BRASS BUTTONS

Inasmuch as language is the least eloquent and effective mode of expressing Love, and inasmuch as Love is commonly inspired in woman by the possession of qualities which she lacks, it is obvious that Shakspere did not show his usual insight into human nature when he wrote—

It seems, indeed, quite probable that Bacon wrote those two lines; if Shakspere had written them he would have said—

The extraordinary infatuation for military uniforms shown by women of all times and countries is one of the most obscure problems in mental and social philosophy. Whenever an officer, though ever so humble in rank, is present at a ball or other social gathering, all other men, be they merchants, politicians, lawyers, physicians, artists, students, ministers, are simply “nowhere.”

What is the cause of this singular infatuation? Is it the colour-harmony formed by the complementary blue cloth and yellow buttons? No, for various officials, as well as messenger boys, wear similar uniforms without making any special impression on the feminine heart. Is it the beauty or the wit of the soldier? No, for he may be as stupid as a log, and red-nosed and smallpox-pitted, without losing a jot of his popularity. Nor can it be his valour, for he has perhaps never yet been opposite the “business end” of a rifle, as they say out West. Nor, again, is it likely that women admire soldiers from an inherited sense of gratitude for the services they rendered in former warlike times in protecting their great-great-grandmothers from the enemy’s barbarity; for woman’s gratitude is not apt to be so very retrospective, while gratitude itself is less apt to inspire Love than aversion.

Whatever may be the cause of this mysterious phenomenon, the fact remains that officers are woman’s ideals. Hence the first and most important hint to those who would win a woman’s Love is: Put brass buttons on your coat, have it dyed blue, and wear epaulettes and a waxed moustache. This love-charm has never been known to fail.

CONFIDENCE AND BOLDNESS

Women secretly detest bashful men. It is their own duty, prescribed by etiquette, to be passive, shy, and diffident; hence if men were shy and diffident too, no advances would be made, and all progress in Love-making would be retarded.

Women love courage. He who robs lions of their hearts can easily win a woman’s.

says Shakspere; and Chesterfield remarks À propos, that “that silly sanguine notion which is firmly entertained here, that one Englishman can beat three Frenchmen, encourages and has sometimes enabled one Englishman in reality to beat two.”

Ovid knew the value of boldness. And although his object was not to teach how to win permanent Love, but how to get honey without taking care of the bees, yet his psychology is correct, and agrees with Goethe’s aphorism that “if thou approachest women with tenderness thou winnest them with a word; but he who is bold and saucy comes off better.”

Perhaps this is one reason why officers are so successful in Love, for several of them have been known to be bold and saucy.

Another reason may be that their pursuit is more distinctively and exclusively masculine than any other profession.

What, for instance, could be more delightfully masculine, i.e. mediÆval, than the way in which, according to the Chronicon Turonense, William the Conqueror wooed and won Mathilde, the daughter of Count Baldwin, Prince of Flanders. At first he was unsuccessful, “for the young girl,” says Professor Scherr, “declared proudly she would not marry a bastard. Then William rode to Bruges, waylaid Mathilde, attacked her when she came from church, pulled her long hair, and maltreated her with his fists and with kicks, after which heroic performance he made his escape. Strange to say, this peculiar mode of Love-making imposed so greatly on the beauty that she declared with tears in her eyes that she would marry no one but the Norman Duke, whom she actually did marry. A parallel case may be found in the German Nibelungenlied (str. 870 and 901).”

Since, according to the old philosophy, human nature, including Love and Love-making, is the same at all times and in all countries, it follows that a modern lover, after donning his brass buttons, should administer his sweetheart a sound thrashing. That will make her mellow and docile.

PLEASANT ASSOCIATIONS

The Germans, it is well known, are deficient in Gallantry, at least in conjugal life, and often treat their wives more as upper servants than as companions. Perhaps it was the unconscious desire to justify this conjugal attitude that induced one of the leading German psychologists, Horwicz, to pen these lines:—

“Love can only be excited by strong and vivid emotions, and it is almost immaterial whether these emotions are agreeable or disagreeable. The Cid wooed the proud heart of Donna Ximene, whose father he had slain, by shooting one after another of her pet pigeons. Such persons as arouse in us only weak emotions, or none at all, are obviously least likely to incline us toward them.... Our aversion is most apt to be bestowed on individuals who, as the phrase goes, are ‘neither warm nor cold’; whereas impulsive, choleric people, though they may readily offend us, are just as capable of making us warmly attached to them.”

