She said, "I not only believe but know that a 
woman can be true till death, if she has an ideal which deman~ 
her fidelity." And then she distinguishes between keeping one's 
marriage vows and being true to a person in the sense of never 
desiring another. And she says, "It's an unreasonable thing to ask 
that a woman can be true to a man-seeing what men are. Or a 
man true to a woman, seeing what women are." 

Temptations Should Be Expected as the Natural 

Hurdles to Heaven 

She then continues: "Everybody must of course arrive at this 
result: if his marriage were built upon no other foundation than 
mutual affection and respect, there would be nothing unreasonable 
in his partner preferring at any rate now and again, almost any 
other man of their circle of acquaintance." 

This is outspoken language. Yet I believe a clear understanding 
of it on the part of every husband and wife would prevent much 
misery. Love and marriage are not violated because at some time 
or anot..l-ter a husband is violently attracted to some other woman, 
or the wife to sotn.e other man. Such things are a part of the na-
tural and to-be-expected obstacles on the path to heaven. 



62 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

But when it happens, the partner should immediately recog-
nize the feeling as simply an ugly temptation which must be 
fought. In fighting it, it is better to give up one's residence in a 
certain street or city, than to Iose one's wife or one's husband, or 
more directly, one's virtue. 

When the Temptation Becomes Critical One Might Best 

Ask One's Spouse for Help 

Ordinarily, it is wise to fight it out alone, and not to mention 
the temptation to one's spouse. But when the danger becomes ex-
treme or critical, then I think a partner should frankly appeal to 
the spouse for help. And the latter should then be understanding 
and sympathetic. And helpful. The spouse should realize that 
marriage is not violated by a temptation. It is only violated by 
giving into the temptation. And each should and must help the 
other in preventing this. 

The great novelist Dickens married one of two sisters. The 
othP.r sister lived with the young couple. As one child after another 
wa~ born to Mrs. Dickens, the unmarried sister-in-law by compari-
son looked more and more attractive to Dickens. This was quite 
a natural possibility and a reasonable temptation. This was the 
time when Dickens should have exp.lained it to his wife and 
asked that for the good of their marriage she should arrange 
to have the sister live elsewhere. 

Naturally, Mrs. Dickens would not have been happy to learn 
from her husband that he is attracted to her sister. But she should 
immediately have joined forces with him sympathetically to over-
come this temptation. Actually Dickens said nothing until he co~ld­
n't stand living near both women anymore. Then the whole house-
hold broke up. 

Whenever in any marriage such a temptation arises all senti-
mental and other considerations must be ruthlessly subordinated 
to these two: adultery must be prevented, and divorce or separa-
tion. And in that, the Church by flatly forbidding divorce and re-
marriage really proves the loving mother implied in the words Our 
Holy Mother the Church. 

What the Church Commands Ethically, Psychology 

Often Enforces Emotionally 

What first caused me to realize the great favor the Church 

does its p 
marriage\ 
in which 
the first. T 
to do. 

Some t 
"I Would 
"how man 
vented." S 
first marri 
shared da1 
planted. s~ 
b1'ing dive 

It is a 
olics from 
and go, b1 
on forevm 



~g­

Ibe 
a 

or 

THE FIRST SPOUSE IS THE BEST SPOUSE 63 

does its people by saving them from the blunder of a second 
marriage was noticing a surprisingly large number of news items 
in which someone divorced his second spouse only to remarry 
the first. They were doing exactly what the soldier wanted so badly 
to do. 

Some time ago a divorcee wrote, as digested in Readers Digest, 
"I Would Not Divorce Him Now." "And I Wonder," she wrote, 
''how many other divorcees wish that divorce had never been in-
vented." Speaking of the virtual impossibility of getting over one's 
first marriage, she explained, "Roots of common experience, of 
shared days and nights, of mutual parenthood are not shallowly 
planted. Separation imposed by death has the dignity of Fate. We 
bring divorce upon ourselves." 

It is a kind mother, the Catholic Church, which keeps Cath-
olics from bringing divorce upon themselves. Temptations come 
and go, but our nature demands that the bond of matrimony go 
on forever. 



CHAPTER XIII 

PARENTS ARE THE BEST MODELS 

This article is reprinted under the same title from THE 
VICTORIAN MAGAZINE, January, 1945, where it was sub-
titled, "Children Imitate Whom They Love." The editor 
prefaced the article with this note from my letter of sub-
mission: "I got the idea for this article listening to Pearl 
Buck talk at Antioch College. This was . ._. July 5th, 1944. 
After her talk I shook hands with the speaker and asked 
if I could quote her remarks about children." This note 
still applies. 

Chinese Parents Take Their Children Along 

Some time ago I heard Pearl Buck say that American parents 
do not make children feel their love enough. Pearl Buck grew up 
in China and won the Nobel Prize for her great novel on Chinese 
life, The Good Earth. She said, "A person should not merely be 
born, but should be born into a family." 

In China, she said, a child is constantly made to feel that it is 
part of the family, that everybody wants it and wants it near. "A 
Chinese woman wants children. If she hasn't any of her own, she 
adopts some," she continued. "And when a Chinese woman goes . 
visiting, she wants her children along. If she isn't a mother, she 
borrows a neighbor's child to take with her." 

American Parents Give Children Things to Keep Them Away 

In contrast, it seemed to her, that American parents, of course, 
value their- children just as much, but show their love more by 

giving the child things than by giving it affection. They give it 
a roller coaster and forget the kiss. When a mother goes visiting, 
she leaves her child in a nursery. American parents, she felt, shower 
their children with material toys, and at the same time think up 
more and more ways of keeping children from getting in their way. 

She thinks children need and want the companionship, the 
physical affection of the parents and older brothers and sisters 
more than they need fine dresses and many toys. 

Why Poor Children Often Seem Quite Happy 

Hearing Pearl Buck, mother of two daughters, say this made 

me recall 
ple had 
worn, an 
elegant t 

Thin1 

children 
the time 
her lap. 
him, anc 
whole p: 
supper, l 

And • 
cannot g 
nurse m: 
can do , 
Lord, tc 
"Suffer t 
For of~ 

Whe 
along v 
and wm 
feel. Bu 
and qui 
lish pm 
more tl. 

Chil 

other " 
particul 
anyone 
writer, 
of criti 
most ir 

It : 
most 5 
bad fr• 

· --~----~~ _ ... -~ -·~ --~ 



PARENTS ARE THE BEST MODElS 65 

me recall how the apparent happiness of the children of poor peo-
ple had often puzzled me. Their clothes were simple and often 
worn, and their food was certainly not dainty and there were no 
elegant toys, yet they seemed collections of happiness. 

Thinking of them now, a few characteristics stand forth. These 
children always knew where their mother was and indeed most of 
the time one or the other was hanging on her skirts or sitting on 
her lap. When the father came home, the whole crew charged at 
him, and he did not brush them aside but more or less lifted the 
whole pack to his shoulders. Later while reading his paper after 
supper, he managed to let one sit on his knee or tug at his leg. 

And in this way parents make their children happy, though they 
cannot give them department store toys or fine clothes or educated 
nurse maids. Bismark seems to have been right when he said, "You 
can do anything with children if you only play with them." Our 
Lord, too, knew what children needed to be happy, for He said, 
"Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not. 
For of such is the Kingdom of God." 

Children Learn from Those Who Love Them and 

Play With Them 

When parents suffer their children near them and take them 
along when possible, they make them feel that they are loved 
and wanted. They spare them the aching loneliness children easily 
feel. But more than that, they help their children learn more easily 
and quickly most of the things one really needs to know. The Eng-
lish poet and clergyman, George Herbert, wrote, "One father is 
more than a hundred schoolmasters." 

Children are imitative. They learn faster by imitating than any 
other way. They learn better by seeing than by being told. They 
particularly imitate whom they love, for they want to be like 
anyone whom they admire and love and who loves them. A French 
writer, Joubert, said, "Children have more need of models than 
of critics." Parents who keep their children about them are th~ 
most irresistible models. 

It Is Usually Best When Children Learn from Parents 

It is also probable that they are the best models. Even the 
most sinful people do not want their children to learn anything 
bad from them. Others may give a child scandal, and as the Bible 



66 COURTESY, COURTSinP, AND MARRIAGE 

says of the scandle-giver, "It were better for him that a millstone 
were hanged about his neck." The mother and father, however, will 
always want their children to see only their good side, so that the 
good side becomes a habit and both child(en and parents look 
beautiful before God. 

Th 
SIG!I 
that 
jami; 
The 
publi 
time. 
mari 
Sine• 
peop. 
I rea 
I pa; 
prin1 
it is 
the ~ 
But 
tami 
siste: 
geni1 
char. 

Me 

New: 
thing: a 
Shakesp 
an inter 
the first 
importa: 
Napolec 
solemn 
would s 
ilies to 
manyb 
to be o 
people 
large fa 

Catl 
great m 
and re1 
quette, 

--y ~·- ,_.--:_ ···- -~·-..~~--



CHAPTER XIV 

FAMOUS WRITERS FROM LARGE FAMILIES 

This article i8 reprinted; with its original title trom the 
SIGN, January, 1932· While teaching literature, I noticed 
that some of the writers were younger children in large 
families. I began keeping a record of any I came across. 
The result was this article, among t he first I ever had 
published. It gained quite a bit of favorable notice at the 
time. THE COMMONWEAL for February 17, 1932, sum-
marized its findings in an editorial of two paragraphs. 
Since it was written, many more instances of famous 
people from large families have come into my file, ant! 
I really ought to rewrite the article and embody them. But 
I partly lack the time, and partly the inclination. So I re-
print the article as origina'lly written. In its present form 
it is enough to show that the more children a couple has, 
the greater the likelihood of a genius being among them. 
But being myself the oldest, not the youngest, of a large 
family, I hasten to add that among many brothers and 
sisters the oldest has e?iery bit as good a chance of being a 
genius as the youngest, but also, alas, not at all a better 
chancel 

Many Geniuses Had Many Older Brothers and Sisters 

News, they say, is not a thing, but merely the quality of a 
thing: a letter found in an old trunk would hardly be news, but a 
Shakespearean letter found in an old trunk, that is, a letter with 
an interesting personal adjective before it, would certainly make 
the first page. So it is with certain facts. They may be quite un-
important and unexciting in themselves, but link them up with 
Napoleon or Lincoln or Dante, and everybody's ears prick up, and 
solemn lessons are drawn from items which otherwise no one 
would stoop to notice. Hence certain random facts about the fam-
ilies to which some of our great writers belonged, showing how 
many brothers and sisters, especially older ones, they had, ought 
to be of interest, especially nowadays when we have all sorts of 
people going about telling us about the dire effects of having 
large families. 

Many Catholic Saints Came from Large Families 

Catholics, of course, when this subject of large families and 
great men is brought up, readily think of a number of their saints 
and religious who had many older brothers and sisters. Pere Mar-
quette, for instance, whose statue is in the Hall of Fame in our 



68 COURTESY, COURTSIUP, AND MARRIAGE 

Capitol, was the youngest of six children. Ignatius of Loyola, noble-
man and saint, founder of the greatest teaching order in the world, 
was the youngest of thirteen children, and his follower, St. Francis 
Xavier, another nobleman saint, was the youngest of at least six. 
Joan of Arc, about whom everybody sang a fiery war song during 
1917, was the youngest of five children. 

