With Valentines Day quickly approaching this month's Book Tuesday (oops actually Thursday) has a special treat from 1900.
This marvellous collection of etiquette tips, poems, suggestions, manners, etc is a must have for anyone launching on the adventure of getting hitched, or not.
Available at the Internet Archive as a PDF file.
Enjoy!
The Victorian Society of Alberta
The modern art of making love
A complete manual of etiquette, love, courtship and matrimony
by James S. Wilson 1900
The desire to be married,— a desire from which we cannot rid ourselves, but nearly always follow, is so strongly imbued with our natural instincts, that we can surely doubt whether any man or woman on reaching maturity has ever been exempt from the feeling.
You will find it a strong characteristic which is held sacrea, and solemnized in the most serious manner by many of the wild and savage tribes of Africa. A great many of the different tribes of Indians within our own borders hold the rites of marriage more sacred and celebrate them more solemnly than do some of our civilized brethren.
Of all the institutions of the world, matrimony is the most important. On it the human race depends for perpetuation. It alone stands to-day with the least changes, from the beginning of time. Good marriages, happy marriages, ideal marriages will always be made. Indifferent marriages, unhappy marriages, bad marriages will always be made. But, by exercise of common sense, and even the discretion which we show in trivial matters, the latter kind of marriages need never exist.
If the advice given in "Selecting a Husband," and "Selecting a Wife:'* to be found in this little book, is closely followed there never need be unhappy marriages through fault of not understanding each other's charaters and tempers.
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