Hints for Lovers Part 15

Whatever the talents of a man, they are stimulated by contact with woman.

Since

An elevating influence seems to radiate from women: we have but to come into the light of their countenances for our own faces to s.h.i.+ne as the sun. Indeed,

Physicists may talk as they like, but lovers know a more subtle and a more potent force than any yet revealed to them. It has not yet been named; but for the present it might be called "psychicity". (3)

(3) Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks of "celebricity". See "Over the Tea Cup"

If you wish to ascertain the relations.h.i.+p of a youthful pair, watch their eyes. For

Simulation is difficult to the eye.

When the idol into which a woman has converted her lover is dethroned, she still wors.h.i.+ps her remembrance of her G.o.d, and puts together and treasures the broken pieces.

When the idol into which has converted his loved one is dethroned, he generally changes his creed.

A circ.u.mpsecting lover is a woman's abhorrence: as a calculating mistress is a man's.

Let a lover but put himself into the hands of his mistress, and he is safe. Since

The man she really loves, a woman will s.h.i.+eld through thick and thin, through right and wrong. For,

Concerning a man, the only question a woman asks is, not, "Is he right or wrong?" but, "Is he mine or another's?"--We men therefore

Leave a woman to get her lover out of a sc.r.a.pe.

It is to be feared that the men and women who love but once and forever are not usually to be found outside of romances.

With women, love is a river, ever-flowing, from the brook in girlhood, (4) to the estuary of womanhood. Like a river, too,

Woman's love is fed by all the streams it meets. On the other hand,

With man, love is a geyser.

(4) Standing with reluctant feet Where the brook and river meet.

--Longfellow, "Maidenhood"

The languis.h.i.+ng lover has gone out of date; he has been replaced by the diverting one. And the change is significant of much: The early nineteenth-century maid pretended to ignorance; the early twentieth-century maid to omniscience.

The early nineteenth-century suitor protested; but

The early twentieth-century suitor has to contest. In the one case,

The woman tacitly acknowledges an inequality. In the other case,

The man has to openly to recognize his equal. Nevertheless,

The fundamental relations.h.i.+p between the s.e.xes do not materially vary from century to century, much as conventional manners and customs may.

For, after all,

Always what a man seeks in a woman is: love. And

In all love there is something perfectly and Paradisiacally pristine.

Would the most emanc.i.p.ated woman have love otherwise? At all events,

Perhaps the most womanly position a woman can occupy is: with her head on her lover's heart. At this the strong-minded may scoff. They may.

The obsession of the male heart by one woman ousts from it all other women. Thus,

The accepted young man regards all women but the one as he would regard fas.h.i.+on-plates. To the young woman men continue to be men. That is to say,

A man dives headlong into love. A woman paddles into it. And the woman's hesitation at the brink of the stream exasperates the spluttering man. In short,

A man's heart is captured wholly and at a stroke. A woman's heart surrenders itself piecemeal.

Whereas, with a man, a trivial pa.s.sion is usually an affair more of the senses or of the imagination than of the heart; with a woman every pa.s.sions is an affair of the heart.

A man, when first he is in love, is absorbed in the contemplation of the object of his love. A woman is similarly situated is capable of making comparisons.

It gives to woman's curiosity a curious pleasure to compare the methods of men's proposals.

In love, a woman is generally cool enough to calculate pros and cons; a man, in similar plight, is incapable of anything but folly.

It is a feminine motto that a woman needs to be taught how to love.

Perhaps she does; but most men will think one private tutor ought to suffice, and that tutor ought to be he. At all events,

The last schoolmaster would be apt to regard with somewhat mixed feelings the tuition of previous crammers.

Why go to the trouble of explaining away a first love, if the second is no whit its inferior? Unless it be to overcome.

What a second love chiefly deplores is: that it was not he (or she) who first taught his (or her) loved one to love. Is it not true also that

It is the first love that amazes, that beautifies, that consecrates?