How that modern genius, who lived two thousand years ago and called himself Ovid, would have opened his eyes in wonder at this German-mediÆval Art of Love! He, queer fellow, believed that a lover should never be otherwise than pleasantly associated in his sweetheart’s mind. If she is spoiled by over-indulgence, do not, he says in effect, take away her dainties with your own hand. If she is unwell, do not hand her the bitter medicine in person: “Let your rival mix the cup for her.”

So long as the professional manslayer is the highest ideal of woman’s tender heart, lovers will do well to follow mediÆval methods of Courtship and make themselves as disagreeable as possible. When the millennium arrives, and wholesale duels to avenge offended national “honour” will, like private duels to avenge individual “honour,” have become obsolete, then the Ovidian psychology of Love will begin to prevail. Then will the lover endeavour to avoid all harshness and to be only agreeably associated in the mind of his goddess—through bright, cheerful conversation, harmless and sincere compliments, mutual enjoyment of excursions and artistic entertainments, the avoidance of disagreeable topics, of jealous suspicions and reproaches, etc.; hoping thus to become the nucleus around which her dreams of matrimonial happiness will gradually crystallise.

PERSEVERANCE

Persistence alone may win a woman where all other means fail. She may dream of an ideal lover and vainly wait for his appearance for several years; and in the meantime the image of her ever-present suitor will become brighter and more inviting in her mind. For is not perseverance, is not unflagging devotion to a single aim, one of the noblest of manly attributes, a guarantee of success in life and the highest test of genuine passion?

Perseverance may neutralise more than one refusal.

asks Shakspere; and Byron teaches that she

The fact that a proposal is the sincerest compliment a man can pay a woman, contributes not a little to make a second proposal more acceptable. A third should rarely be attempted. The first proposal may have been refused more from momentary embarrassment than from real indifference. The second, being weighted by reflection, is generally final, though numerous exceptions have occurred; yet in such cases it is probable that the woman gives her hand without her heart, having at last discovered that her heart is impervious to all Love. There are hundreds of thousands of such women, and some of them are very sweet and pretty. The fault lies in their shallow education.

FEIGNED INDIFFERENCE

Of every ten disappointed lovers seven might say: Had I been a less submissive slave, I might have been a more successful suitor.

“It is a rule of manners,” says Emerson, “to avoid exaggeration.... In man or woman the face and the person lose power when they are on the strain to express admiration.”

In other words, one of the ways of winning Love is through stolidity and indifference, real or feigned.

Were women the paragons of subtle insight they are painted, they would favour those who are most visibly affected by their charms, as being best able to appreciate and cherish them. There are such women—a few; but the majority are partial coquettes, to whom Love is known only as a form of Vanity, who neglect a man already won, and reserve their sweetest smiles for those that seem less submissive. The artificial dignity under which so many young society men hide their mental vacuity has an irresistible fascination for the average society girl. And the high collar, which helps to keep the head in a dignified position, unswerved by emotion, is responsible for innumerable conquests.

Ergo, to win a society girl’s heart, wear a high collar, appear awfully dignified and stolid, and show not the slightest interest in anything. Above all, if you are of superior intelligence, carefully conceal the fact. Brains are not “good form” in society; for what’s the use of having flint where there is no steel to strike a spark? “Stolidity,” says Schopenhauer, “does not injure a man in a woman’s eye: rather will mental superiority, and still more genius, as something abnormal, have an unfavourable influence.”

A passage from Diderot’s Paradox of Acting (Pollock’s translation) may be cited in illustration of Schopenhauer’s remark.

