Ladies! Make your plans now for February 29th!

2024 is a Leap Year, and that means, according to an old custom, it is a year when women can propose marriage to men. Traditionally, it was the man’s role to propose marriage, but anytime during a leap year, but especially on February 29th, the roles were reversed. A woman could finally take matters into her own hands and pop the question. It was said that if the man refused the offer, he was required to give the woman a gift of a pair of gloves or a silk gown as compensation.

Pres Longley, our own Bard of Butte, shared these lines of verse on the subject in 1892.

You may wrangle and rave of your Marysville girls,
Of the girls of the Capital City,
Of the ‘Frisco girls, with their fads and their curls,
But the Butte Creek girls are most pretty.
Their smiles are far dearer to me than the gold
That the millionaire hides in his coffers,
And I hope, ‘ere the days of this leap year are told,
Some dear one will make me an offer.