COURTSHIP
They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.
—Luke 17:27
881 Longest Engagement
Guinness’ Records say that history’s longest engagement lasted 67 years between Octavio Guillena and Adriana Martinez. They were finally married in June, 1969, in Mexico City. Both were 82 years old.
882 When A Fellow Kisses
During a WOR broadcast, Dr. Carlton Fredericks was asked to explain the relationship between nutrition and kissing, and he told it—in full!
“When a fellow kisses a girl,” said Dr. Fredericks, “the adrenosympathetic system calls on the liver for glycogen for energy. This in turn forces the release of insulin, vitamin B-1, and phosphorus to burn the sugar. In his brain, if he is doing any thinking, which is problematical, there is an exchange of starch, phosphorus, and thiamine between the thalamic and the cortical brain. As the pulse and respiration rates rise, there is increased exchange of oxygen on the intracellular level, which would mean increased consumption of thiamine and phosphorus.”
—New York Herald Tribune
883 Legal Value Of Kiss: $275,000
DETROIT, Michigan (UPI)—Clare Tomie told a Wayne county circuit court jury she doesn’t feel a thing when she kisses her husband, and the jury decided the lack of sensation was worth $275,000.
Mrs. Tomie, who was awarded $260,000 said a dental operation left her lower lip and lower jaw permanently numb and had caused a strain in her relationship with her husband.
The jury of four women and two men also awarded her husband $15,000.
In the operation, Mrs. Tomie said, a part of a drill broke and imbedded in her jaw. Later, an X-ray disclosed a bit of metal in her jaw. It was removed, she said, but the numbness remained.
The couple sued a Detroit oral surgeons group, which said it would seek a new trial.
884 For A Year—A Dead Duck!
A Wisconsin clergyman usually has a premarriage conference with couples planning a wedding, and one of the questions he asks is how long they have known each other.
“Nine times out of ten,” says the minister, “the groom will answer, ’Two or three years, ’ while the bride will say, ’Three or four years. ’ In other words, she has had her eye on him, and he has been a dead duck for a year before he knew anything about it.”
—Milwaukee Journal
885 Waiting 42 Years
For forty-two years every week, David Thomas slipped a love letter under the door of his neighbor, Rachel Jones. Each letter attempted to mend the lover’s quarrel that parted them when both were 32. Rachel Jones burned each letter and refused even to speak to her suitor.
When David finally summoned courage to knock on her door and proposed, she accepted. Both were 74 years old when marriage finally came.
886 He Waited 48 Years
This time Madge Coomber’s 89-year-old father gave his permission, and so Madge and Len Patching were married—48 years after Len was first rejected and went off to live in Australia.
“Madge was the only girl I ever loved,” said the groom. “I never married. I always knew that one day I would come back and find her.”
Last summer after retiring as a technical college instructor in New South Wales, he flew back to Britain to search for the woman he last knew as a childhood sweetheart of 17.
He located her, now a widow, with the help of a local radio station. Within weeks they were engaged.
887 “Love” Can’t Be Returned
Boise, Idaho (AP)—Jack A. Hall had a short answer to why he spent $850 for a full-page advertisement for a birthday card for his girlfriend. “Love,” he said.
Hall, 38, bought the ad in the Sunday Idaho Statesman for Bette Barber’s 21st birthday. He said the ad cost $714 and the photo work to spread Miss Barber’s picture across the page brought it to $850.
He said he thought of the ad when Miss Barber told him she didn’t want him to spend any money on a gift.
“There’s nothing tangible here,” Hall said. “She can’t return it.”
888 Rich But Timid Bachelors
Bilbao, Northern Spain—A hundred bachelors from the village of Ceberio, near here, are looking for wives and have offered a week’s holiday to anyone introducing them to suitable girls. The newspaper, El Pueblo Vasco, reported that the oldest among them is only 35 and that the majority are rich landowners. According to the newspaper the reason for their continuing bachelorhood is the natural timidity of the men of the region and the reluctance of girls of the area to settle down in Ceberio to which the bachelors are deeply attached.
889 Prison Terms For Love
Fidenza, Sicily (Reuter)—Stefano Cambria loves Maria Barbieri very much, and Saturday, he went back to prison for the 11th time to prove it.
The problem is that Maria, a 25-year-old school teacher, doesn’t much like her persistent suitor—and each time he annoys her, she calls the police.
Cambria, 26, left only a week ago after serving the latest of a string of three-month sentences for molesting Signorina Barbieri.
He went straight round to her school, telephoned her and Saturday morning tried to batter down the door of her home.
She phoned the police. They took him to prison, for the 11th time since they first met on holiday three years ago. He was charged with trespassing.