“Take two lovers, both of whom have their declarations to make. Who will come out of it best? Not I, I promise you. I remember that I approached the beloved object with fear and trembling; my heart beat, my ideas grew confused, my voice failed me, I mangled all I said; I cried yes for no; I made a thousand blunders; I was inimitably inept; I was absurd from top to toe, and the more I saw it the more absurd I became. Meanwhile, under my very eyes, a gay rival, light-hearted and agreeable, master of himself, pleased with himself, losing no opportunity for the finest flattery, made himself entertaining and agreeable, enjoyed himself; he implored the touch of a hand which was at once given him, he sometimes caught it without asking leave, he kissed it once and again. I the while, alone in a corner, avoided a sight which irritated me, stifling my sighs, cracking my fingers with grasping my wrists, plunged in melancholy, covered with a cold sweat, I could neither show nor conceal my vexation. People say of love that it robs witty men of their wit, and gives it to those who had none before: in other words, makes some people sensitive and stupid, others cold and adventurous.”

Another specialist in Love-lore, Lord Byron, discourses on this text in five pithy lines—

And even the king of German metaphysicians, old Kant, understood this feminine foible, which may have been the reason why he never found a wife: “An actor,” he says, “who remains unmoved, but possesses a powerful intellect and imagination, may succeed in producing a deeper impression by his feigned emotion than he could by real emotion. One who is truly in love is, in presence of his beloved, confused, awkward, and anything but fascinating. But a clever man who merely plays the rÔle of a lover may do it so naturally as to easily ensnare his poor victim; simply because, his heart being unmoved, his head remains clear, and he can, therefore, make the most of his wits and his cleverness in presenting the counterfeit of a lover.”

“The counterfeit of a lover.” It is he, then, whom women, according to these French, English, and German witnesses, encourage, instead of the true lover. So that women are not only less capable of deep Love than men, but they do not even promote the growth and survival of Love by favouring the men most deeply affected by it. And the fault, be it said once more, lies in the superficial education not only of their intellect but of their emotions, for the heart can only be reached and refined through the brain. The average woman, being incapable of feeling Love, is incapable of appreciating it when she finds it in a man. She sees only its ridiculous side—and ridicule is fatal, even to Love. Ridicule killed Love in France, which to-day is the most loveless country in the civilised world, its women the most frivolous and heartless,—and its population gradually diminishing.

The ridiculous exaggerations of a lover are indeed harmless if the girl is in love too, for then she does not see them; but to one who has yet to win Love, as girls are now constituted, they are fatal. Perhaps this is the reason why the list of men of genius who failed in their truest Love is so extraordinarily large: for, their Love being more ardent than that of others, they were unable to restrain its excesses and feign indifference; while another way in which they “lost power” was through their extravagant admiration of Beauty, which put their faces “on the strain” to express it.

However this may be, lovers should keep in mind this paradoxical rule, which follows as a corollary from the foregoing discussion:

In order to win a woman, first cure yourself of your passion, then, having won her through feigned indifference (which is easy), fall in love again and bag her before she has had time to discover your change of feeling.

The only difficulty herein lies in the cure. Should this be found impossible, even with the aid of our next chapter, one last resource is open to the lover. Says La BruyÈre: “Quand l’on a assez fait auprÈs d’une femme pour devoir l’engager, il y a encore une ressource, qui est de ne plus rien faire; c’est alors qu’elle vous rappelle.” In other words, if you have failed to win her love, with all your attentions, change your policy: leave her alone, and she will be sure to recall you.

This trait is not simply the outcome of feminine perverseness or coquetry. The explanation lies deeper. Every sensible woman, be she ever so vain and accustomed to flattery, is painfully conscious of certain defects, physical or mental. “Has he discovered them?” she will anxiously ask herself when the sly lover suddenly withdraws; “I must recover his good opinion.” So she sets herself the task of fascinating and pleasing him; and this desire to please (Gallantry) being one of the constituent parts of Love, it is apt to be soon joined by the other symptoms which make up the romantic passion.

COMPLIMENTS

exclaims one of Shakspere’s characters; and again—

There is one advantage in writing about the romantic passion. Love is such a tissue of paradoxes, and exists in such an endless variety of forms and shades that you may say almost anything about it you please, and it is likely to be correct. So again here. It is true, no doubt, that skill in the art of flattery helps a man to win a woman’s goodwill, but how does this rhyme with the doctrine that Feigned Indifference is the lover’s sharpest weapon?

