Hints for Lovers Part 20

The publicity with which a woman will receive admiration from a male admirer 144 often is sufficient to astonish that admirer. But

Often enough it is the admiration, not the admirer, that a woman covets.

Indeed,

Many a woman is in love with love (3), but not her lover. But this no lover can be got to comprehend.

To flatter by deprecating a rival is a complement of extremely doubtful efficacy.

(3) I seem to remember that somebody before has said something like this before.

A woman does not admire too clement a conqueror. She admits the right to ovation, and to him who waives it she lightly regards.

Seek no stepping-stones unless you mean to cross:

He who gathers stepping-stones and refrains from crossing is contempted of women. Indeed,

Every advance of which advantage is not taken, is in reality a retreat.

And remember, too, that though

Sought interviews are sweet, those unsought are sweeter. And

Probably no son of Adam--and for the matter of that, probably no daughter of Eve--ever quite looks back with remorse upon a semi-innocent escapade. Yet

The man who thinks he can at any time extract himself from any feminine entanglement that he may choose to have raveled, is a simpleton.

The way of man with a maid may have been too wonderful for Agur; now-a-days the way of a man with a married woman would puzzle a wiser than he.

What is the att.i.tude to be maintained towards the too complaisant spouse of an honorable friend? That is a problem will puzzle weak men without end. Of that fatal and fateful dilemma when a wife or a husband falls victim to the wiles of another, there are, for the delinquent, two and only two horns (and it is a moot question upon which it is preferable to be impaled): Flight--either from the victor or the victrix. Yet

To some it is no anomaly to pray G.o.d's blessing upon a liaison. But these folk are to be pitied; for

A clandestine love always works havoc--havoc to all three. (4)

(4) Cf. Platus: "Malus clandestinus est amor; d.a.m.num 'st merum."

Will men and women never learn what trouble they lay up in store for themselves by breaking their plighted troths?

VII. On Beauty

"La beaute' pour moi c'est la divinite' visible, c'est le bonheur palpable, c'est le ciel descendu sur terre."

--Theophile Gautier

Beauty, they say, is but skin-deep. That is quite deep enough to enslave mankind. As a matter of fact, it is much deeper: for, to say nothing of health and good-spirits,

Beneath true beauty lies an admirable or a loveable character. And yet--or, perhaps, and therefore--

If by some mischance beauty should arouse our resentment, with what different eyes we regard it!

The feeling for beauty is probably more highly developed in man than in woman. (N. B. Perhaps this is the source of the beauty of women.) Nevertheless,

It is a question that perhaps will never be settled, how much value should be placed upon mere beauty. For

Man soon tires of mere beauty. In fact, man, the inconstant creature, soon tires of mere anything.

Beauty should never be a.n.a.lyzed. At sight of graceful neck, who speaks of "musculus sterno-cleido-mastoideus"; at touch of moist red lips, who thinks upon the corpuscles of Paccini?

More women are wooed for their complexions than for their characters.

Could women only know it, nothing can add to their charms: how provokingly delightful is the uniformed demureness of an hospital nurse beside the elaborate bedizenments of a woman of fas.h.i.+on!

The most beautiful thing known among men is: a good woman. And this is not an anomaly.

She who captures a man by a single charm, be it even beauty, holds him by a weak chain.

Think not it was merely beauty that made Helen or Cleopatra historic.

Beauty is much, and grace is much; but there is a charm more subtle and potent than these.

Beauty without modesty is a rose without perfume: the petals may delight, but they lack an ineffable savor. Like a flower, too,

Though the tangible petals are numbered and comptable, the subtle perfume eludes the sense and is inexhaustible. For