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Thursday, June 16, 2005
Dear Madam: I have been keeping company with a young man for some time, and I love him. He seemed to love me in return, but he told me some time ago that he did not care to keep steady company, and left me.... I asked him the last time if he thought we would ever go together again, and he said he could not tell, as at the present time, he did not want any girl, but still he likes to go out with me. I keep company with a young man who loves me, and I like him, but I do not love him as much as I do the other.... I would accept my first lover tomorrow. If I were to be married, and were at the altar with the second one, and could see the chance to marry the first, I would back out and return with my old love, if I knew he would be true to me.
LIDA MAYLida May, you sentimental girls who lack pride and self-respect and call that lack "love" are rapidly destroying my sympathy with the victims of the tender passion. Have you any ground whatever for believing that a man who has played fast and loose with your feelings as your admirer would be a faithful or loving husband? Why don't you summon a little common sense to your aid? The man has insulted, rebuffed and wounded you. Could you possibly put yourself again in a position where he could again hurt you? A broken heart--I dare say you think you are suffering from that--is a trifling complaint compared to a bad husband. Do be brave and self-respecting, and dismiss this creature from your mind and life.
Beatrice Fairfax is the pen name of Marie Manning, who penned
America’s first write-in advice column on July 20, 1898
for William Randolph Hearst's “New York Evening Journal.”
The column was an instant success, and in the following decades,
both Manning and others wrote under the pen name Beatrice Fairfax.
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