Answer: A compliment is not so much an expression of Love as of simple Æsthetic admiration; or else it may spring from the flatterer’s desire to show off his wit. A man may compliment a woman for whom he does not feel the slightest Love; and women know it. Therefore even a coquette does not despise and ignore a man who flatters her, as she invariably does one whose actions brand him as her captive and slave.

At the same time, since the desire to be considered beautiful is the strongest passion in a woman’s heart, the avenue to that heart may often be found by a man who can convince her honestly that she is considered beautiful by himself and others. For, as every man of ability has moments when he doubts his genius, so every woman has moments when she doubts her beauty and longs to see it in the mirror of a masculine eye.

The most common mistake of lovers is to compliment a woman on her most conspicuous points of beauty. This has very much the same effect on her as telling Rubinstein he is a wonderful pianist. He knows that better than you do, and has been told so so many million times that he is sick and tired of hearing it again. But show him that you have discovered some special subtle detail of excellence in his performance or compositions that had escaped general notice, and his heart is yours at once and for ever. A lover can have no difficulty in discovering such subtle charms in his sweetheart, for Cupid, while blinding him to her defects, places her beauties under a microscope.

A man who attends a social gathering comes home pleased, not at having heard a number of bright things, but in proportion to his own success in amusing the company. On the same principle, if you give a girl—especially one who mistrusts her conversational ability—a chance to say a single bright thing, she will love you more than if you said a hundred clever things to her.

Sincerity in compliments is essential; else all is lost. It is useless to try to convince a woman with an ugly mouth or nose that those features are not ugly. She knows they are ugly, as well as Rubinstein knows when he strikes a wrong note. “Very ugly or very beautiful women,” says Chesterfield, “should be flattered on their understanding, and mediocre ones on their beauty.”

A clever joke is never out of place. You may intimate to a comparatively plain woman that she is good-looking, and if she retorts with a sceptical answer, you may snub her and score ten points in Love by telling her you pity her poor taste.

Indeed, the art of successful flattery, especially with modern self-conscious girls, consists in the ability of giving “a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of playful raillery,” as Coleridge puts it. Conundrums are very useful. For instance, Angelina is patting a dog. “Do you know why all dogs are so fond of you?” asks Adolphus. Angelina gives it up. “Because dogs are the most intelligent of all animals.” Angelina goes to Paris, and Adolphus enjoys his last walk with her. They pass a weeping willow. “Why are we two like this tree?” She gives it up again. “A weeping willow is graceful and melancholy; you are graceful, I melancholy.”

“How old am I?” asks Angelina. “I don’t know. Judging by your conversation thirty-five, by your looks nineteen.”

Tell a woman—casually, as it were—of the effect of her charms on a third party, and it will please her more than a bushel of your neatest compliments. As Lessing remarks, Homer gives us a more vivid sense of Helen’s beauty by noting its effect even on the Trojan elders, than he could have done by the most minute enumeration of her charms. Put your flatteries into actions rather than words—“mettre la flatterie dans les actions et non en paroles”—is Balzac’s advice. But “flattery in actions” is simply another name for Gallantry.

There is no danger that the subtlest compliment will ever escape notice. In the discovery of praise the commonest mind has the quickness of genius.

LOVE-LETTERS

The great trouble with compliments is that they have an annoying habit of occurring to the mind about ten or twenty minutes after the natural opportunity for getting them off has passed away. It is here that Love-letters come to the rescue. They enable a man to excogitate the most excruciatingly subtle and hyperbolic compliments, and then “lead up to them” most naturally.

There is an old superstition that Love-letters must be incoherent trash to be genuine evidences of passion. When Keats’s Love-letters to Fanny Brawne were sold at auction, a spicy journalist commented as follows on the occasion:—