Then there is the Little Flower. When her mother, a young 
French girl, was about to marry, she prayed to God, saying, "I 
beseech thee to make me the mother of many children, and to 
grant that all of them may be consecrated to thee." God gave her 
nine: four of them went to heaven in infancy, the other five be-
came nuns. Of these the youngest, or ninth child, is honored 
throughout the world today as St. Therese of Lisieux, the Little 
Flower. And, of course, everyone remembers Catherine of Siena, 
the twenty-fifth child of a Sienese dyer, and wonders how many 
first and only children ever attain to the fame and prominence 
that was hers. 

Coleridge Was the Thirteenth Child 

Of these holy people from large families we know; but few of 
us realize that many famous English and American writers were 
also born of large families and had many older brothers and sisters. 
Most striking of these is the man who wrote: 

"He prayeth best, who loveth best 
All things, both great and small." 

Coleridge was a thirteenth child. His father, a scholarly English 
minister and schoolmaster, and his mother were not rich in a 
worldly way, though, good people that they were, they probably 
felt themselves rich with so many children. At any rate they had 
the satisfaction of seeing their thirteenth child so precocious as to 
be able to read at three and so gifted generally as to become the 
most brilliant man of his time, the best conversationalist, the best 
critic, and a rare poet. When he died at sixty-two, he had left a 
deep impress on English philosophic and literary thought. 

One Seventh Child Is the Sanest and Greatest 

His friend and contemporary, Charles Lamb, who wrote the 
well-known, "All, all are gone, the old familiar faces," was the 
youngest of seven children. Only three of these survived. Of the 
oldest of the three, John, not much is known. But the one surviv-
ing sister, Mary, was gifted and distinguished. She contributed the 

corned) 
wrote t 

"A I 

But ur 
which 
of the 
and vi. 
Essays 
Ears," 
certain 

An 
irrepn 
purse. 

ately' 

Golds: 
er-par 
not rio 
even 

who' 
was t• 

K 
biogr 
ingto 
est ol 
what 
it wa 
supp 
with 
ltm 
broth 
Peter 

news: 
ear liE 



FAMOUS WRITERS FROM LARGE FAMILIES 69 

comedy tales to the popular Lambs' Tales of Shakespeare, and 
wrote the well-known In Memoriam, beginning, 

"A child's a plaything for an hour." 

But unfortunately she was subject to fits of insanity, in one of 
which she killed her own mother. It was Charles, the youngest 
of the children, who remained Mary's suppor_ter and protector, 
and who lived the most normal and distinguished life. With his 
Essays of Elia ("A Dissertation upon Roast Pig," "A Chapter on 
Ears," etc.) he became one of the most beloved English authors, 
certainly the best loved essayist. 

An Irishman Is the Sixth Child of Mine 

Another universally beloved writer is Oliver Goldsmith, the 
irrepressible Irishman whose heart was always larger than his 
purse. It is he who in his "Deserted Village" somewhat appropri-
ately wrote 

"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay." 

Goldsmith was the sixth of nine children. His father, an Irish farm-
er-parson "passing rich with forty pounds a year," was in reality 
not rich in anything except his children, a wealth which probably 
even in those days few would envy him. Yet now, looking back, 
who would not gladly have fed nine such mouths if a Goldsmith 
was to be sixth among them! 

The Author of "Rip" ~as the Eleventh Child 

Even more worthy of enrollment in this paper is Goldsmith's 
biographer, our own good-natured Diedrich Knickerbocker, Wash-
ington Irving. He was the youngest of eleven children, the young-
est of eight sons. For many years the family regarded him as some-
what of a failure, yet when the Irving cutlery firm failed in 1818, 
it was upon this youngest boy that the family could best lean for 
support, since the very next year he published his Sketch Book, 
with its "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow." 
It made him celebrated both here and abroad. But of the eight 
brothers, Irving was not the only prominent one. At least two. 
Peter and John, went to Columbia, and Peter later established a 
newspaper, the "Morning Chronic!~," to which Irving :rnade his 
earliest contributions, the Jonathan Oldstyle letters. Again it was 



70 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

the oldest brother, William, and a relative, James K. Paulding, who 
with Irving started the Salmagundi papers. But capable as his 
brothers were, it was Irving, the youngest of the eleven children, 
who was the first American to achieve international literary fame. 

Franklin, Cooper, Bancroft, and Jack London 

Another American writer not to be omitted here is Franklin of 
Poor Richard's Almanac fame with its, "Early to bed, early to rise," 
and many like it. He was the fifteenth of seventeen children of 
his father, ten of whom ·were of the second wife. He was, therefore, 
his mother's eighth child. He became his country's earliest out-
standing son,-famous as a statesman, a scholar, and a writer. His 
father was a poor candle maker whose country is happy that he 
was not too selfish to have a large family. 

Along with Franklin, our first great almanac and magazine 
writer, and Irving, our first short-story writer, we must list our first 
great novelist, James Fenimore Cooper, whose Deerslayer, Red 
Rover, etc., are known to every American and, one can almost add, 
every EuropeaR boy. Everybody knows several odd facts about 
him, that, for instance, upon his wife's entreaties he resigned from 
the navy to take up farming, and that he subsequently started 
novel-writing because his wife mischi'evously retorted to his criti-
cism of some novel with the challenge, "Why don't you write a 
better one?'' Few, however, happen to know that this genius so 
oddly thrown into literature was the eleventh child of his Quaker 
parents. 

To these three pioneers in American Letters, coming from large 
families, we must add also the earliest of our great historians, 
George Bancroft. He started his life's work, the History of the 
United States, at twenty-three, published the first volume eleven 
years later, and the final revised edition of twelve volumes fifty 
years later, in 1884. The man who showed such industry and perse-
verance was the eighth of thirteen children. His father was a clergy-
man and the author of a Life of Washington. Hence each of these 
four great pioneers in American Letters, Irving, Franklin, Cooper, 
and Bancroft, had at least seven older brotheril and sisters. 

Here, while we think of it, we hurriedly skip to a very recent 
American writer, to Jack London author of perhaps the best dog 
story ever penned, The Call of the Wild. He was the youngest of 
ten children. 

Am 
the clt 
and W i 
classic~ 
seventl 

Sim 
childm 
The thi 
The fo 
morally 
fifth ch 
and per 
possesst 
the Bro 
likewise 

two no' 
still rea< 
of a fail 
brother, 
distincti, 

Ton 
rememb1 

was, like 
But mon 
greatest 1 
rose-buds 

He was tl 
goldsmith 



FAMOUS WRITERS FROM LARGE FAMILIES 71 

Some English Women Novelists From Large Families 

Among the English novelists to be enrolled here is Jane Austen, 
the clergyman's daughter, who, when only twenty-one years old 
and without formal education to speak of, wrote one of the great 
classics of English literature, Pride and Prejudice. She was the 
seventh child of the Anglican rector of a little village church. 

Similar to Jane Austen are the Bronte sisters. There were six 
children in the Bronte family. The two oldest died in their teens. 
The third girl, Charlotte, became the famous author of Jane Eyre. 
The fourth child, Patrick Branwell, was artistically capable but 
morally weak, so that he died young of delirium tremens. But the 
fifth child, Emily, is commonly regarded as "the most enigmatical 
and perhaps the greatest of the Brontes," who "alone of the sisters 
possessed a true poetic gift" and who wrote the most powerful of 
the Bronte novels, W uthering Heights. The sixth child, Anne, was 
likewise possessed of unusual talent. She wrote graceful verse and 
two novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell, which are 
still readable. The Brontes, therefore, present a noteworthy example 
of a fairly large family in which from among five sisters and one 
brother, the three youngest sisters achieved international literary 
distinction. 

Carew, Herrick, Herbert, and Cowley 

To return to the English poets. Thomas Carew, Cavalier poet, 
remembered for his 

"He that loves a rosy cheek, 

Or a coral lip admires," 
and, 

"Hearts with equal love combined 
Kindle never-dying fires," 

was, like Charlotte Bronte, a third child, but a third child of eleven. 
But more noteworthy is Robert Herrick, also a Cavalier, and the 
greatest pastoral lyricist in English. Everyone likes his, "Gather ye 
rose-buds while ye may," and his 

.. Fair daffodils, we weep to see 
You haste away so soon." 

He was the-seventh of eight children. Though his father, a London 
goldsinith, died when Herrick was still an infant, the boy, begging 



72 . COURTESY, COURTSIDP, AND MARRIAGE 

help from an uncle, managed to get to Cambridge and eventually 
became a contented bachelor, a well-liked clergyman, and the 
great lyricist we still love. In 1857 a collateral descendant of his put 
up a monument to him in Dean Prior, the parish of his labors. 

Then there is Herrick's contemporary, George Herbert, who 
ranks with Crashaw and Thompson as one of the chief religious 
poets of England. Some popular expressions attributed to him are: 

"Hell is full of good meanings and wishings," 
"His bark is worse than his bite," 
"God's mill grinds slow but sure." 

Before dying, he sent the manuscript of his poems to a friend, 
asking him to read it, saying, "if he can think it may turn to the 
advantage of any dejected poor soul, let it be made public; if not, 
let him burn it, for I and it are less than the least of God's mercies." 
He was one poet, therefore, who knew the right spirit in which to 
publish his work and he was of a comparatively large family-the 
fifth son of Sir Richard Herbert. 

Abraham Cowley, another contemporary of Herrick, too, be-
longs here. He is little read now, but in his day he was considered 
a fair rival of Milton, and a recent biographer calls him "the most 
precocious English poet, excepting none." His poems began to be 
published when he was ten, and his first book of poems appeared 
when he was only thirteen. He was also one of our essayists. This 
man who throughout his life held a leading position in English 
Letters "was the seventh and a posthumous child of one Thomas 
Cowley, probably a stationer." 

Tennyson Was a Fourth, Shakespeare a Third Child 

Another poet one is especially glad to introduce is Tennyson, 
one of the most pleasant and edifying poets of the world. Every 
heart responds to his "Sunset and evening star" and his " 'Tis 
better to have loved and lost." He was the fourth of twelve chil-
dren of a scholarly English clergyman and a mother "not learned, 
save in gracious household ways." All of these children were 
poetically inclined, though only the fourth became the first poet 
of his age. 

Before concluding, just a word about the prince of poets, Shake-
speare. We know quite definitely that he, too, was of a large fam-

ily, on 
before 
therefo 

Am 
to end 
born o 
were v 
emineiJ 
one of 



a.lly 
the 
put 

•ho 
)US 

re: 

.d, 
b.e 
~t, 

r· 
, 

to 

e 

~-

FAMOUS WRITERS FROM LARGE FAMILIES 73 

ily, one of at least eight. At least two of the children were born 
before Shakespeare, but died in infancy. As far as we know, 
therefore, the great dramatist was the third of eight children. 

"The Holiest Thing Alive" 

And now with not the least pretense to completeness, we bring 
to end this little sketch of famous English and American writers 
born of large families, whose mothers, like the Little Flower's, 
were willing to take the full responsibility of their state and who 
eminently deserve the words of Coleridge, the thirteenth child of 
one of them: 

"A mother is a mother still, 
The holiest thing alive." 



CHAPTER XV 

A CULTURED PERSON AND A CULTURED NATION 

This article is reprinted with the same title trom THE 
CATHOLIC HOME JOURNAL, September, 1945. It was an 
article requested to fit an illustration consisting of a tree 
whose stem was marked "Education," whose roots repre-
sented books, magazines newpapers and freedom of re-
ligion, speech and press and whose branches represented 
health, invention, enterprise, arts, and sciences. The 
result was something I hoPe every woman who sees this 
book will re·ad. 

