Alan Mays' photos with the keyword: requests

"Dear Miss, I very much desire the pleasure of your acquaintance and your company home this evening. If agreeable please keep this card, if not kindly return it. Yours truly, ________." See also Fair Lady, I Send You This Beautiful Chromo with My Compliments (below) and my Acquaintance Cards album for additional examples.

"Fair Lady, I send you this beautiful chromo with my compliments. If I may be the happy youth on the promenade, please retain it. If I must suffer misery on the fence, be so good as to return it. Yours truly, ________." See also Dear Miss, I Very Much Desire the Pleasure of Your Acquaintance (below) and my Acquaintance Cards album for additional examples.

"Please send home that shirt you borrowed." Postmarked Los Angeles, Calif., Jan. 30, 1910, and addressed to: "Mr. Clarence Fox, RR #5, Sterling, Kans." Is it an amusingly nonsensical message to send to a friend? Or could it be a catchphrase from some forgotten song or play? Whatever the case might be, I've only seen it on early twentieth-century postcards like this one.

"May I see you home?"

"W. L. Alexander. May I see you home? Or will I have to set on the fence and watch you meander by?"

"Acquaintance compliments with confidence & respect. Can I have the pleasure of your company this evening? If so, keep this card; if not, please return it. O. G. Pfleogor." This is the only card I've come across that has a name printed on one side (like a calling card ) and a "let's get acquainted" message (like an acquaintance card ) on the other side.

Or to put it more straightforwardly, this acquaintance card asks, "May I see you home?" The Encyclopedia of Ephemera (New York: Routledge, 2000), p 4, provides additional information: "A novelty variant of the American calling card of the 1870s and 1880s, the acquaintance card was used by the less formal male in approaches to the less formal female. Given also as an 'escort card' or 'invitation card,' the device commonly carried a brief message and a simple illustration.... Flirtatious and fun, the acquaintance card brought levity to what otherwise might have seemed a more formal proposal. A common means of introduction, it was never taken too seriously."