Comic Strips 2024: Just Act Cool and Flex a Little (2024)

quote:

How to Make Love---By Nell Brinkley
No 4--When Billiam Is Impetuous and Has a Boy's Heart
"You go after her with tragedy, and gayety, and hand on your heart."

THIS is the Billiam of the boy's heart-the boy's wooing; the boy's love; and he should be back in the Old Days of minstrels and gold lace, and red-heeled slippers, and love songs, and sword edges; for his wooing needs the gay dress and the wild deeds and the real and actual expression of the moods and madness that go to make the wonder of his wooing.

And how-oh me!-he must tuck half of it away and click the key on it. Only think! If he lived in those Long Ago Days, when he was drowned in the black mud despair he could go him over the land that lay between his Lady Love and him, and bite the grass under her window; and then he could make a song about it, to sing in the halls of feast nights. And all that would help some Angelface.

And then, on the times when the heart in him was as gay and light as the dandelion-down that flies in the wind in the Fall-when joy was fierce in him-he could fight and hack at other brave knights, and bleed and die for the ribbon that was the color of his Damosel!

In the Old Days He Could Fight.

See Also

What is your favorite comic strip? - (BETA) DVD Talk Forum1981 Ziggy Chef Geburtstagskuchen Happy Birthday to You Applause Figur Tom Wilson • EUR 16,40

And then another thing; if she kept on curling her pretty lip at him, and shaking her head for "nay," he could swipe her away some black night on the back of his wind-swift Jennet.

But, oh-ho! These are bad days for the impetuous Billy of the boy's wooing; for you can't bite the grass under the window of your Betty when there isn't any grass; and then, too, the nights are wet and cold sometimes, and a policeman might come gently along.

And when you are in black moods you can't hack your fellow Billiams and bleed and die for a crazy ribbon; for the land is rank and bristling with more policemen, Angelface.

Now It's All Up to Betty.

But you can swipe your Betty away in a motor these days. But it's bad there, too, because it's got to be that she says you can, or you have to fling up your hands and say "Kismet!"

Oh, you kind of a Billy; your wooing is swift and impetuous and filled with moods like days, changeable like the west wind! One day it is shouting with gayety and confidence, like a gold day hot with sun and sky; and the day after it is black and hopeless, and when your Betty makes a little face at you and shouts "No!" you tug into your things, and slam the door like a clap of thunder, and go out to "go straight to the devil," and you "don't care anyway!"

You are impatient. When she says "No; no; some day." you coax and threaten and plead and weave wonderful dreams of how it will be, and you lose your breath and you say "Oh-h. Angelface; now; now; to-morrow; the next day after that?" And when she says "No," you feel like beating your head against the door, and you do tell of her that you will blow it off.

You go after her with tragedy and gayety and hand on your heart. You bid her violently to take you or leave you, while she can get you.

You are rough as a pirate, and as tender as the palms of your one girl's pink hands. You won't believe she's anything but a saint, even when she tells you so.

You are dreams, and boy threats; and most times you get your Betty.

And she most times is a gay and wise little half child and half woman, who holds you off from her at her stretched out finger tips; who laughs at you, and some- times is tender with you.

She's Wise, and at Times Wicked.

Some awful times, though, she is a gay and wise one-but wise with a wickedness-and she plays with you like a gray kitten with a pearl bead, and leads you on to the very height of madness and wonder of your wooing, even as the tenderer and more sincere Betty would. But-when all the tragic wonder and sweetness and moods of your boy heart are at her feet, and you

have given all, she kicks over the brazier that smokes with the burning of it, and laughs in your stricken face. And then the impetuous boy turns into a bitter man -if he doesn't forget.

But we'll play it's the Betty who is won long before she will own up to you, and just likes to tease; and who is wise and knows you better than you know your own self; and knows, in that wiseness, that when you are at the tips of her fingers and never a bit nearer you are a bullier wooer, and she wants all before she drops the fingers and says, "Not this day; but oh, Billiam Angelface, the next, if you say so."

NELL BRINKLEY.