Some of its implications are too tar-reaching tor a 
short article. It suggests, tor exa.mple, that nations and 
races do not have different cultures, but merely a, higher 
or lower culture. At any given point in hist01"]J some 
races and nations have a definitely higher culture than 
others. Since the Christian era those nations and races 
have the highest culture which have made the best at-
tempt at trying Christianity. But in addition to this not-
yet-understood concept of culture, the article has many 
practical suggestions tor becoming a more cultured per-
son one's self and tor helping one's country to become more 
cultured. 

Perfect Culture Is Where Reason and the Will of God 

Perfectly Prevail 

To be a fine person and to have a fine nation, each and all must 
be in the habit of making reason and the will of God prevail 
Making reason and the will of God prevail is what the great 
English critic, Matthew Arnold, calls culture. Some of us think of 
culture as plays and operas and highbrow books. This is confusing 
the engine with the car. These things are not culture-but they 
are the engines of culture. They are the things that help each of 
us individually and all of us nationally to become cultured. 

Points of Culture 

Cardinal Newman defined a gentleman as one who never inflicts 
pain. To act and think so as to give a minimum of pain and a max-
imum of contentment to oneself and others is the aim of culture. 
To do so one must bring the natural impulses under the control of 
right reason and the will of God. The word culture etymologically 
means tilling, systematic training. Culture is the degree to which 
anyone or any group has developed the habit of acting so as to 
offend least and please most. When we speak of American culture 

we mean 
life amor 
least dist: 
tesy, mari 

-all are 1 
termine c 
tentment. 

How 

Wetl 
merely tl: 
woman c 
safe for a 
a gid c2 
without 
Where i 
does not 
establish 
ing, peo 
granted 
school ti 
high cull 

'J 

If in 
the stror 
a cultiva 
regardle1 
hindmosi 

is the sl< 
Rule: D1 

Thou 
simply c; 
racy the 
rights of 
An unju1 
could ke 
Ghettoes 
clergymE 
churches 
a minori 
it is now 



A CULTURED PERSON AND A CULTURED NATION 75 

we mean those habits and tendencies and customs which make 
life among us most pleasant and agreeable for everybody and 
least distasteful. Political justice, economic efficiency, public cour-
tesy, marital fidelity, courtship habits, trade honesty, table manners 
-all are part of the American way of life, of our culture. They de-
termine our personal and national comfort, convenience, and con-
tentment. 

How One Can Know That a Country Has a High Culture 

We think we have a high culture. But actually we need not 
merely think so, we can know so. A country where, for example, a 
woman can go places alone is more pleasant than where it is un-
safe for a woman to go shopping or visiting alone. A country where 
a girl can with moral safety go to a show with her boyfriend 
without a chaperone is more pleasant than where she cannot. 
Where in stores prices are fixed and . where not being swindled 
does not depend on being a good bargainer; where drivers follow 
established signals and rules; where instead of elbowing and push-
ing, people line up and first come first served; where jobs are 
granted on merit and tests rather than an color, creed, or old 
school ties-these and hundreds of similar things are marks of a 
high culture and contributions to the conveniences of life. 

The Yardstick of Culture: Doing Unto Others ... 

If in a fire people form a line, rather than a stampede in which 
the strong trample down the weak, they display a high culture-
a cultivated control of their natural impulse to stampede to safety 
regardless of others. "Everybody for himself and the devil take the 
hindmost," is the slogan of barbarism; "Consider the other person" 
is the slogan of culture. Culture is really the habit of the Golden 
Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do to you. 

Though mankind everywhere needs this habit, a democracy 
simply cannot get along without a high degree of it. In a democ-
racy the majority rules. If this majority is not considerate of the 
rights of the minority, there would soon be chaos and violence. 
An unjust majority could keep Catholics out of government jobs, 
could keep Negroes out of schools, could force all Jews to live in 
Ghettoes, could confiscate the property of the rich, could force 
clergymen and Quakers to kill in wars, could even take the 
churches away from the churchgoers. When a majority still kept 
a minority as slaves, our political culture was so much lower than 
it is now that it finally resulted in the worst violence in our history. 



76 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

When a few years ago the majority without trial or conviction 
put all Americans of Japanese descent into relocation camps, our 

political culture took a sudden dangerous drop. State universities 
which do not admit Negro students reflect a great depression in 
our national culture. Every law or custom which is unjust to some-

one is a blemish in our culture, in our American way of life, whose 

ideal must be not to inflict unjust pain or inconvenience on any-
body and to offer a maximum of comfort and contentment to every-

body. 

Unnecessary Nuisances Are Defects of Culture 

Everything, big or little, personal or national, which unneces-

sarily disturbs or inconveniences others is a cultural defect. Honk-
ing the auto horn too loud, talking ungrammatically or coarsely, 

playing one's radio too loud or too late, letting one's city yard grow 

weedy or littered up, pushing and jostling in streetcars-these and 

thousands of other things, in which is some preventable offence, 

are defects in culture. In some countries men still turn and stare 
at a woman passing by. In this, many smokers are careless as to 

where the smoke blows or the ashes fall. A person publicly drunk 
has not only committed a sin but has also made a nuisance of 
himself-by failing to control his natural impulses he has made life 

uglier than it need have been. By so much he has lowered the . 
cultural level of his country. 

Men and Women Compared Culturally 

Women, until a hundred years ago, were culturally neglected. 
Only the churches were as open to them as they were to men. They 
did not get the schooling men got; they could hardly attend plays; 

books, magazines and newspapers were kept from them as too 
deep and strong for them; and of course they could not vote. Now 
women have more cultural opportunities than men. While the 

men work or, after work, talk shop, women can spare some time 

from their housework to read, attend book circles, see shows, and 
belong to clubs and roundtables. · 

In some respects, women have culturally outstripped the men. 
They are more refined in speech, less coarse and more gram-
matical; their manners and etiquette are better; and they seem 

to talk less shop. On the other hand, men say they still talk too 
much about what creeps, crawls, or marries, and too seldom talk 

ideas. Their talk is too often disorganized, rather trivial and silly, 

and strung together with interminable ands. All these things de-
tract from the general pleasantness of life. 

M( 
jilting, 
canno' 

arem< 
politic 
that t1 
peopl! 
buts; : 
try to1 
than 1 

these 

them 

prove1 

is the 
alway: 

In 
humm 

of cuJ 
the 1v 
Emily 

ware : 

his n< 
pleasi 
and i1 

impul 
mates 

urgin! 
thing~ 
them 

to the 

Fre 

Fr 

religi< 

what 

sary : 

.re..k'$6 



A CULTURED PERSON AND A CULTURED Nf\TION 77 

Where Men Think Women Are Weak Culturally 

Men furthermore insist that women have not learned to take a 
jilting, an unsuccessful love affair, as gracefully as men; that they 
cannot take criticism as good-naturedly and profitably; that they 
are more unfair towards people they don't like; that in business and 
politics they act on emotion and hunches rather than on reason; 
that they think too well of their own children and too ill of other 
people's; that their compliments of other women usually end in 
buts; and finally that they think too much about personal beauty, 
try too long to stay young, and indulge in far more little vanities 
than men. Men admit that plenty of men have a good share of 
these faults, too, but insist that their beloved womenfolks have 
them to a greater degree. In general there is much room for im-
provement on all these counts in men and women. A fine culture 
is the fruit of Christianity, and like Christianity, it can and must 
always get better. 

True Culture Starts With the Ten Commandments 

In truth, the cornerstone of culture, of every really high and 
humane culture, is the Christian religion. The structure and frame 
of culture must be the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on 
the Mount. Morals are the prerequisites of manners. The most 
Emily-Posted dinner guest is unacceptable if he spills the silver-
ware into his pockets. The most loving husband who equally loves 
his neighbor's wife is worse than a boor. A charming voice is 
pleasing only after it has learned not to lie. Culture, in a person 
and in a nation, begins with the control over the powerful natural 
impulses, to kill, to lie, to steal, to get drunk, to seduce each other's 
mates. And this beginning is everywhere made only under the 
urgings and sanctions of religion. Religion not only tells us the first 
things we must do to get along with one another, but it also enlists 
the mighty arguments of heaven and hell to make people live up 
to these rock-bottom rules. 

Freedom of Religion Needed to Make Sure a Faulty Religion 

Won't Forever Prevail 

Freedom of religion is indispensable for a happy nation. Only 
religious revelation, in Bible and Church, can tell people effectively 
what is forever right and good to do. Freedom of religion is neces-
sary so that all people can strive to find and to adopt the true 
religion. Many . religions are imperfect, some are almost more bad 



78 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

than good. Only where religious freedom exists can even Catholics 
be sure that a majority or a mistaken government won't some day 
make a false or imperfect religion mandatory. Just as true religion 
is the foundation of a fine culture, so a false religion is the most 
certain and tragic check to it. Sooner or later a nation saddled 
with a false religion falls culturally behind nations with the true 

religious concepts. 

Cultural Help Besides Religion and Ethics 

Religion and ethics indicate and enforce the first fundamentals 
of culture, of a satisfactory human society. But much that is not 
specifically comprised by the Ten Commandments is needed for 
full pleasantness and happiness. Cleanliness, efficiency, good man-
ners, tact, knowledge, health-all these and others are needed to 
make a person or a nation really fine and agreeable. A good wife 
whose dinner is always late, a fine husband whose shoes are never 
polished, a scholar whose smile is warped-all these are culturally 
deficient. In addition to Church and religion, people need other 

cultural helps. 

Cultural Wisdom Is Carried from the "Prophets" to the 

People in Books 

Of these, books are first, because they are the viaducts of cul-
ture from generation to generation, from nation to nation, and 
from scholars to the people. Good customs and good ideas never 
happen all of a sudden to all the people. They always start with 
a few prophet-like persons and then through books reach all 
localities. The Ten Commandments started from Moses (through 
God) ; we read them in the Bible. This is how all good things 
develop. Only sin is everywhere: all wise and good things start 
with one or two and usually spread in books. This is not only true 
of ideas but also of things. It was a novel by Bulwer-Lytton that 
introduced and popularized the tuxedo for men. To advance cul-
turally people must read. And some of this reading should be from 
books. Everybody, certainly every modem woman, should find 
time for at least a few books a year. Almost any book in a good 
library is better than none. Any librarian can advise one as to the 
best books. 

One Must Read or Barbarize 

In addition to books, a person and a nation need magazines and 
newspapers. Through them we learn what's going on in the world. 

To be: 
what th 
pens to 
o'urselv1 
Obviou 
things • 
imporh 

is hap:r: 
and ne 

My 
person 
weekly 
least 01 

Cu] 

lecture 
truthfu 
Only i l 
the pe 
and er. 
and sp 
while 
largely 
trois k 
lible g 
wrong 
will di 

Th 
invest 
Or din: 

unless 
is no 
functi-
thing 
if the 
major 
in fav 
rise tc 
given 
the pt 



A CULTURED PERSON AND A CULTURED NATION 79 

To be a good neighbor to people in other states one must know 
what they do and think and what is happening to them. What hap-
pens to our family and the neighbors in our village we can see for 
oi.rrselves . . But if we know only that, we remain narrow and trivial. 
Obviously, unless we live in the White House, great and important 
things cannot often happen in our immediate circle. To learn of 
important things, we must increase our vision-we must see what 
is happening all over the country and the world. It is magazines 
and newspapers that give us this telescopic eye. 

