Hints for Lovers Part 2

When with the woman he admires and whose admiration he seeks, a man cannot be too careful of his dress, his speech, and his manners.

A believer in Woman is a believer in Good. And vice versa, and mutatis mutandis.

Man's standard of value of a woman is usually determined by the scale of his own emotions. That is to say,

The pedestal upon which a man places a woman (a man always puts a woman upon a pedestal) is a pedestal erected solely by the effect upon himself of her charms.

A man may boast himself invincible by men; never by woman.

The lady-killer is always an object of attraction to ladies, even to those whom he makes no attempt to slay.

It may perhaps be a thing as unreasonable as certainly it is indisputable, that however much wild oats a man may himself sow, he invariably entertains a very peculiar objection to any woman near or dear to him entering upon this particular branch of agriculture.

He is a fool who does not bear himself before his lady-love as a prince among men.

Some men are so gallant that they will never be outdone by the woman who encourages them. But it often leads to strange embarra.s.sments and entanglements.

Few things terrify a man more than the knowledge of a woman's ability to make her emotions--when, if ever, he arrives at it.

That is a very silly man who thing she can play one woman off against another. For

In matters of emotional finesse the masculine instance is nowhere: it is blinded, befogged, befooled at every turn.

Heaven help the man who is dragged into a quarrel between two wrathful ladies!

Three things there be--nay, four--which man can never be sure, how a greatsoever his ac.u.men, his astuteness, or his zeal: a woman; a race horse; a patent; and the money-market. They defy both faith and fate; they should be the recreations not the resources of life; and he is a fool who stakes more than a portion of his substance on any one of them.

What a paltry thing, after all, is man, man uncomplemented by woman! Left to himself, he stagnates; linked with a woman, he rises---or sinks. A gentle touch stimulates him, a confiding heart makes of him a new creature. Under the rays of feminine sympathy, he expands who else would remain inert. Fame may allure him, friends encourage him, fortune cause him a momentary smile, but only woman makes him; and fame, friends, fortune, all are naught if there be not at his side a sharer of his weal.

A man will strive for fortune, strip himself for friends, scour the earth for fame; but were there no woman in the world to be won, not one of these things would he do.

III. On Women

"Ehret die Fanen!"

-Schiller

From woman, who e're she be, there seems to emanate a potency ineffable to man,--impalpable, invisible, divine. It lies not in beauty or grace, not even in manner or mein; and it requires neither wiles nor artifice. It is not the growth of long and intimate acquaintance, for often it acts spontaneously and at once; and neither the woman who possesses it nor the man who succ.u.mbs to it can give it a name. For to say that it consists in the effluence or influence of personality or temperament, of affinity or pa.s.sion, of sympathy or charm, is to say nothing save that we know not what it is. All unknown to herself, it wraps its owner round with airs the which to breathe uplifts the spirit, and yet, may be, perturbs the heart, of man. Even its effects are recondite and obscure. It allures; but how it allures now man shall tell. It impels; but to what, does not appear. It rouses all manner of hopes, stirs sleeping ambition, and desires and aspirations unappeasable; but for what purport or to what end, none stays to inquire . It incites; sometimes it enthralls. It innervates; it exhaults. Under its spell, reason is flung to the winds, and matters of great mundane moment are trivial and of no account: for it bewilders the wit and s.n.a.t.c.hes the judgment of sane and rational men. It is most powerful in youth; it is most powerful upon youth; yet some retain it till far on in years, and no age but feels its sway:--a veiled and mysterious force; sometimes daemonical, often divine: at once the delight and the despair of man.

After all,

The man who declares he understands women, declares his folly. For,

If woman were not such a mystery, she would not be such an attraction.

For again,

What is known is ignored. (But woman need have no cause for apprehension.) Besides,

Men may be cla.s.sified; women never. This is why

Generalizing in the case of women is useless; since

Woman is a species of which every woman is a variety. And every man must make up his mind to this, that

Every woman is a study in herself. However,

If women were comprehensible to men, men and women would be friends, not lovers (But the race is safe). The simple fact is that

Womanliness is the supreme attraction, in however fair or however frail a personality it is embodied. And

The sacred function of all womanhood is to kindle in man the divine spark by means 30 of the mystic flame that burns ever in the vestal breast.

Every true woman's...o...b..t is determined by two forces: Love and Duty.

Which is another way of saying that

Women, like the lark, are true to the kindred points of heaven and home.

But,

It is only when the two foci are coincident and identical that her orbit becomes the perfect circle and her home becomes her heaven.