Dear Aunt,—If I have from time to time bothered you with my financial schemes I am very sorry. But I have an active brain, and too few briefs. Also I want to be in a sound financial position, and, under more favourable circumstances, most of my projects would, I am sure, succeed. But you are the only capitalist that I know, and just at the moment you are, I now realize, not in a position to take any deep interest in monetary ventures. I ought to have thought of this before, and I apologise.
I write to you to-day for a very different purpose and that is, to enlist not your bank balance but your sympathy and, I hope, active help. In a nutshell, I want to marry Hazel. I have laid my case before her more than once, but she refuses to take me seriously. I am aware that I am not so superficially gay and insouciant as the majority of the young men of to-day; I know only too well that I cannot jazz and that I prefer dances where an intervening atmospheric space divides the partners. But, though I may be old-fashioned, surely I have compensating qualities of value in married life. What I feel is that if only Hazel could be persuaded that I am in deadly earnest, and that marriage is not one of—what she calls—my “wild-cat schemes,” she would begin to look upon me with a new eye. I am very human au fond, dear Aunt, and, in my own way, I adore Hazel. Would you not try to persuade her to be more kind and understanding?—I am, your affectionate nephew,
Horace Mun-Brown
P.S.—On reading this letter through, I find that I have made what looks rather like a pun—that passage about Hazel and a nutshell. I assure you, my dear Aunt, it was unintentional. I should never joke about love.