My own mother used to say, "I must read or barbarize." Every 
person ought to glance through at least one daily paper, one 
weekly, and about two monthly magazines. For a Catholic, at 
least one or two of these should be Catholic. 

Freedom of Speech Is Necessary So That Truth Can 

Win Over Error 

Cultural progress is dependent upon books, magazines, papers, 
lectures, sermons, and meetings. To have them plentifully and 
truthfully, freedom of speech and press are absolutely necessary. 
Only if all thinkers can express themselves freely and honestly can 
the people be sure of finally getting what is best and true. Truth 
and error do not come from the people; they come from the experts 
and specialists, from the scholars and philosophers. But the people, 
while they do not discover truth, readily embrace truth or error 
largely as it is presented to them. If any party or government con-
trols knowledge, the results are dangerous. Truth is not the infal-
lible gift of any party or government. Governments are as often 
wrong as right. Sooner or later a government that dictates ideas 
will dictate errors. 

The human race arrives at truth only by thorough pro-and-con 
investigation and discussion by all the best minds in the country. 

Ordinarily the people will believe what their leaders tell them, 
unless the contrary view is developed by an opposition. If there 
is no freedom of press and speech, a democracy simply cannot 
function because then people are in no position to vote for any-
thing except what their government tells them is right. For example, 
if the government asks for peacetime military conscription, the 
majority of the people, if asked to vote the next day, would vote 
in favor. It is only if clergymen, educators, philisophers, historians 
rise to argue against the government view, and if enough time is 
given for their opposing views to be weighed by the people, that 
the people can and probably will render a wise vote. Consequently, 



80 COlJRTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

whatever else people allow, they must on no account relinquish 
their freedom of press and speech-not even in a war, for pre-
cisely during war are these freedoms most needed and valuable. 
Even the present wartime ban on conventions should not have 
been tolerated and ought to be revoked. [It was revoked soon after 
the war. Yet freedom of discussion is most necessary during a war-
whether it is just or not, when and how a peace should be negoti-
ated, etc.] 

If there is freedom of religion, press, speech, and if there are 
enough books, magazines, and newspapers, the people have the 
tools to become educated towards a constantly higher, more 
Christian culture. Though in these tools there will be many errors 
and heresies, nevertheless, when all the best minds in the counby 
argue points and write and speak about them, the truth will surely 
if slowly rise to the top. The people will just as surely and definitely 
come to recognize and adopt it. 

Truth Permeates a Country Gradually 

Some will do it quickly. Others will be slow about it-these are 
called backward. When young Lincoln, two hundred years after 
Galileo had proclaimed it in Italy, said to his school mates that the 
earth is round, not flat, they walked away twirling their fingers 
against their temples and shaking their heads. Lincoln, the first 
in his village to hear and adopt the correct theory about the solar 
system, was also the first to realize that slavery is wrong. Every-
body should strive to be like Lincoln in this respect. 

Everyone Should Try to See and Accept the Truth First 
Especially should every Catholic woman, like Lincoln, strive 

to be progressive and alert to all moral and cultural developments. 
For many centuries Catholics were so poor and oppressed that they 
could not go to higher schools or read the better books and maga-
zines. But in this counby Catholic women now have as much time 
and talent to read and learn as anyone else. One hopes earnestly 
that they are doing so: that in the arts, the sciences, in health and 
enterprise, in manners and morals, in ideas and justice, they are 
taking their places in the very front ranks of culture. 

With the security of the right religion to guide them, they can 
avoid the errors and heresies that one cannot blame others for 
stumbling into. If now they show the same energy and thirst for 
the way, the truth, and the light as others show, Catholic women 
will be the best and finest cultural leaders that their counby and 
the world-and God-can ask for. 

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CHAPTER XVI 

WOMAN, WHERE CHRISTIANITY IS NOT 

This article is reprinted from MAGNIFICAT, November 
1941. It was condensed in THE CATHOLIC DIGEST for 

January, 1942, pp.25-29. It gives citations largely from 
contemporary sources showing that only where Christ-
ianity is established are women treated as human beings 
who have the same moral rights men have. Naturally, 
since it was first written some new and even better evi-
dences of this observation have come to light. But the 
old ones are incontrovertible, and powerful enough tor 
their purpose 

A central thesis of my life is that literally and really 
the only hope for the world is Christianity. Christianity 
not only makes nations decent, it also makes them 
strong. And more than that, it even gives them their su-
periority in plumbing! Paganism and all branches of it 
are immorality and dirt. Christianity, though still nowhere 
perfectly applied, is the o n l y creator of justice and 
cleanliness. 

I furthermore thoroughly repudiate the propaganda 
that the " classic" and pagan Greeks and Romans had 
a civilization that could compare with that of the Chris-
tian nations of today. What they had was fleas, slavery, 
concubines and temples of immorality. Fallen man, even 
in Christian countries, is still much of a beas-t, even an 
atomic beas-t if you will, but he is no longer on the aver-
age a flea-bitten, slave-holding polygamist. From that 
Calibanistic state, Christianity, and Christianity alone 
has elevated him. I want you to read this article·. 

A Pagan Girl Has No Wedding March 

When young King Farouk of Egypt married pretty Farida 
Zuficar in the non-Christian city of Cairo, a few years ago, the 
sixteen-year-old Farida was not present at her own wedding. While 
"her man" was saying, "I do," she was stationed at a distance to 

watch her own wedding through a latticed partition. 

Instead of receiving a ring and a kiss from the bridegroom, 
poor, non-Christian Farida had to be content with being allowed 
to see from afar how her father married her off with a symbolic 
handshake between himself and the groom! According to a news-
paper report, "The two pressed upright thumbs under a silk cloth, 
and the bride's father said, 'I betroth to your majesty my daughter, 
Farida.'" Thereupon the groom thrice intoned the words, "I accept 
her betrothal to myself from thee." In another building through a 
lattice, the bride watched. For her, Mendelssohn's Wedding March 
could have no meaning! 



82 COURTESY, COURTSIUP, AND MARRIAGE 

Only In Christian Countries Do Girls Marry, In Others They 

Are Married Off 

That is the nearest a non-Christian, Egyptian girl comes to her 
own wedding. How would a sweet American young thing, or a 
European girl tolerate being cheated out of her parade up the 
middle aisle? And what would a young wife say to her husband, 
once she got him alone inside, if he had made her stand in the 
rectory while he married her by shaking hands at the altar with 
her father? Only in a Christian country would she have anything 
to say in the 'matter. Where Christianity is not, men marry, but 
women are only married off,-and it is not theirs to say to whom, 
or when, or how. 

Even the Greatest Pagans, Aristotle and Plato, Thought 

Women Not Quite Human 

One often hears it said that it was the medieval Christian rev-
erence for the Blessed Virgin that raised the modern woman to 
her present level of respect and freedom. But few who glibly say 
that Christ, through his Mother, put woman on a pedestal really 
understand what they are saying. They do not really grasp the 
great fact that Christianity did literally raise women from a chattel 
to a partner, from a beast of burden to an equal, from a lot worse 
than slavery to one but little less than angelic. They do riot grasp 
really that Aristotle, the greatest of the pagan philosophers, de-
clared woman to be an inferior order of being, that Plato said it 
was beneath the dignity of a man to love a woman! And further-
more, they do not realize that even now, where Christianity is 
not, there women are still chattels and slaves. 

Africans Strike Because the Rich Grab All the Pretty Women 

Recently, the Negroes of some pagan Mrican tribes went on a 
sort of strike because their elders were owning all the desirable 
women. But these pagans did not rebel because each chief had 
more than one wife. They rebelled only because the rich had 
''hogged" all the desirable women. That is the typical situation of 
paganism in all times and all places. Where Christianity is not, 
there the strong and rich men have harems and the poor men 
share scarlet unfortunates. And the women have no more to say 
which they shall be than the cattle in an American barn,-except 
that our cattle are never abused! 

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WOMAN, WHERE CHRISTIANITY IS NOT 83 

Among the Non-Christians, Men May Divorce Their Wives, But 

Wives May Not Divorce the Husbands 

Do you, Christianized American wife, realize that were you 
a native of much of Asia and Mrica, Mohammedan and pagan 
territories, your husband could come home tonight and say to 
you, "I met a beautiful dancer today. I divorce you. Leave tonight. 
fll bring her home tomorrow!" Yes, that is what he could do. 
And you couldn't collect alimony, either. Nor, of course, had you 
espied a fine fullback that day, could you have divorced the hus-
band and brought home the fullback. As you know, even among 
the ancient Hebrews, it was only the man who could divorce the 
wife, or, because of the ''hardness" of his heart, marry two or three, 
but the wife could not divorce him, or take unto herself an extra 
helpmeet or two! 

Men and women in Christian countries do not realize how 
directly and specifically Christianity has raised the men from 
the level of cavemen brutes and women from the level of domestic 
kine. 

Even in the Most Civilized Pagan Country, Japan, the 

Women Are Still Chattels 

In 1938 the Baroness Shizue Ishimoto, editor of the Women's 
Cyclopedia, shocked Japan, the most advanced of the pagan coun-
tries, when she declared that Japanese women are treated with 
no more respect than idiots and lunatics. 

Ernest 0. Hauser, former staff member of the Institute of Pacific 
Relations, in the Survey Graphic of October, 1938, states that for 
$4.50 to $10.80 a month, Japanese women have been working 
thirteen to fifteen hours a day, and that even after the Japanese 
Welfare Ministry recently ordered stores to close at 10 p.m., the 
sales-girls' working day is still eleven hours. 

