Ring Lardner
Oakland Enquirer/January 11, 1919
MR. SULLIVAN:
I wrote you a letter last week in which I invited you to dinner Xmas with my mother and I. As you have not had the “time” to reply, I am not aware of whether you intended to accept the invitation or not, but I must now ask you to kindly disregard that invitation as there are reasons why I cannot “entertain” you on that occasion. Perhaps you will be interested in the news that I am engaged to be married to a real man and one whom I believe has the good manners to reply when they receive a note of invitation.
Mr. Charlton, who has paid me the honor of asking me to become his bride, is not the kind of a “man” who thinks all the girls must be “crazy” about him, as some “men” I know seem to think. On the contrary, he is a perfect “gentleman” in every sense of the term and extremely modest, though he has a great deal more to be proud of than lots of “men” who have an exalted opinion of themselves, though it is hard to see why they should have, but perhaps it is just as well for them that they have that opinion as if they did not care for themselves there would be nobody that did.
Mr. Charlton is a man whom no one who knows him could help from respecting him, as he is the finest type of gentleman, and it is unfortunate that there are not more like him instead of being so many of the kind that the word “gentleman” hardly seems to fit. He commands the highest salary paid to any traveling salesman in his firm and is capable of supporting a wife in the way she has been accustomed to living, otherwise he would not ask a girl to share his life, much as he loved her.
Mr. Charlton tried in every possible way to get into the army, but his firm insisted on him remaining with them, as they are engaged in the manufacture of an essential article. I can say for him, however, that he is of a much higher type of gentleman than many persons in the service who call themselves that. At least his intentions have always been honorable, and he has not tried to play with a girl for the purpose of amusing himself, as many “gentlemen” I have encountered.
It will not be necessary for you to reply to this note, as I do not care to hear from you again and I only want to give you a little bit of advice, which is that sometimes when a man thinks he is making a “f–l” of a girl it is himself that he is making a “f–l” of rather than she. EDNA H CONKLIN.
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