The Implet (Jan-Jun 1912)

THE "IMPLET" uThe Faint Heart That Won A Lady" Story Founded Upon The Great Imp Comedy "A Cave Man Wooing" Release of May 20th By THOMAS BEDDING _Ji I. "It is not so much the gallant who woos, as the gallant's way of wooing." If every callow youth who starts out to find a bride would bear this in mind the art of making love to women would be reduced to a simple formula, a formula easily applied. We should all get the girl we wanted just because we would go the right way about the job. Alan is the pursuing animal. This applies throughout creation. It is a law of nature. It was found out so soon as the globe became inhabited by sentient beings. No matter what kind of being — fish, flesh or fowl — the rule is the same. The "female of the species, which is more deadly than the male," is best won by brute force. Poor Samuel Forrester had lived on the earth twenty-seven years without grasping these elementary truths as to the pursuit of women. Sammy was a nice boy. He grew up to be a nice young man. His manners were good; he-was always flawlessly dressed; he had a smile that would not wear off; he parted his hair with accuracy as regards right and left; his swear-word vocabulary was limited to the one awful exclamation, "Bother!" he went to church regularly three times on Sunday. He was a very good young man. And because he was so good he was unpopular among young men and the women treated him as a lapdog. II. This is just what women do with young men of Sammy's class. When Sammy was not a lap-dog he was a tame cat. He hung around smilingly; he handed tea. with perfect manners, he turned over music with all the delicacy and finesse of a tradesman's daughter at a finishing school. Smoke? God bless you, Sammy never thought of it. Drink? An impossibility. He was as correct in his society demeanor as a young clergyman in the pulpit giving his lirst sermon. Sammy could not quite make out why he made such little progress in the affections of the girl upon whom he had set his capsuled heart. For Sammy's heart was a pulseless kind of thing encased, so to speak, in a colloidal substance. It never palpitated. It never sent the blush of joy to his face. He had not got a heart in the conventional sense. Sammy was just a pretty, smiling automaton, and lively, young Ruth Ellis saw this; so did her brothers, and father and mother; so did the whole Ellis family, in fact. Sammy was too good for any human girl with the pulse of life in her; for any girl who wanted to be loved; for any girl who wanted her lips kissed, her waist squeezed, or her hand pressed; any girl, in fact, who wanted to be loved in a breezy, manly way for herself and wholly for herself. It is the way most girls want to be loved. Isn't it, girls? III. At last, Sammy, who was not without brains, fell to wondering in the solitude of his own room why Ruth did not warm up to him; why he was laughed at in a good humored way in the Ellis house; sniggered at by his friends, and, although called "good and pious" by the clergyman and his Sunday School associates, neither loved nor appreciated by them. Then Sammy's brain from a wonrmental stage drifted into the cause-of-things stage. Why was it? ^Next one of those happy coincidents that occur to us all at times thrust itself under Sammy's notice. This particular coincidence was furnished by the awe-inspiring personality that sways so many, many hearts, Laura Jean Libbey. Sammy was a devout student of Laura Jean Libbey' s Delphic utterances on love. But Laura Jean, notwithstanding Sammy's patronage of her to the extent ot one cent a day for a year or more, had not helped Sammy any until this moment. Hitherto Laura Jean had generalized to Sammy as she generalized to all her readers. Now Laura Jean particularized. Thus Laura Jean: "Women love to be won; they fall for strong men; men of action; men of courage. Ihese are the kind of men women love." A light broke in upon Sammy's mind. He was not one of this kind. Why? He had never attempted to do brave things. He was no athlete, sportsman, soldier, sailor; he was not a strong man; he would not harm a fly. Perhaps it was this very harmlessness, this very goodness of his which stood in his way. Sammy pondered on this topic for several days. Then a marvellous change took place in his mind. He began to read about the prowess of brave men, strong men; of sailors, soldiers, warriors and travelers. And Sammy suddenly resolved to be brave. He could not be a soldier, sailor, or a traveler; he had to earn his money at a dry goods counter. But at least he could be .strong. The advertisement of a school of physical culture started Sammy on the road to strength. He would get up his courage by physical means and make another assault upon the heart of Ruth. Last time he was there he blushed at his inability to help move a piano, he was so weak. In time he would find means to avert such humiliation. He would become strong. IV. When Sammy, having duly paid his fees, made his appearance in Prof. Mulligan's School of Physical Culture, his impressions were not pleasing. The men he saw there struck him as being just brutes. Hall clad brutes, with disagreeable methods of speech. Sammy was shocked at their lack of politeness, their coarse expressions, their unbounded hilarity and their disrespect for the niceties of human appearance. They seemed to him to pass their time in pounding each other's bodies in order that these said bodies might be deformed out of recognition. That was Sammy's first impression of exercising with the boxing gloves. Then the men seemed to leap over bars, punch swinging balls, jump about, contort and distort themselves in the most eccentric and aimless fashion. Sammy's first impulse was to quit the school of physical culture as a very uncomfortable institution. Indeed, he was on the point of going when the little spark of manhood in him was fanned into a flame by the soothing assurances of Prof. Mulligan that he had got "the makings of a white 'ope in him." Sammy was patriotic and objected on general principles