If you were the average young Japanese girl your father would 
arrange to marry you off to someone whom, probably, you had 
never seen. Mter marriage your husband would customarily keep 
you confined to the house. If he wanted a "good time," he would 
not share it with you but with a Geisha girl. And if he were to 
buy any luxury for a woman, it would be for the Geisha, not for 
you. Customarily Japanese men do not take their wives to parties. 
They go on stag parties, and if they need women, . they get paid 

~~~ .' 
-- --------------------



84 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

ones. Of course, what with the influx of Christian trade and 
Christian pictures from Europe and America, things are changing 
somewhat. Father Clarence Burns, Maryknoll missionary, who in 
1936 was dragged about China for nine and a half months by ban-
dits, says that more and more one can see Japanese husbands 
escorting their wives down town. Although the war, he says, is 
again checking this tendency, it has at least made a beginning. 
Nevertheless, a Japanese wife is still socially confined to the house 
in the manner of a servant or a chattel. 

Husbands in Japan Can Bring Prostitutes Home 

According to Father Burns, it is still possible for a Japanese 
husband to bring a prostitute home with him and require his wife 
to wait on her, to do even menial tasks for her. And furthermore 
the wife must do it graciously and not seem resentful. Otherwise 
he can simply tell her to get out-which in Japan would be equiva-
lent to divorce. Such a dismissal or divorce is particularly pathetic 
for a Japanese woman because by marrying she has forever given 
up and lost her family and cannot return to her former home. This 
does not happen often, of course, but that it is socially and legally 
possible is sufficient proof of the horribly degraded status of wom-
en in even the most advanced of pagan countries. 

The Geishas Are Girls the Parents Sold Into a Life of Sin 

And where do the Geishas and brothel women come from? 
They are the young daughters of Japanese mothers, whom the 
father and husband has sold for from fifty to two hundred and 
fifty dollars to a Geisha broker, touring about quite legally to do 
such buying! This broker will, if a girl be very pretty and clever, 
make a Geisha out of her, to die soon enough of syphilis; or, if 
she isnt clever, he will send her to a mere licensed brothel, to die 
still sooner. Though you were the girl's mother, it being a non-
Christian country, you would have legally nothing to say as to 
what your husband does with her. Dennis McEvoy, for several 
years newspaper correspondent in Tokyo, says in Coronet, January, 
1941, that Japanese Geisha brokers buy approximately 10,000 girls 
annually from the poverty-stricken northern provinces of Japan. 
That's what woman's life is like, where Christianity is not! 

In Pagan China Women Are Treated Even Worse 

Than in Pagan Japan 

Nor are things better in vast and sprawling China. Here too, 

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WOMAN, WHERE CHRISTIANITY IS NOT 85 

fathers sell daughters into slavery and immorality, price possibly 
two hundred dollars. These slave girls then work from 6 a. m. and 
have "only duties and no rights." And those girls whom their 
fathers do not sell into slavery are bartered into marriage. In a 
pagan country girls are simply not allowed to choose a husband. 
According to an item in Catholic Missions (April-May, 1940), 
"Girls are promised in marriage at the age of two or three, some-
times even before birth with the proviso that it be a daughter." 

There Is No Courtship in Pagan China 

In pagan China, and in pagan countries everywhere, people 
simply do not have the privilege of courtship and of marriage for 
love. If a Chinaman loves his wife, it is an accident, not a pre-
vious condition. A Catholic missionary, seeing a Chinese farmer 
looking sad because his wife had just died, was deeply moved 
to think how much this fellow had loved his wife. Consolingly 
he said, "Don't take it so hard, my man. Time heals the worst of 
wounds. And in time you will surely be able to find and to love 
another wife." 

"Oh, it isn't that at all," exclaimed the Chinaman ruefully, and 
somewhat startled by the missionary's romantic sentiment. "It is 
only that I will never, never get so strong and good a worker 
again." Where Christianity is not, that represents the ultimate 
of a man's appreciation of "his woman!" 

Adultery Is a Man's Glory in China, a Wife's Death 

And as Benjamin Franklin once wisely remarked, where peo-
ple marry without love, they love without marriage! Even Lin 
Yutang, the celebrated interpreter of Chinese culture to Ameri-
cans, says blithely that the Chinaman wants some woman who 
understands him, if not his wife, "then one of the sing-song girls." 
Adultery in China and in all pagan countries is a sin a man glories 
in, but which his wife dies for! 

Everybody knows of China's Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. 
As a pagan "he was married to his first wife in Chinese fashion, at 
the age of sixteen." She became the mother of his two sons. He 
kept the sons, but put her away. And as a recent article says, "There 
were three concubines to be disposed of when Chiang assumed 
Mei-ling [the present Madam Kai-shek] and Christianity." Now, 
having become a Christian, he recently "proclaimed in the presence 
of Madame Chiang his undying Christian love and complete mono-



86 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

gamy" (George Moorad, "Chiang Kai-shek," American Mercury, 
June, 1947, p. 673) . Pagans are bigamists and concubinists and the 
more concubines they have the more respected they are for it. 
Only among Christians is monogamy the accepted, if still often 
violated, order of things. [This paragraph was not in the original 
Magnificat article.] 

Pearl Buck, in her novel about Chinese life, The Good Earth, 
shows that in this pagan country it is the accepted order of the 
day · for the mother to be put aside by her husband in favor of 
one or more concubines, and for her sons, even in their teens, to 
be furnished with slave girls. His wife has made Wang Lung 
rich, and in reciprocation he established a brothel girl in the 
house. That is how a mother may be treated where Christianity 
is not. That is how she was treated also in Europe before Chris-
tianity made all men bow reverently before the Mother and her 
Child! 

In Hindu and Moslem India a Wife May Not Talk to Her 

Brother-in-Law 

In India with its 350,000,000 pagans and Mohammedans, 
woman's lot is as shameful as in China. You Christian wife, how 
would you like to be forbidden to mention your husband's name? 
Or how would you like to be forbidden ever to speak to your 
brother-in-law? Those are but two of the rules prescribed for 
women in the Indian Civil Service textbook, Social Service in 
India, by Edward A. H. Blount, issued by the British Stationery 
Office in 1939. 

The head of a school for girls in Calcutta reported a few years 
ago that she was spending five thousand rupees a year for teach-
ers, and only two rupees for the library, but a full seven thousand 
for transporting the girls to and from school. And why this money 
for their transportation? Because among these people a girl may 
not walk on a public street. That means that in that Moslem 
country, where Christianity is not yet, your daughter could not 
walk to the store for you or walk to high school, nor for that 
matter could you-even you-her mother. Your son, of course, 
and your husband could go anywhere they pleased at any time. 

In All Mohammedan Countries Men May Have Four Wives 

and Replacements 

In Persia and Arabia and Mrica, in all of these non-Christian 

-
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WOMAN, WHERE CHRISTIANITY IS NOT 87 

territories the lot of women is abominable. When the King of 
Arabia, Ibn Saud, was eighteen years old he already had three 
wives, at thirty-seven he had married and divorced an even hun-
dred, according to Richard Halliburton in the Baltimore Sun, and 
recently, at fifty-five, he has had one hundred and sixty wives. He 
had twenty-seven sons and a great many daughters, whom he 
does not bother to count, for women are not worth counting, in 
this non-Christian country! Ibn Saud may have only four wives at a 
time, but whenever he finds a girl he fancies, he says to one of his 
wives, "I divorce thee. Get out." And he brings in the new wife. As 
a matter of fact he usually keeps only three wives at a time, so 
that when a new fancy strikes him he can marry her on the spot 
without waiting to get home to divorce one of the others! 

The Most Divorced Christian Not as Foul as These 

Pagan Lust-pots 

How would you like to be a woman in such a country? And 
still some people say Christianity has failed! At its worst, what are 
the five or six wives in a lifetime of a Barrymore, in Christian 
America, compared to the one hundred and sixty of respected and 
honored rascals like Ibn Saud! 

And Ibn Saud is not at all exceptional, except in the number 
of his wives. Any Mohammedan may have four wives and when-
ever he sees a fifth woman he wants, he can merely dispose of 
one of the four by saying, "I divorce thee," and she is out on the 
street, without alimony or redress. Not even her sons can bring 
her back. One Bedouin sheikh complained to an American woman 
that he would like one wife who was educated and that if he had 
such a one he would be most kind to her. "The four I have are 
all ignorant," he said, "and cause me much trouble. I want one 
with whom I could talk. If I can find the right one I might 
be willing to let her wear a hat!" Such magnanimity! But imagine 
a husband in a Christian country telling his wife that if she does 
so and thus he might be willing to let her wear a hat! 

Pagan Countries Improve Only After Contact 

With Christian Countries 

It is hue that things are improving a little in the non-Christian 
world. Adopting western, that is, Christian ways, Turkey, for 
example, passed decrees permitting women to appear in public un-
veiled. That Turkey is also discouraging harems and polygamy 
now, is due only to Christian influence. 

~ - --~--



_..........._..,..-:;;·' . ... 

88 COURTESY, COURTSIDP, AND MARRIAGE 

Pagan Wife Killed Not Only If She Looks at Another Man, 

But If Another Man Looks at Her 

The accepted and honored injustice exercised against women 
in non-Christian countries is so utterly crass and hardened that a 
western mind cannot even conceive it. While husbands regularly 
and acceptably practice adultery and polygamy, the wife is often 
subject to death if a man but manages to look at her. For example, 
the Ibn Saud, of the one hundred sixty wives, being told that 
"western ways" were getting around in Arabia, angrily interrupted 
a speaker at a formal dinner in honor of the Crown Prince Emir 
Saud, and cried: "By Allah! If I saw any one of my wives talking 
to any man, even my brother, I would kill both immediately." 

Sinful Brothers Kill Sisters Who "Fall" 

Dr. Paul W. Harrison, the famous "Desert Doctor" of Arabia, 
relates that girls have their throats slit by their 'l:!rothers for com-
mitting adultery. 

And while their husbands live with Geishas or their equivalents, 
wives die by the thousand, because no man not even a doctor, 
may look upon them. Victor Heiser, M. D., in an article entitled 
"An American Doctor in China" (The Saturday Evening Post, 
November 20, 1937) says it is easier to train women doctors 

"than change the idee fixe that no male physician should 
be allowed to examine a woman. In the past his diagnosis 
had to be made by feeling her pulse through a gauze net, 
or even by means of the vibrations along a silken cord 
made fast to her wrist and passed through a hole in the 
wainscot into a neighboring room." 

