Miss Maude Pettit lived in Tonawanda, a city that grew up near the terminus of the Erie Canal – north of Buffalo, NY.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonawanda,_New_York

In April of 1912, Maude received a postcard from her friend, Mrs. Powell.

It seems that Mrs. Powell had recently married.

The friend wrote from Arcade, a town south of Buffalo in western New York.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcade,_New_York

Tonawanda is 40 miles northeast of Arcade.

The face of the postcard is a drawing of a well-dressed woman sitting within a rail fence.

She wears a large straw hat adorned with blossoms, and she carries a parasol.

On the other side of the fence, a well-dressed young man, carrying a walking stick, passes toward a country road in the distance.

It is not clear why the woman is waiting there, nor where the gentleman is going.

Nevertheless, the legend admonishes: “When You’re Passing, Stop”.

The postcard was copyrighted in 1911 by J. J. Marks of New York; it is part of the “Embossed Comics Series”.

On the reverse, the new Mrs. Powell apologizes for her tardiness in responding to Maud’s postcard; she explains, “I have been so busy getting settled”.

After lamenting a missed meeting in Buffalo. Mrs. Powell exclaims, “Well, Maude, married life is great”.

With an invitation to come and visit, Mrs. Powell closes the message.

One hopes that Maude was pleased by the pretty card about courtship, that Mrs. Powell and her husband continued to be happy in their marriage, and that the friends remained correspondents for many years.