890 False Alarms In Love’s Name
Rene Jobin was deeply in love but the girl’s parents would not even allow her to see him. While pacing the front of her house, he noticed a fire alarm strategically located beside the building. He had a flaming idea. He thought that if he pulled the alarm, the fire engines would come thundering, and in the commotion the people in the house would all rush out. He would have a chance to sneak off with her even for a few minutes.
It worked. While pa and ma joined the firemen frantically looking for the fire, Rene and the girl had a blissful few minutes, vowing eternal devotion. It worked again the next time. In fact, it worked eight times. The Montreal Fire Department was driven crazy.
The ninth time was different! The officials had set a watch and Rene was caught. The lovelorn girl is hoping that by the time he got out, he wouldn’t be too old to marry her.
891 Six Ambulances For Her
This happened in Manhattan. The young lady was obviously not interested in her persistent suitor. But he kept on pressing the matter. When telephone calls to her were rebuffed with “She’s out,” he tried something unique.
He had ambulances call at her house. One ambulance skidded to her door and the intern explained he was called to remove a young lady suffering from spinal injury. (He had a sense of humor! ). A second ambulance arrived for her. This time it was for fractured skull. A total of six ambulances showed up each attributing to her a supposed injury which he intended to symbolize what she had.
The lady decided this was one ambulance too many and called the cops.
892 Hymnal Proposal
At the celebration of their 50th-wedding anniversary, Mr. and Mrs. Earl Calhoun of Tulsa told how he proposed and she accepted. They were attending a church service in Deepwater, Mo., when Mr. Calhoun flipped through the hymnbook and pointed out the words “Every Day I Need Thee More.” Mrs. Calhoun took the hymnal, turned a few pages and showed him her answer: “Take Me as I am.” He did.
—Associated Press
893 Victor Hugo’s Novel
The parents of the girl Victor Hugo was courting disapproved strongly of his company. They went so far as to stop his mail.
But Victor Hugo did not give up. He began a novel, whose plot was the situation between Victor Hugo, his girl, and her parents. Naturally, they bought and read the novel. From then on he was permitted to see her.
—Tone
894 Vera Hruba’s Marriage Proposals
A young lady entered the United States, and there were $20,000 and 3,000 proposals of marriage waiting for her. A case of American hospitality:
The lucky girl was Vera Hruba. She came to the United States on some figure skating exhibitions when her permit to remain in the country expired. She would have to return to Nazi-dominated Czechoslovakia, unless she got married to an American. In the publicity, she described herself as “a romantic, homeloving girl.” This in addition to her blond, good looks, would have given her no difficulty getting a husband. And she was resigned to it, when an avalanche of 3,000 proposals came to her.
Meanwhile, she was told that she could go to Canada and then return to the USA under the Czechoslovakian immigration quota. This she did. On returning to the States, the proposals were waiting for her, plus a legacy of twenty thousand dollars from an unknown Mrs. Nan Foley. Lucky girl.
895 Solomon As Better Judge
When William Jennings Bryan went to call on the father of his prospective wife and seek the hand of his daughter in marriage, knowing the strong religious feeling of the father, he thought to strengthen his case by a quotation from the Bible, and quoted the proverb of Solomon: “Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing” (Prov. 18:22).
But to his surprise the father replied with a citation from Paul to the effect that he that marrieth doeth well, but he that marrieth not doeth better. The young suitor was for a moment confounded. Then with a happy inspiration he replied that Paul had no wife and Solomon had seven hundred, and Solomon, therefore, ought to be the better judge as to marriage.
—C. E. Macartney
896 Edison Puts Telegraphy To Use
As a boy, Thomas Edison learned telegraphy. Later, after he had become a successful inventor, he used his ability at the telegraph key to send a proposal of marriage to his sweetheart, Mina Miller. Edison’s first wife died when he was thirty-seven. Later, he met Mina, a young and lovely lady. Edison taught Mina the Morse code, and after he had learned it, he tested her with a message tapped out with a coin. Mina decoded the “message,” which was really a marriage proposal, and tapped out her acceptance.
Not the most romantic proposal in history, but certainly as effective as any on record.
897 Out Of The Clouds
One of the most unusual meetings that later blossomed into romance was that experienced by Lauritz Melchoir, the great Wagnerian tenor. When he was a young man studying music, he was one day sitting in the garden of his boarding school in Munich, practicing a certain passage. He sang out one of the lines, “Come to me, my love, on the wings of light.”
Scarcely had the words been sung, when a young lady literally dropped out of the sky and landed at his feet. The young lady was Maria Hacker, a Bavarian actress who had been doing a stunt for a movie thriller. A part of her act was to parachute from a plane. The winds had changed and she landed in the garden of this music school. Yes, Lauritz and Maria were later married.