In Pagan Countries Daughters Are a Shame and a Liability 

And why did not our friend Ibn Saud bother about counting his 
daughters? Because in pagan countries, unless a man, like the 
lowest of Chinese and Japanese, is willing to sell his daughters 
into prostitution, daughters are expensive. A writer in the New 
York Times Magazine, March 28, 1937, speaking of India says, 
"The stigma attaching to unmarried girls is so great that parents 
are driven to desperate remedies. One of them is the pathetic 
dowry given to induce young men to marry." The writer goes on 
to say that a Brahmin youth who has passed the university en-
trance examinations commands a dowry of five thousands rupees 
to marry, a graduate ten thousand. In other words, if you were 

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WOMAN, WHERE CHRISTIANITY IS NOT 89 

a beautiful young thing in India, instead of in Indiana, and wanted 
to marry a college graduate, it is not he who would give you an 
expensive diamond, it is you who would have to pay him thousands 
of dollars to marry you. That, and that literally, is the effect of 
the absence of Christianity, as far as woman is concerned. 

Treatment of Women Not a Matter of Climate or Race 

But of Culture 

And let no one think that all this is a matter of continent or 
nationality, and not of Christianity. The Greeks, before Saint Paul 
declared to them that "there is neither male nor female, for you 
are all one in Jesus Christ," treated their women just as badly as 
the Persians treat them now. Greek fathers used to expose their 
baby daughters to starve or to be saved by someone for a life 
we Christians call "worse than death." 

Where Europe Is Still Pagan. Women Still Wear Veils 

Let there be no misunderstanding: if women are treated as 
human beings in Europe today it is because there they have 
heard Christ's words to the adulterous men about to stone a 
woman, "Let him who is innocent throw the first stone." As a 
proof that without Christianity women would be no better off in 
Europe than in Asia, one need but call attention to that part of 
Europe which is not Christian,-Albania. There, in that last Mo-
hammedan stronghold of Europe, a revolution broke out in 1937, 
an insurrection of the Albanian men against the governor's order 
that the women of Albania should henceforth appear in public 
unveiled, as women in the Christian countries do. The New York 
Times caption for May 16, 1937, read, "Revolt Flares in Albania, 
City is Captured; Enemies of King Act on Unveiling of Women." 

Only Where Christ and His Mother Enter Do the Polygamists 

and the Geishas Exit 

Yes, the saying that Christ and His Mother raised womanhood 
to queenhood is not empty rhetoric. Where Christianity is, there 
women walk about free and unveiled; are courted and loved and 
married. But wherever Christianity is not, there the wife helps the 
husband with his slippers, but the Geisha girl helps him with his 
two-steps! And so it will continue to be until the Christian mission-
ary has carried the ensign of the Mother and Child into every 
city and hamlet! 



CHAPTER XVII 

YOU AND I, AND A BETTER WORLD 

This is the Commencement Address delivered at In-
carnate Word College, May 31, 1945, and is here printed 
tor the first time. I think it fittingly closes these chap-
ters oj collecte·d, re-published articles. The reader will 
make allowances tor the topicality unavoidable in a com-
mencement address. I thought it best to puiblish it as it 
was delivered. 

Beyond its topicality, this is not just another conven-
tional commencement address. It has in it things even 
clergymen might well ponder. And it makes clear that 
the "new woman's" influence will not be good, neces-
sarily, because oj any feminine intuition, but only, if at 
all, because of training, a training more truly Christian 
than that which, lar.gely restricted to the men, has not 
prevented Christian nations from fighting a Hundred 
Years War, a Thirty Years War, and two World Wars. 
The savages and the barbarians and the pagans fought 
and fight still more wars. But the tragedy that these Chris-
tain wars have been fought at all is due solely and entirely 
to the tact that Christianity has not been understood suf-
ficiently or tried enough. 

But we are making progress. Bishops no longer captain 
the bloody encounters! By and by, we will make still more 
progress. This essay gives some hints which, I believe, not 
only every educated wo1714n, but every man and woman 
everywhere ought to grasp and take to heart. 

Commencement. One of Life's Happiest Milestones 

College commencements represent the happiest group mile-
stone in human life. For a whole class of happy people, commence-
ment sets a colon to exciting years of work and play well done, 
and the colon suggests long vistas of usefully happy years ahead. 
The ailestones that come later in life too often end in a period, not 
a colon. 

At midnight, June 27, 1787, in Switzerland, Edward Gibbon 
completed the last volume of his monumental History of the De-
cline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He had got the idea for 
it many years ago when as a young man on a visit to Rome he 
heard the barefooted friars singing vespers in what once had been 
the Temple of Jupiter. He had worked on it twenty-one years, 
when on this June night he wrote a writer's only happy word, 
Finis. 

He records the event in his Autobiography. "After laying down 
my pen," he wrote, "I took several turns in a . . . covered walk 

of 1 
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--- --------------------------------------

YOU AND I AND A BETTER WORLD 91 

of acacias, which commands a prospect of the .country, the la~e, 
and the mount~ins. The air was temperate, the sky serene, th~ 
silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all na-
ture was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotion of joy on 
recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishme!'l~ of my 
fame. But my pride. was sqqn humbJe,d, and a sober melancholy 
was spread over my mi'f!d, by the idea that I had taken an ever-
lasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that, what-
soever might be the future fate of my History, the life of the 
historian must be short and precarious." 

For Gibbon that great milestone was a period. For you grad-
uates this happy occasion tonight is a colon. It marks the end of 
many things-of good things and of examinations-but it more 
truly means the beginning, the commencement, of the long, use-
ful, the really decisive things ahead. 

I am happy on such an occasion to be your Commencement 
Speaker. As you are leaving this your Alma Mater I am glad to 
have the last word. Your fathers and mothers and friends may 
think that a professor always has the last word. However, I can 
playfully assure them that in a girls' college a man professor can 
be sure of the last word only if he is the Commencement Speaker! 

The World Needs Flames of Justice, Not Torches of Revolution 

My first wish is that you do not go out with romantic visions 
of setting the world afire but with a firm resolution to be a clear, 
steady flame of justice and charity and usefulness, wherever you 
are, all your life. Two wars have · made me terribly afraid of 
people who want to set the world on fire. I have developed an 

· abhorrence of anyone who wants to reform the world in a big 
way. The big way turns into wars and revolutions, and the reform 
ends in ruined cities and millions of unmarked crosses. 

History more and more convinces me that the really great 
and enduring improvements in the world have come from very 
noble ideas and very little noise. The greatest of all came, not 
from a general staff and a military band, but from a stable and 
an angels' song. The mighty medieval crusades today are a bad 
memory; St. Francis, the humble peacemaker, the poor man of 
Assisi, lives on in eleven thousand monasteries all over the world. 
Three girls, who in 1869 came to Texas to found a badly needed 
but humble hospital planted a movement of charity and educa-
tion which today as the Congregation of Sisters of the Incarnate 



92 COURTESY, COURTSinP, AND MAlUUAGE 

Word embraces colleges, academies, hospitals and orphanages in 
many states and several countries. It's the high-minded small way 
that benefits the world, not the strong-armed big way. St. James 
the Apostle said: 

" . . . who causeth one sinner to be converted from the 
error of his way, shall save his soul from death, and shall 
cover a multitude of sins" (Epistle, V, 20). 

Converting people in a small way and so saving your soul, as 
St. James promises, is the chief thing I ask of you and wish for you. 

Some Call This the Century of the "New Woman" 

A few months ago at the Centennial celebration of a Texas 
college for women the speaker declared that the most epoch-
making development of our Century is not fast transportation or 
world wars but the new status of women. Wars and totalitarian-
isms, he said, are old things which the world has simply not yet 
been able to grow out of, but the social, economic, moral equality 
of women is something new-something Plato and Aristotle did 
not even dream of. A thousand years from now, he said, our 
Century will not likely be called the Age of the World Wars but 
the Age of the New Woman (Mary Hardin Baylor, Centennial, 
Feb. 1, 1945). 

In the last hundred years woman has slowly achieved the 
same school curricula as men, the right to vote, an open door 
to man's professions, equal pay for equal work, opportunity to hold 
ollices and to manage business, the right to choose her own hus-
band, freedom from the chaperone-and also some freedoms we 
won't name! Women in this country get two-thirds as many college 
degrees as men; women control two-thirds of the wealth of the 
country. Culturally women seem to have four times more chance 
or inclination to attend plays and motion pictures, to hear re-
views and read books, and to belong to discussion clubs-not to 
mention bridge clubs. 

Woman's Influence in Civic Affairs Has Been Disappointing 

Nevertheless in 1937 on her 79th birthday, Miss Alice Stone 
Blackwell, grand old pioneer of the woman's suffrage move-
ment, to quote a headline, voiced "disappointment at way Women 
have made use of ballot." She said "she had hoped woman's suf-
frage would make certain peace, temperance and a child labor 
amendment to the Constitution" (News Item, AP, N. Y. Times, 
Jan. 11, 1937). In view of the facts she commented quietly, "No 
reform ever accomplishes as much as its advocates expect." 

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YOU AND I AND A BETIER WORLD 93 

In this matter, too, the humanitarians had argued for the 
big reform, woman's suffrage, and expected the perfect world, and 
they are disappointed that woman's new power did not -produce 
that better world. Crooked politics, wars, bad literature, ~ace pre-
judice, starvation wages, unemployment, drunkenness and immor-
ality were not ended, in fact, it almost seemed as if they had 
increased with the New Woman in politics and business! 

Only Better Training, Not Their Nature, Can Make Women 

Wiser Than Men 

They aren't worse, of course, but there is a good reason why 
they did not become much better. That reason is important for 
us. 

The reason is that women are not naturally better or wiser 
than men. Women by the fact of being women may be conceded 
to be more beautiful than men, but their being women does not 
make them better or wiser! Women, like men, grow good and 
wise only through wise Christian training and experience. Women 
unless so trained are just as savage as men. 

Uncivilized Women Want Their Men to Kill Other Women's Men 

A missionary, Father Marcelline Molz, in "The Naga Head-
hunters of India," (Salesianum, April, 1945, p. 56) writes that 
among the Naga headhunters, 

