Wins French Bride in 13 Minutes

1920

Yank Voted Speed Demon of A. E. F.

SOMERSWORTH, N. H. — Paul J. St. Jean, wounded hero of this town, has returned with his French bride whom he met for fifteen minutes in Angouleme, France, while on his way to the front in 1918, wooed by mail and made a special trip to her home to marry.

Now the citizens of this ordinarily quiet village vote unanimously that Jean can claim the A. E. F. record for a speedy courtship. And Jean says nothing. His record speaks for itself.

Mrs. Paul J. St. Jean has settled down to learn the English language.

Private Paul J. St. Jean left Somersworth in 1917 with the Yankee Division for France. He went thru every battle from the engagement at Seicheprey to Chateau Thierry, where he was felled with a machine gun bullet in the first American push. Out of the fighting, he was invalided to Camp Hospital 5, near Bordeaux. For over two months he hovered between death and life, and on Sept. 29th left again for the front to join his division.

Could Speak Language.

Then Cupid got in his work. While serenely traveling by train at the rate of three knots an hour, the French Limited stopped at the town of Angouleme. On the platform watching the train pull in were three French mademoiselles. Jean had the advantage. He was the only doughboy on the limited that knew French without the aid of a "French Made Easy" book, so he engaged the young women in conversation.

Two of the girls talked. The other didn't. Thruout the fifteen minutes that the train waited, a quiet French maiden of 16 summers hung back, saying nothing but thinking a whole lot. That young lady is now Mrs. Jean.

Jean, like any enterprising Yank, took their addresses and corresponded from the front. The shy young miss, whose name was Gabrielle Deleichelle, and whose father was at the front during the war, made it known to Jean thru her sisters' letter that she wanted to write.

Kept Writing to Girl.

The soldier came home with his division and started on a course of vocational training in New York. Altho unable to visit his young friend on his way home, he kept up the correspondence, which grew more interesting with each succeeding letter. In June, 1919, the obvious happened. They became engaged with the aid of a 5-cent stamp and several pages of uncensored French.

The vocational training complete, on April 10th of this year, the Yankee hero sailed from New York, arrived at Angouleme, and on May 17th married the young lady who had kept the postmasters at Somersworth and Angouleme busy for nearly two years.

Mr. and Mrs. Jean then came home. They visited New York and spent three days in Boston. But the big cities displeased Mrs. Jean. She liked the quietude of country places like Somersworth, and So they arrived home on her eighteenth birthday.

Mrs. Jean admires her soldier husband, is amazed at the progressiveness of America, but says with a far-away look: "I will always love my old France and expect to go back some day," and Mr. Jean, who is of French descent himself, is quite willing to go, too.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Aug. 7, 1920, p. 1.

Shrapnel (Pointed Humor)

1916

A doctor's pills may cure some ill — but not ill humor.

Courtship is a game in which a girl plays her heart against a man's diamond.

If women looked like the pictures in fashion magazines men would take to the woods.

It isn't necessary for a man to be a hypnotist in order to get his mind concentrated on the toothpick.

If time were money, the average man would have his watch geared to run forty-eight hours a day.

A young widow knows that the easiest way to catch a successor to the late lamented is to run away from him.

If the phoenix of common sense rises from the ashes of a fool's money the conflagration has not been in vain.

Possibly an honest man might be otherwise if an opportunity worth while were to knock at his front door.

The Hon. Doc Brown's Courtship

1902

The "Hon. Doc" Brown, of Morgansfield, Kentucky, who represents his district in the State Legislature, is one of Kentucky's unique characters. To illustrate a point in a recent speech, he gave the following account of his courtship:

"Take my advice and never give a woman anything she can't eat, and never make love to her out of an ink bottle. Why, when I courted my wife, I just grabbed hold of her and said, 'Sally, you are the sweetest thing on earth, and your beauty baffles the skill of man and subdues his ferocious nature,' and I got her." - New Orleans Times-Democrat.

Cupid Ten o'Clock Club

Indiana, 1905

Scheme to Revolutionize Love Making in Logansport, Indiana

For the purpose of discouraging swains with a disposition to monopolize all their time and to encourage the habit of "breaking away" early the Cupid Ten o'Clock club of Logansport Ind., has organized with twenty charter members, says a special dispatch from that place to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Miss Florence Moore, the founder, is the president. She declared that two evenings a week was abundant opportunity for the prosecution of the most ardent suit, and believes that "no two young people can have anything so important to say that it cannot fully be discussed in a three hour call."

Announcing in newspapers her intention to combat evils arising from too great familiarity before marriage, she called for enrollments in the new club and declares it will revolutionize love making in Logansport. She hopes to extend the idea throughout the state. Miss Moore is only eighteen and of a prominent old family.

Dean of Women: 'Love-Making Rooms Not Needed in Homes'

1921

"Courting Parlors" Not Needed Says Wisconsin University Dean

Room Fitted for Love-Making Would Drive Away Average Young People; Old Time Courting Out of Date

By MERLE SHAW

"The establishing of courting parlors in homes, where the young people can make love under mother's supervision, may be necessary in England, but not in Wisconsin," declared Mrs. M. H. Mendenhall, assistant dean of women at the University of Wisconsin. Most American homes are of such an informal nature that the old time courting days are decidedly out-of-date anyway."

Mrs. Mendenhall believes that in the larger cities where many homes are crowded and disorderly and where lovers are rushed out into the street to do their courting, such rooms might be necessary. Much of the public courting that goes on in parks, theaters, and trolleys in the large cities is, however, due to the foreign population.

"The time has not yet come in Wisconsin when a so-called 'courting parlor' is needed in the average substantial home," said Mrs. Mendenhall. "Besides," she added with a twinkle in her eye, "a room fitted out for love-making purposes is more liable to drive out the young people rather than serve a means to keep them at home."

—The Capital Times, Madison, Wisconsin, May 2, 1921, page 3.