to the pugilistic pre eminence of Jack Johnson. He objected to negro pre-eminence in anything. And animated by the hope that he, too, might, one day, be able to down the redoubtable Jack, he yielded to Prof. Mulligan's blandishments and donned the mittens. Sammy, "donned the mittens"! ! ! He stripped to his waist in approved fashion. Then the professor got busy on Sammy's physiognomy. Sammy got a terrible drubbing. His long hair obscured his vision; he struck out wildly; the professor tapped him; the other people in the school looked on and smiled — and in ten minutes Sammy collapsed, being brought to by a pail of water and some towels. Sammy's first appearance in the school of physical culture was ludicrous. Were it not for Laura Jean Libbey and the possibility that Prof. Mulligan's school might make a certain path to the heart of Ruth Ellis, Sammy would have quit right there. But Sammy stuck to the school. V. Sammy stuck so well to the school that those in his home began to know him not. He kept his own counsel, however. To the Ellis family, he began to look rather graver and liner drawn than hitherto. His smile seemed less obvious. Sammy was working hard. He was working so hard that a rival was making inroads into Ruth's heart. But with the accretion of physical prowess Sammy began to get an increase in worldly wisdom. He now found that women are mystified by silence. He could see that his changed demeanor and fewer appearances at the Ellis home were setting Ruth and her family wondering. So he let them wonder. Three months sped by. Sammy got his money's worth at the school of physical culture. Now he could down Prof. Mulligan in three rounds. Sammy was a man at last. One evening in the Ellis home, without previous warning, he began moving things about in such a surprising manner that he gave them the impression of being a giant — a man suddenly endowed with miraculous powers of displacing the heaviest articles with the least effort. He threw his rival aside, and insisted upon Ruth playing what he wished her to play. The girl did so wonderingly. The whole family looked upon Sammy as a being other than the one they had hitherto known as a harmless appanage. VI. It is a scientific fact that a healthy body is the best way to assure a sound mind. Sammy had the one and the other was not slow to follow. He had made strong play for Ruth for the past eighteen months with little progress. He meant having the girl, notwithstanding parental objections, and the fact that his rival was making progress in her affections. One night the astonished Ellis family beheld the extraordinary Sammy imitating Samson in his strength. He lifted the slender girl, Ruth, in his arms, walked out of the house and in a few seconds had dumped her into a waiting automobile. Off he bore her to the home of a convenient clergyman whose services Sammy had previously bespoken, and there the knot was tied. He had got the license the week before, had terrorized the girl into acquiescing. Ruth, in fact, for weeks past had lived in a kind of dread of Sammy. lie had, in the cant phrase, hypnotized her. She had been unconscious of the change which had taken place in him and was also unconscious of the change that had taken place in herself. The smiling, willing man of the drawing room, which Sammy used to be, had been gradually transformed into the hardened, well-set, calm, determined, husky fellow who, though he did not fawn and smile upon her as in the old days, was still never long absent from her side. So when in defiance of modern conventionality he had borne the girl off and was forcibly married to her she had acted like one in a dream. It was only when the ceremony was concluded that she woke up to realize that she was married actually and in fact to Sammy. VII There was a pursuit, of course. The family were after Sammy; so was his rival. They broke in upon him and his new bride within an hour of the celebration of the marriage. Sammy leaned back in his chair an unconcerned young giant. And what did the new wife do? What do yrou think? Did she welcome her parents and lover? Not a bit of it. She just sent them all about their business. She was married now; she was a wife; she was free. She had never thought of all this before. The idea! To think that these people should dare to come between her and her husband. It was preposterous! So there was nothing for the family and the unsuccessful suitor to do, 1ml to depart, and leave the suddenly muted couple to their fate. VIII. The concluding chapter of this strange romance is, of course, the strangest of all. Sammy exulted in the pride of possession. lie had triumphed; he had won the girl as Lochinvar of old had won his bride — he had borne her off from friends and parents. And, would you believe it, never until this minute had it entered the mind of Ruth that she really cared for Sammy. When Sammy reminded her of the fact, that now they were married it was her duty to love him. She had first recoiled from the mere suggestion. Yet, strange as it may seem, when Sammy told her that if she did not care for him; if she did not love him; she was free to go back home — he was satisfied to have won her in his own way because he loved her — when Sammy told her all this, the girl, in a flash, realized that she could not possibly go away from him; that she never wanted to leave him; that she loved him. So she fell into his arms and then they were happy. * * ' * * * * This is an unconventional love story. It has a moral; most love stories haven't any moral. In this story you will see that the love-making does not commence until after marriage. It is a case of cause and effect. If 1 wanted to get married, I would go after the girl pretty much in the same way as the renovated Sammy went after Ruth. It seems to be about the surest way of making a girl really fall in love with you, so that you can omnt on lots of connubial bliss after the knot is tied. Which is something of a change in the usual order of thing-, otherwise there would not be so many divorces, would there?