"A Naga youth is not considered to have proved him-
self a man until he has taken at least one head. The 
Naga women concur in this point of view, for they 
never cease to ridicule a young man who cannot show 
a trophy. When a suitor pays court to a Naga girl, he must 
pledge his affection by presenting her with one or more 
heads." 

It may be terrible that the Naga women should praise their men 
for headhunting-but until trained better than their savage men, 
it is perfectly natural that they do. Similarly, given the same train-
ing as men, it was perfectly natural that American women should 
have turned on Lew Ayres, movie star, as fiercely as the mem-
bers of the American Legion when he said that his conscience 
forbade him to kill! 

Women In New Fields Have All the Ignorance and Vices 

of Their Trainers 

When women enter politics, finance, medicine, the arts, it is 



94 COURTESY, COURTSillP, AND MAIUUAGE 

fantastic to expect them to be more skilled, more wise, or more 
moral th:m the men from whom they learned. A woman becomes . 
a good swimmer only by expert training and practice: she be-
comes an honest politician only by training in highminded and 
Christian politics. 

When women acquired the various freedoms we hear about, 
they inherited all the graft, prejudices, cruelties of the men. If 
the New Age of Woman is to be a special blessing for the world, 
then women must use their new cultural opportunities to become 
thoroughly Christian more quickly and enthusiastically than men--
more honest, more just, more charitable, more fair, and more 
wise than men. 

Women Today Can Take Over the Cultural Leadership 

And women today are in a splendid position to become so-
if threy know how and if they want to. They are getting the same 
high school training as men, and the time seems to be approach-
ing when as many will go to college as men. During the war 
years, while the men brutalized on war fronts, women have been 
able to push ahead educationally. Furthermore in school and in 
life women are somewhat less enslaved by vocationalism, so as to 
allow them an edge in liberal subjects. In addition to that, women 
somehow-both career women and housewives-seem to have more 
time for culture, for plays, books, and study clubs, and even no-
venas and prayer meetings, than men. In short the setting is 
perfect for women for the first time in the history of the world to 
take over the cultural leadership-that is, the leadership in better 
living, in better thinking, and in an improved brotherhood of man. 

Cultural Leaders Should See the Right First and Live It First 

Of this feminine leadership in better thinking and living, 
young women who have had the liberal education for which you 
got your degrees tonight should be and will be the leaders. To be 
leaders at all, and to be above all worthy leaders, you must see 
the right and live and teach the right sooner than others. To be a 
true leader, for example, you must be among the first to under-
stand race prejudice and to overcome it in yourselves and in others. 
Race prejudice is only one of dozens of things regarding which 
the human race must think and act more wisely. 

Thornton Wilder in his beautiful play, Our Town, remarks, 
"Wherever you come near the human race, there's layers and lay-

ers 
ers. 
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YOU AND I AND A BETrER WORLD 95 

ers of nonsense" (Act III). Unfortunately, there are not only lay-
ers. of nonsense, there are layers and layers of prejudice, racial-
ism, blind nationalism, revenge, and war lust. These are the 
layers of original sin that women trained in good, liberal, Chris-
tian schools must take a lead in rolling back. 

In the Past Even Churchmen Have Too Often Supported 

Wrongs and Stupidities 

Banishing these sinful stupidities cannot be entirely entrusted 
to the men. We men have rolled up a sad, sorry record regarding 
them. Even the record of our morally elite, our churchmen, is 
badly spotted. While it must be emphasized that churchmen have 
ever been in the front rank of any true progress, justice, and 
brotherhood, as only recently, for example, I heard His Excellency, 
Archbishop Robert E. Lucey, urge corrections of the injustices of 
Yalta, one must nevertheless sadly note that there has never been 
a war or a witch hunt which some churchmen did not sanctify. It 
was a Jewish high priest who crucified Christ as a blasphemer and 
traitor; it was a Catholic bishop who ordered Joan of Arc burned 
at the stake as some kind of war criminal; it was the great Protest-
ant divine, Cotton Mather, who promoted the shameful witch burn-
ings of Puritan New England. And today, when modern witch 
hunters, like Judge Samuel Rosenman, want blanket war criminal 
punishment for whole organizations (Time, May 21, 1945), looking 
to the butchery of some six Inillion people, the Anglican Archbishop 
of York self-righteously cries out that all whom he calls master war 
criminals should be lynched on the spot without trial and that as 
regards punishment of others, "Some share of guilt [must go to] 
the whole German people" (Time, April 2, 1945, p. 53)! 

A High Morality Quotient Is More Needed Than a High I. Q~ 

Yes, sadly, just as among judges, teachers, doctors, so just as 
surely if not as universally among clergymen there has never been 
a war or a witch hunt which some churchmen did not give the 
moral whitewash. Clearly, a high morality quotient is as rare as 
a high intelligence quotient, and no class of men has enough of a 
morality quotient to make the world good and just without the 
utmost help from everybody whom God, through grace or educa-
tion, endowed with rightmindedness-with a sense of justice, with 
the heroic ability to do to others as one wants to be done by. 

Such right-minded people is what we need. More and more we 
must expect them to arise from among the women-for they are 



96 COURTESY, COURTSHIP, AND MARRIAGE 

now the greater recipients of a liberal Christian culture. Such right-
minded leaders is what one should especially be justified in expect-
ing of young women who are graduates of so progressive a Catholic 
liberal college as Incarnate Word. · 

Three Guides for Right Thinking 

To be such true, right-minded leaders you must first of all resolve 
that you will never stop trying to see what is really right, good, and 
progressive. You must determine to keep on thinking, and learning, 
and praying against your own prejudices until you see and feel the 
right. Some principles of procedure should become second nature 
to you. I would suggest three. 

One-Nothing Is Right That Doesn't Square With Christianity 

You should stand convinced at all times that nothing is truly 
progressive that cannot be harmonized with God, Christ and the 
Bible. You should recognize as wrong in yourself and in others 
whatever offends against these religious concepts. An atheist may 
often be right, but when he is, his ideas must harmonize with Christ 
and the Bible. That holds for adherents of any sect or denomination. 
I should like you to feel absolutely certain that society never rises 
higher than its truest religious beliefs, and that therefore your most 
important search for truth must be for religious truth. 

Two-Mankind Needs the Ten Commandments for Happiness 

Secondly, you should proceed on the conviction that the Ten 
Commandments are an absolute essential for man's happiness, 
not only hereafter, but here and now. God gave us these Command-
ments not to make life hard for us but to make possible the only 
happiness that we can reasonably expect on earth. Any plans or 
institutions, no matter how seductively proposed as conducive to 
man's happiness, which violate this holy code will lead to misery 
and must be ruthlessly rejected. 

Three-The Supreme Yardstick of Right Is Christ's, 

"Do Unto Others •• ," 

These two conditions are the first foundations of any worthy 
leadership. But the principle that actively makes for leadership is 
Christ's chief Command, "All things therefore whatsoever you 
would that men should do to you, do you also to them. For this 
is the law and the prophets" (Matt. vii, 12). Christ could give us 

no hi! 
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YOU AND I AND A BE'ITER WORLD 97 

no higher yardstick for being just and fair and charitable in all 
things to all men. If you really feel it and apply it to your parents, 
your husband, your mother-in-law, your children, it doesn't seem 
possible that you should ever be thought anything but the best and 
wisest of women. 

Christ's Yardstick Alone Can Prevent an Unjust Peace 

and Another War 

If you now rise higher, as because of your high education you 
should, and apply this standard to every proposed law, to all peace 
terms and settlements, to all races and creeds, then you cannot be 
unjust and you cannot go wrong. If you will then live and speak 
those ideas, you will be the finest leader your country and man-
kind can possible have. With enough leaders like that there could 
not be an unjust peace, and taking in other countries, there could 
not be another war. 

Christian Leadership as a Wife and Mother 

But you may ask how extensive should you try to make your 
leadership. My contention has been from the beginning that the 
little flame that is right is much better than a conflagration that 
may go wrong. I repeat, I should like every graduate first of all to 
see what is right and then to use it whenever she can, beginning in 
her own home. 

As graduates of Incarnate Word College you are trained to take 

your place in the world of wages and hours, in the world of voca-

tions and professions. Promotion in your profession is a success I 

wish you and a success which everybody can easily understand. 

But I should like to emphasize that your success as college 

graduates, as valuable leaders, is not limited to a professional 

career. It is my conviction that a liberally educated girl can use her 

Christian leadership while being a wife and mother, quite as effec-

tively as in a career. Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton did 

splendid things as career girls. And if you make a career your 

life I wish you every blessing. But who will say that St. Monica, 

the mother that finally turned a pagan son, Augustine, into the saint 

and theologian, did not exercise a wholesome influence on the 

world that was as great as Florence Nightingale's or Clara Barton's! 

_-_,_ - - - --'- ___ _:__- ~-



98 

===-------' 

COURTESY, COURTSHU', AND MARRIAGE 

Becoming the Mother of a Saint Is Greater Than 
Becoming a Governor 

Merely being a wife and mother, it is true, is. no great achieve-
ment. The Naga women I quoted are wives and mothers very 
early. But a wife and mother that possesses the world's front rank 
Christian attitudes is a tremendous factor for good. The saints all 
had mothers; but so had the gangsters. The right kind of college-
trained mother has the best chance in the world of becoming the 
mother of a saint-of another St. Francis of Assisi perhaps. 

We return to the quotation from St. James-about saving one's 
soul by converting just one sinner. For a college graduate to in-
fluence her husband and children is not reforming the world by 
a revolution. But we have agreed that violent reforms start with 
high ideals and too often ep.d with ruined cities.. A girl who in-
fluences her husband and children into .the hi,ghest tiers of Chris-
tianity is improving the world in the mustard seed way which Our 
Lord so highly commends. 

Christ Himself Started With Twelve Fishermen. 

Not With the World 

He himself did not set out to reform the world with a brass 
band and a mighty conference of potentates. Instead he took twelve 
fellows of the type of fishermen, wherever he found them, and 
spent most of his time making good and wise Christians out of 