“It is open to question whether, like so many of the letter-writers of the age of which Keats inherited the traditions, the singer of Endymion had not a shrewd eye to posterity when he wrote the laboured compositions which the world regards as the record of his wooing. The manuscript is painfully correct, the punctuation worthy of a printer’s reader, the capitals much nicer than fiery lovers usually form, and the periods rounded with painful care. Like so many cultivators of the art of letter-writing, the sensitive poet, ‘who was snuffed out by a review,’ seems to have copied the gush, which last week sold for ten times more than Endymion fetched, before he committed it to the fourpenny post. Hence the veriest scrawl, the most illegible postcard of these times is, as an index to the writer’s character, infinitely more valuable than the ponderous pieces of rhetoric which last century passed for love-making between Strephon, who quotes the elegant Tully, and Chloe, who makes free use of the ‘Elegant Extracts.’ Duller fustian than such priggish love-letters it is hard to conceive. They remind one of nothing so much as the epistles copied out of The Complete Letter-Writer, and must recall to some middle-aged men certain painful experiences of those salad days when their young affections suffered a sudden blight by missives of so severely correct an order that they suggest the idea of having undergone maternal supervision.”

Yet why, pray, should Keats not have written his Love-letters so carefully and copied them so neatly? Is it not a fact that when a man is in love he cares more to make a pleasing impression on one particular person than on all the rest of the world combined? and that even his ambition and fame, for which he labours so hard, seem valuable in his eyes solely as a means of winning Her Love? And if Love is a deeper passion, even in a poet, than ambition, why should he not go to the extent even of taking notes and utilising his very best conceits in his Love-letters? The truth is, in the writing of Love-letters everything depends on the man’s habits. If he is accustomed to writing carelessly, his Love-letters will probably be hasty and slovenly enough to suit orthodox notions on this subject. But if he is a literary artist, he will probably polish his billets-doux more than anything else con amore, considering the probable effect on her mind of every sentence. And although the thought of future publication may enter his mind, it will appear as the veriest trifle compared with the more important object of winning a woman’s Love by a display of complimentary wit and passionate protestations of undying affection.

Sir Richard Steele evidently did not believe that Love-letters, to be genuine, must be slovenly. In one of his letters to Miss Scurlock he apologises for not having time to revise what he had written. In another letter he exclaims: “How art thou, oh my soul, stolen from thyself! how is all my attention broken! my books are blank paper, and my friends intruders.” Again: “It is the hardest thing in the world to be in love, and yet attend business. As for me, all that speak to find me out, and I must lock myself up, or other people will do it for me. A gentleman asked me this morning, ‘What news from Holland?’ and I answered, ‘She is exquisitely handsome.’ Another desired to know when I had been last at Windsor; I replied, ‘She designs to go with me.’” And once more: “It is to my lovely charmer I owe that many noble ideas are continually affixed to my words and actions: it is the natural effect of that generous passion to create in the admirers some similitude of the object admired; thus, my dear, am I every day to improve from so sweet a companion.”

The first score or so of Keats’s Love-letters have the ring of true gold. Here are a few specimens in which the thermometer of endearments rises steadily from My Dearest Lady, through My Sweet Girl, My Dear Girl, My Dearest Girl, My Sweet Fanny, to My Sweet Love, Dearest Love and Sweetest Fanny. In the very first letter he writes:—

“Ask yourself, my love, whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom. Will you confess this in the letter you must write immediately? and do all you can to console me in it—make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me—write the softest words and kiss them, that I may at least touch my lips where yours have been. For myself, if I do not know how to express my devotion to so fair a form, I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were butterflies, and lived but three summer days—three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”

“All I can bring you is a swooning admiration of your beauty.”

“I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks—your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.”

“I hate the world: it batters too much the wings of my self-will, and would I could take a sweet poison from your lips to send me out of it. From no others would I take it.”

“At Winchester I shall get your letters more readily; and it being a cathedral city, I shall have a pleasure, always a great one to me when near a cathedral, of reading them during the service up and down the aisle.”

All this is in the true Shaksperian key of Romantic Love, as are the Love-letters of Burns, Byron, Moore, Heine, BÜrger, Lenau, and most other poets. Room must be made here for a few extracts from Lenau’s letters to his love, which, in some respects, resemble those of Keats—equally polished, poetic, deep, and sincere:—

“It makes me melancholy to see how incapable I am of sympathizing with the pleasures of my friends. My Love goes out afar towards you; it hearkens and listens and stares in the distance for you, and takes no note of all the love by which it is surrounded here. I am truly ill. I constantly think of you alone and death. It often seems to me as if my time had expired. I cannot write poetry, I cannot rejoice in anything, cannot hope, can only think of you and death. The other day I wrote to you to take good care of your health—though I myself feel so little desire to live.”

