I am a young girl nearly seventeen years old, engaged to be married next Spring. I have been engaged over six months and want to ask, If it is wrong to sit on a betrothed lover's lap?
My mother tells me strictly that it is very wrong until I am married. I have a true and honorable lover. He and his folks say it is all right. Is it wrong or not?..
ANXIOUS, Yonkers, N.Y.
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A June 23, 1894 Reply...
SAT ON HIS KNEE ONLY ONCE.
To the Editor:
Replying to the letter of "anxious", headed "Is It Wrong?", which appeared in your issue June 14th, inst., let me say, Yes; decidedly so: and if the mother of Miss Anxious had acted her part in a maternal manner such letters as hers would not appear in your interesting column.
At the age of nineten I became engaged to my present husband, whom I had known from childhood. Our engagement lasted two years. One evening my young man stayed so long (it was after 11:30) that my mother came down to send him home and to her surprise she found me sitting on his lap and fast asleep. She woke us up and sent me off to bed, and after giving him a good talking to sent him home.
She then came up to my room, and bidding me to hand her the hairbrush, she sat down on the side of the bed and, taking me across her knees, gave me the soundest spanking that I had ever received, and after giving me a scolding for the inpropriety of my actions she left me with the threat, that if she ever heard of my sitting on his lap again before I was his wife she would whip me again.
This was five years ago. I still remember it, and I know mother was right. If Miss Anxious's mother will adopt the same course with her daughter she will be doing something which her girl may thank her for in later years...