them. As we all know, he ended by remaking the world. And His 
work is still going on. 

As Individuals Let's Live the Golden Rule Towards Those About 

Us, as Americans Let's Worry More About American 

Sins Than German or Russian Ones 

Surely, if Christ considered the shaping of twelve Apostles into 
• high-grade Christians his first and constant vocation, then what 

worthier leadership or finer vocation can one wish for a college 
graduate than that she help those near and dear to her, her home-
town fellow citizens, her family, kin and friends, and, God willing, 
a husband and children, to become the kind of people Christ would 
want them to be. What more can your Alma Mater, and your 
country, and your church, ask of you? 

On this happy educational milestone of your life, that is the 
vocation and that is the success I, and I am sure all your other 
teachers and superiors, heartily and hopefully wish you. May it 
bring you happiness, fame, and salvation. Good-bye and good luck! 

(A< 
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INDEX1 

(A General Index, but functional rather thon "Complete; it does 
index all titles arid authors, but many other incidental refer-

ences are omitted or not repeated). 

Abraham, 18 
Addison, 11 
Adonises, 64 
Adrenal glancjs, 14 
Adultery, 65, 68, 86 
Affection, 40, 42, 43, 93 
Affinity, 69, 61 
Africa, 83, 86 
African tribes, 82 
Agnes Grey, 71 
Aim, iv 
Albania, 89 
Albert, Prince, 1, 6 
Allah, 88 
Allusions, v 
Alma Mater, 91, 98 
American, 9 
American husbands, 17 
American Legion, 93 
American Mercury, 86 
Androclus, 13 
"An American doctor in Chinau~ ·· gg 
Anglican Archbishop of York, 96 
Antioch College, 64 
Apologia Pro Vita Sua, 34 
Apostles, 98 
Arabia, 86 
Aristotle, 82, 92 
Army, 43 
Arnold, Matthew, vi, 74 
Asia, 83 
Associated Press, ~tem, 92 
Atheists, 12 
Augustine, St., 9, 44, 66 
Austen, Jane, 71 
Author's self-assurance, iii 
1\uthor, allusion to author of this book, 

42, 43, 44 
Autobiography, 4 
Autographed, v 
Autocrat, 33 
Ayres. Lew, 93 
Bachelor, 39, 67 
Bacon, iv 
Baltimore Sun, 87 
Bancroft, Georr:e, 70 
Baroness Shizue Ishimoto, 88 
Barrett, Elizabeth, 41 
Barretts of Wimpole street, the, 41 
Barrymore, 87 
Barton, Clara, 97 
Baylor, Mary Hardin, 92 
Beauty, 1, 40 
Bedouin Sheikh, 87 
Beelzebub, 31 
Belgium, 6 
Besier, Rudolf, 41 
Bible, 2, 32, 64, 60, &6, 77, 78, 96 
Bigamists, 86 
Bismark, 65 

Blackwell, Miss Alice ·Stone, 92 
Blessed Virgin, 82 
Blount, Edward A. H., 86 
Brahmin, youth, 88 
Branwell, Patrick, 71 
Bridge clubs, 92 
British Authors of the Nineteenth 

Century, 41 
British Stationery Office, 86 
Bronte sisters, Charlotte, 'Emily, Anne, '71 
Brothel, 84 
Browning, Robert, 41, 46 
Buck, Pearl, 64, · 86 
Bulwer-Lytton, 78 
Burlesque, 65, 66 
Burns, Father Clarence, 84 
Byron, 18 · 
Cairo, 81 
Calcutta, 86 
Call of the Wild, The, 70 
Cambridge, 72 
Capitol, 68 
Carew, Thomas, 71 
Casti Connubi, 55 
Catherine of Siena, 68 
Catholic Digest, The, 1, 81 
Catholic Home Journal, The, v, 13, 49, 

68, 74 
Catholic Missions, 85 
Cavalier poet, 71 
Chaperone, 75 
Chattel, 82, 83 
Chesterfield, Lord, 4 
Chiang Kai-shek, 86, 86 
Chicago, 68, 69 
China, 64, 84 
Chinese, 2 
Christ, 7, 8, 9, 10, 86, 89, 95, · 96, 98 
Christian Moral Order, 
Christianity, 77, 81 
Church, 60, 62 
Cii-cu1Ption, iv, 28 
Civil War, 18 
Coleridge, 1, 8, 68, 73 
Commencement address, v ; 90 
Commonweal, The, 67 
Compliments, 6 
Concubines, 86 
Conclusion, v 
Congregation of Sisters of the Incarnate 

Word, 91 
Contradiction, 2 
Cooper, James Fenimere, 7G 
Copyright, v 
Coronet, 84 
Count Orsino, 25, 26 
Courtesy, " 
Courtesy, Caurtship and Marriage, iii 
Courtship, iv 
Cowley, Abraham, 72 

1. For this index I am indebted to my sisters Mrs. William A. Liebl, Milwaukee, 
Wisconsin, and Miss Martina App, M.A., Washington, D. C. They came to 
San Antonio this hot July to see it and to rest. Finding me overwhelmed 
with proof sheets, they said sympathetically but also conventionally, "There 
isn't anything we can do for you, is there!" Before they could retract that 
unguarded remark, I had an armful of page proofs on their laps and said, 
"'!'hat's just too nice of you. You can make the index for me. I need it 
right away I" For a while they were simply speechless. But then, bowing 
to the inevitable, they really tore into those proof sheets. "It was joye for 
to see (the)m swete" among a pile of inoiex carda I And it is a nother joy 
for me to thank them her•. 



Crashaw, 72 
Crime, 11 
Crimes of the peace, iv 
Cultural Similarity, 40 
Culture, 7 4, 80 
Dating, 25, 36, 46, 47, 48, 50 
Daughters, 26, 84, 85, 88 
Dante, iv, 67 
Dating, 36, 46, 50 
Dean Prior, 72 
Deerslayer, 70 
Desdemona, 46 
"Desert Doctor" of Arabia, 88 
"Deserted Villa1<e", 69 
Dickens ; Mrs. Dickens, 62 
Dissertation Upon Roast Pig, A, 69 
Divorce, iv, 83 
Doctrine, Catholic, 58 
Dog, 13 
Domesticity, 40 
Dostoevski, 10, 42 
Drunkard, 12, 39 
Editors, v 
Ears, A Chapter on, 69 
Egypt, 81 
Education, 40, 7 4 
Eighth Commandment, 32 
Elizabeth, 45 · 
Emily 11, 52 
Emily-posted, 77 
Engagements, long, 47 
English, 3 
English poets, 71 
Epictetus, 9 
Epistle, St. James', 92 
Error, 79 
Eosay of Ella, 69 
Ethics, 78 
European war, 6 
Eve, 5 
Face, saving people's, 2 
Family Digest, 40 
Farley, Big Jim, 14 
Fate, 63 
Fear, 14 
Fish, 19. 20 
Fisher, Dorothy Canfield, 15 
Four-F 14-F), 43 
Frailty, 11 
Francis Xavier, St., 68 
Francis of Assisi, St., 91, 98 
Franklin, Benjamin. 4, 70, 85 
Freeom of Press, 80 
Freedom of Religion, 77 
Freedom of Speech, 79 
French, 4, 9 
Frenchman, 9 
Friends, 2 
Gan<\"Ster'• Stand-by, 33 
Galileo, 80 
Geisha girl, 83 
George, 11 
Ghettoes, 75 
Geniuses, 67 
German crirn~. iv. 98 
C"..erman neople, 95 
C:ihbon, Edwa.l'-1, 90, 91 
Gibbs, Mrs., 52 
Girlfrien<l's bovfriend. 30 
God, 5, 7. 9. 35, 38. 45. 54, 55, 56, 57, 

66, 68·. 7 4, so 95, 96 
Goethe, 27 
Golden Rule. 75, 98 
Goldsmith. Oliver, 69 
Good Earth, The, 64, 86 
Government, 79 
Graduat~•. college, 36, 91 
Gr<oeks. 81, 98 
Guillotine. 5 
Hall of Fame. 67 
Halliburton, Richard, 87 
Harems. 87 
Harrison, Dr. Paul W., 88 
Hate, 14 
Hauser, Ernest 0., 83 
Hayfever, 43 
Health, 40, 43 

Heiser, Victor, M. D., 88 
Her Son's Wife, 15 
Herbert, George, 11, 65, 72 
Herbert, Sir Richard, 72 
Herrick, Robert, 71 
Hindu, 86 
History of the Decline and Fall of the 

Roman Empire, 90 
History of the United States, The, 70 
Hollweg, Bethman, 5 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 18, 33 
Honesty, 32, 33, 35 
Housman, Laurence, 1 
Human Nature, iv 
Human race, 94, 95 
Hundred Years War, 90 
Ignatius of Loyola, 68 
'Imperfect Sympathies" 34 
In Memoriam, 69 • 
Incarnate Word College, v, 90, 96, 97 
Incarnate Word, Congregation of Sioters 

of the, 91 
India, 89 
Injustice, iv 
Institute of Pacific Relations, 83 
Intelligence, 40, 43 
Invitation, 28 
Iowa, Farmers of, 6 
Irving, Washington, 69; John, 69; 

Peter, 69 
Isaac, 18 
James, St., 92, 98 
Japan, 83 
Japanese, Ameriean of ... descent, 75 
Japanese crime, iv 
Japanese Welfare Ministry, 83 
Jepthe, 18 
Jesus, 18 
Jewish highpriest, 95 
Jews, 75 
Joan of Arc, 68, 95 
Johnson, Samuel, 11 42 
Jonathan Oldstyle Letters, 69 
Joubert, 65 
Juliet, 46, 4 7 
Juniors, class of, 25 
Kindness., 14 
King of Arabia, 87 
King Farouk, 81 
Kingdom of God, 65 
Kingsley, Charles, 34 
uKissing, The Low-down on," 51 
Knickerbocker, Diedrich, 69 
Lamb, Charles, 34, 35, 68; John, 68; 

Mary, 68 
Lambs' Tales of Shakespeare, 69 
Lansing, Secretary. 4 
Large Families, 67 
Leadership, Christian, 97 
"Legend of Sleepy Hollow", 69 
Liars, a nation of, 32 
Libertinists, 12 
Library, librarians, 78, 86 
Life of WashinJrton, 70 
Lincoln, Abraham, 18, 67, 80 
Lincoln's father, 44 
Lion, 13 
Little Flower, The, 68, 73 
London, Jack, 70 
Louis, Joe, 10 
Louis xiv, 5 
Love, 15, 50, 51; love-making, iii 
Luce, Clare Booth, 60 
Lucey, His Excellency Archbishop, 95 
Lying, 32 
Magazines, 78 ; Catholic, iv 
Magnificat, v, 81 86 
Marquette, Pere, 67 
Marriage, 44, 45, 47, 55 
Mary, 60, 61 
Mary, Mother of God, Blessed Virgin, 

82, 86, 89 
Maryknoll Missionary, 84 
Mass, 2 
Mate, choosing, 39, 40 
Mather, Cotton, 95 
Matrimony, 55 



·McEvoy, Dennis, 84 
Mei-ling Madame Kai-shek, 85 
Mendel~ohn's Wedding March, 81 
Milton, 72 
Mind in the Making, The, 19 
Mohammedan , 83, 86 
Molz, Father Marcelline, 93 
Monica, St., 97 
Monogamy, 86 
Moorad, George, 86 
Moral Character, high, 43, 44 
Morals, 77 
Morgenthauistic, iv 
"Morning Chronicle", 69 
Mortal sin, 11 
Moslem, 86 
Moses, 78 
Mother, my, 79; a mother, 13, 26, 73 
Mother-in-law, 14, 16 
Naga headhunters, 93 ; women, 93, 98 
Napoleon, 67 
Negroes, 75, 82 
Newman, Cardinal, 33, 34, 74 
Newspapers, 78 
New York Post, 5 . 
New York Times, 89, 92 ; Magazme, 88 
Nightingale, Florence, 97 
Noble Prize, 64 
Non-Catholic, iv; readers, iv 
Olivia, Lady, 25, 26 
"On Christian Marriage", 55 
Old Testament, 18 
Orsino, Count, 25, 26 
"Our Father", 11, 12 
Our Town, 11, 52, 94 
Paganism, 81 
Parents, American, 64 
Parliamentary Rules, 3 
Paul, St., 61 
Paulding, James, K., 70 
Peace policies, iv 
Persia, 86 
Persians, 89 
Peter, St., 17, 18 
Phoney reasons. 22 
"Pistol Packin" Mama", 55, 56 
,.Planned Parenthood", iii 
Plato, 82 92 
Poets, poetry, v. 71, 72 
Polygamy, 87, 88 
Poor Richards Almaane, 70 
Pope, Alexander, 4, 9 
Pope Pius XI, 55 
Powell, Elinor, 5 
Press, iv 
Pride and Prejudice, 71 
Prophets, 78 
Prostitutes. 84 
Protestants, iv 
Psychology, 14 
Psychologist, 60 
Publicity agencies, iv 
Publisher, v 
Quakers, 34, 35, 75 
Queen's Work, The, v, 1, 7, 19, 25 
Queen Victoria, 1 
Queen Victoria's husband, 6 . 
Questionaire, qualities of a Wife, (0 
Quick-wittedness, 35 
Quotations, v 
Readers, Catholic, iv 
Reader's Digest, The, 65 
Recreational interests, 40 
Red Rover, 70 
Reed, R. H., 51 
Relatives, 2 
Religion, 40, 77 
Relocation camps, 77 
' Rip Van Winkle" , 69 
Robinson, James Harvey, 19, 20 
Romans, 81 
Rome, 90 
Romeo, 47 
Romeo and Juliet, 47 
Roman Catechism, 55 
Rosenman, Judge Samuel, 95 
Russian, 10 
Saints, Ca tholic, 67 

Salesianum, 93 
Sa lesma n, 36 
Salmagundi papers, 70 
San Antonio, v 
Saturcj,ay Evening Post, The 88 
Sarah, 59 
Satan, 18 
Saud, Crown Prince Emir, 88 
Saud, Ibn, 87, 88 
Scandal, 65, 66 
Schnepp, S. M., Gerald J., 40 
Scotch loch. 41 
Scrofula, 42 
Senior, college, 46 
Sermon of the Mount, 77 
Shakespeare, 25, 26, 46, 47, 72 
Shakespearean letter, 67 
Shaw's father, 44 
" She Was a Phantom of Delight," 49 
Shoe clerk, 5 
Siberian tribes, 17 
Sienese dyer, 68 
Sign, The, v, 67 
Sketch Book, 69 
Slaves, 82 
Snitkina, 42 
Social Service in India, 86 
Soldier, Catholic, 58 
Stag parties, 83 
Stephen, 60 
Stoic, Roman, 9 
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 42 
Survey Graphic, 83 
Switzerland, 90 
Table of Contents, iii 
Tact. 1 
Temple of Jupiter, 90 
Temptations, 60, 61, 62 
Tenant of Wildfell, The 71 
Tennyson, 72 
Ten Commandments, 55, 56, 57, 77, 78 
Texas, v, 91 
Therese of Lisieux, St., 68 
Thieves, 12 
Thirty Years War, 90 
Thomas, St., 26 
Thomas a Kempis, 9 
Thompson, Francis, 72 
Time. Magazine, 95 
Twelfth Night, 25 
Tokyo, 84 
"Traveler between life and death", 63 
Truth, iv, 1 
Turkey, 87 
Undset, Sigrid, 61 
Veils, 89 
Venial sin, 11 
Vice, 11 
Vice-president Curtis, 6 
Victoria Regina, 1 
Victorian Magazine, The, v, 32, 36, 46, 

55, 64 
Victors, iv 
Virgin-liberty, 51 
Vocation, 55 ; vocationalism, 94 
War criminal punishments, blanket, 95 
Wealth, 40 
Weibchen, 1 
Wife, 38. 40, 56, 63 
White H ouse, 79 
Wilder, Thornton, 11, 52, 94 
Witch burning, 95 
Witch hunters, 95 
Woman, Age of the New, 92 
Woman, 51 
Woman suffrage, 92, 93 
Women, The, 60 
Women's Cyclopedia, The, 83 
Wordsworth, William, 49, 50, 51, 53 
World War, 6 
World Wars, Age of, 92 
Writers, 60 
Writer's Conference, 39 
Wuthering Heights, 71 
Yalta, injustices of, 95 
Yutang, Lin, 85 
Zuficar, F a rida, 81 

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