Hints for Lovers Part 31

As with commodities, so with kissings, the greater the rarity, the greater the vale.

Osculatory transactions there be as lasting in their results as transient in their causes.

A cheek surrept.i.tiously brushed in the dark is preferable to lips premittedly pressed by day.

What an extraordinary multiplicity of maneuvers a man will perform for "Just one kiss!" But

With the precise numerical equivalent of the expression "Just one kiss"

algebra has not yet been found quite able to grapple. It is believed, however, to belong to Permutations and Combinations.

There is a very decided, but wholly indefinable, line of demarcation between the kissed and the unkissed woman. In other words,

The "status quo ante exosculationem" can never be re-established: hitherto the kisses may have been friends; henceforward they may be...

they may be ... ... But

Who shall say to what kissing may lead? Besides,

Much more kissing than is supposed goes by purchase than by favor. All which, probably, will be Greek to the uninitiated. Nevertheless, and at all times, and in all places,

A kiss is like faith: it is "the evidence of things not seen, the substance of things hoped for."

How appalling the immensity of the results due to the minutest of causes --a burning city from a lighted match; a life-long tragedy from a stolen kiss! In truth,

Fate is often another name for Folly.

A woman who is afraid of a kiss knows much. Amongst other things, perhaps, that

Kisses, like misfortunes, rarely come singly--and bear many things in their train.

Despite the varieties of beards and mustachios, never will you hear from your osculatrix the source of her knowledge of that variety.

If by any chance the divulgence leaks out--how the girl beshrews the mischance! For, though the man may hold his peace, she knows that she gives him to think.

It takes two to make a quarrel. Yes: and it takes two to make the reconciliating kiss.

XII. On Engagements and on Being Engaged

Chalepon to mae philaesai Chalepon de kai philaesai --Anacreon.

Perhaps the pleasantest and most satisfactory period in a girl's life is the time of her first youthful engagement:

Never is a girl more jubilant, never more buoyant, never so charming, so blithesome, or so debonair, as when she is the gazetted about-to-be bride of the man of her girlish choice. For

During her engagement, a girl is owned and petted; and Owners.h.i.+p and petting are dear to women--whether young or old:

Owners.h.i.+p is proof, at all events, that she is of value to the man--else the man would not sought to make her his; and

Petting is proof that the man properly appreciates the value. Yet meanwhile, anomalous as it may sound,

The engaged girl is still her own property, and is practically free.

Besides,

What more delectable to a girl than to have captured and kept a real man?

This flatters her, uplifts her, makes of her a woman at once: she holds her head higher she carries herself with an air; she shows off her capture. Besides, also,

The engaged girl is looked up to by her compeers, is congratulated y her elders. Even if she keeps the engagement secret, these compeers and congratulatresses do not (sometimes, alas! To her detriment).--In addition to all this,

What delight so unique as the preparation of the trousseau! 239 Trousseau!--'T is a name of mystical import to man.

A woman's trousseau is symbol of two things--and perhaps dimly indicative of a third:

(i) it proves--what needs no proof--that, such is the unselfish nature of Love, never can it give enough, never enhance too much the gifts it gives. Accordingly the bride goes to the man appareled and bedecked to the best of her ability;

(ii) It is a subtle tribute to the sensibility of man, of the man in love, who is stimulated and pleased by dainty, it may be diaphanous, raiment. Lastly, since even that supernal thing Love is not unconcerned with matters practical,

(iii) It bespeaks as prophetic suspicion of the little fact that perhaps it is well to go to her husband's home abundantly provided with dainty raiment, inasmuch as the man not in love is not always so delicately sensible of their need.

A girl's first engagement is peculiarly sweet: long does she remember, long meditatively dwell upon, its pettiest incidents. For, if any man dared give utterance to so outrageous an a.s.sumption,

The emoluments of a promise to marry are as sweet to the donatress as undoubtedly they are to the accepter.--And why not, pray? Nevertheless,

A certain practical sobriety supervenes upon subsequent affairs of the heart. For

The recurrence of love is apt to spoil its romance. And yet--and yet--

It is a question which woman after woman has put herself, in vain, whether 't would have been wiser to have accepted and retained the romantic love of unthinking youth, or to have waited for the more sober affection of the years of discretion.

Perhaps a girl hardly knows all that is meant by that thing called "love"