898 She Smiled!
The movie millionaire, Nicholas Schenck, was boarding the yacht of Tom Meighan, when he noticed a slip of a girl standing near the edge of the dock.
“For some inexplicable reason,” Schenck later recalled, “I had an uncontrollable impulse to push her into the water. To my horror—I did. I had no idea if she could swim. I expected an infuriated young woman. Instead, she came to the surface, blinked the water out of her eyes and smiled a brilliant smile.
“I said to myself, “that’s the girl I’m going to marry!”” and he did.
899 To Feel Loss Of Million Dollars
Representative Joseph W. Martin, Jr., Republican House leader, is often twitted by his colleagues about being a bachelor. Representative Clarence Brown likes to say that in his youth Martin narrowly missed being married and being a millionaire to boot.
According to Brown’s fanciful tale, Martin paid court to a young lady who confided she had a million dollars. Brown said the following passage ensued:
“Will you marry me?” Martin asked the girl.
“No,” she said.
“I thought so.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“Just to see what it feels like to lose a million dollars.”
—Walter Trohan
900 Girls Want Sense Of Humor
A computer test based on thousands of returned questionnaires showed that 65 percent of the women found a sense of humor the most important quality in a man.
The runner-up qualities were: regarding the woman as an equal (55 percent), and loving children (34 percent).
Good looks were at the bottom of the list with only 4 percent.
901 Woman Could Wait
In Rheims an innkeeper opened a bottle of champagne from his wine cellar and found this note in the packing: “Will the person who drinks this champagne and finds my photo here please write to me? I am 17 and looking for a husband.” The innkeeper wrote and received this reply: “Alas! Your champagne was bottled in 1956. Wine can wait and age ten years in confidence, but a woman cannot.”
—NANA-WNS
902 Vase Cracked At Proposal
When Jan and Hendrika Smit of Rotterdam, Holland, celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. They had their children, their grandchildrens and their great-grandchildren home for the occasion. But on the banquet table they had placed a cracked vase as the chief ornament.
Here’s Hendrika’s explanation of that vase: “When Jan proposed to me, the vase was on the table in front of the sofa on which we were sitting. I answered in the affirmative in what I thought was modest tone, but it caused the vase to crack right through. It hasn’t been able to hold water ever since.”
—Prairie Overcomer
903 A Dozen Times “Yes”
He had but recently met an elderly maiden lady while in the country, and on his return home he wrote asking her to marry him, and requesting an answer by telegraph. On receiving the letter the lady rushed to the telegraph office. “How much does it cost now to send a telegram?” she demanded.
“Ninepence for twelve words,” answered the clerk, and this was the telegram her suitor received.
“Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes.”
—Selected
904 “If It Doesn’t Rain”
The young man poured out his heart’s devotion on paper as he wrote to the girl of his dreams:“Darling:
I would climb the highest mountain, swim the widest stream, cross the burning desert, die at the stake for you.
P. S. I will see you on Saturday—if it doesn t rain.”
905 “He’s Gettin’ Thar”
Hiram had walked four miles over the Great Smokies to call on his lady fair. For a time they sat silent on a bench by the side of her log cabin, but soon the moon, as moons do, had its effect and Hiram slid closer to her and patted her hand. “Mary,” he began, “y’ know I got a clearin’ over thar and a team an’ a wagon an’ some hawgs an’ cows, an’ I’low to build me house this fall an’—”
Here he was interrupted by Mary’s mother, who had awaken. “Mary,” she called in a loud voice, “is that young man thar yit?”
Back came the answer, “No, Maw, but he’s gettin’ thar.”
—Capper’s Weekly
906 Epigram On Courtship
• Puppy love has sent many a young man to the dogs.
• To marry a woman for her beauty is like buying a house for its paint.
• The greatest salesman in the world is not a man—it’s a girl selling her boy friend the engagement ring!
—Maxwell Droke
• The teen-ager sent his girlfriend her first orchid with this note: “With all my love and most of my allowance.”
• “To lovers, even pockmarks look like dimples.”
—Japanese
• Heard during a news report on the radio: “Efforts are being made to avert a threatened strike of stewardesses and pursuers.”
• A draftee claimed exemption on the grounds of poor eyesight—and brought his wife along to prove it.
—The Ohio Motorist
• In the bakery department of a Dallas supermarket, a wedding cake was set out for shoppers with the sign: “He changed his mind. Have a piece of cake on us.”
—Fort Worth Star-Telegram
See also: Divorces ; Marriages ; Matt. 24:38.