“The whole evening I was unable to think of anything but of you and the possibility of losing you. The large crowd of people seemed to have assembled on purpose to show me most painfully what a mere nothing the world would be to me if I had to part from you. I constantly saw but your face, your lovely, divine eye.”

“Alexander wishes me to go to the baths at Leuk with him. He is quite ill. But I cannot go. If I have to see Switzerland without you, I prefer not to see it at all.”

“My poetic composition is in a bad way. Though a thought sprouts in me here and there, it withers before it has reached maturity. When I go to see you I shall bring along a dry wreath of prematurely-faded poetic blossoms, and make them revive in your presence, as there are warm fountains dipped into which faded flowers blossom again.”

“I have lost all pleasure in other people when you are absent. If you had only been at Weinsberg! Even the Æolian harps did not produce the usual impression on me.” It is noticeable how the overtone of Monopoly is accented in all these plaints.

“I have found in your companionship more evidence of an eternal life than in all my investigations and studies of nature. Whenever, in a happy hour, I believed I had reached the climax of Love and the proper moment for death, since a more delicious moment could never follow: it was on each occasion an illusion, for another hour followed in which I loved you still more deeply. These ever new, ever deeper abysses of life convince me of its immortality. To-day I saw in your eyes the full measure of the divine. Most distinctly did I perceive to-day that the swelling and sinking of the eye is the breathing of the soul. In an eye of such beauty as yours we can see, as in a prophetic hieroglyphic, the essence of which some day our immortal body will consist. If I die, I shall depart rich, for I have seen what is most beautiful in the world.”

“The rose you gave me at parting has a most delicious fragrance, as if it were a Good-Night from you! Sleep well, dearest heart! Preserve the second rose as a memento. I love you immeasurably.”

No doubt the average Love-letters read in courts of justice in breach of promise cases, to the intense amusement of the audience, are very different in character from these poetic effusions. But to say that, because the average Love-letters are ludicrous, therefore all Love-letters, to be genuine, must be ludicrous and incoherent, is the very Bedlam of absurdity. What makes common Love-letters so laughable is the fact that the writer, previously a paragon of prosiness, suddenly gets some poetic fancies and tries to put them into language. But as the writing of poetry—in verse or prose—is a more difficult art than piano-playing, first attempts cannot be otherwise than harrowing or amusing. On the other hand, just as a pianist can never improvise so soulfully as when he is in love, so a poet will write his best prose in the letters addressed to his love; the only ludicrous feature being that extravagant and exclusive admiration of one person which is the very essence of Love.

Surely Hawthorne was neither “insincere” nor “thinking of posterity” when he finished one of his Love-letters with this poetic conceit, expressed in his best prose style:—

“When we shall be endowed with spiritual bodies I think they will be so constituted that we may send thoughts and feelings any distance, in no time at all, and transfuse them warm and fresh into the consciousness of those we love. Oh, what happiness it would be, at this moment, if I could be conscious of some purer feeling, some more delicate sentiment, some lovelier fantasy than could possibly have had its birth in my own nature, and therefore be aware that you were thinking through my mind and feeling through my heart! Perhaps you possess this power already.”

This is true epistolary Love-making—the sublimated essence of complimentary Gallantry.

LOVE-CHARMS FOR WOMEN

As women are not allowed to make Love actively, they resort to various cunning arts with which they indirectly reach the hard hearts of men. Magic is the most potent of these arts, and always has been so considered by women; for, curiously enough, one finds on looking over the folklore of various nations, ancient and modern, that in nineteen cases out of twenty where a Love-charm is spoken of, it is one used by women to win the affection of men.

Probably the real reason why the vast majority of women are so curiously indifferent to the hygienic arts of increasing and preserving Personal Beauty—as shown in their devotion to tight-lacing, their aversion to fresh air, sunshine, and brisk exercise—is because they know they can infallibly win a man’s Love by the use of some simple powder or potion. It is well known that the Roman poet Lucretius took his life in an amorous fit caused by a love-potion; and Lucullus lost his reason in the same way. The grandest musical work in existence would never have been written had not BrangÄne given to Tristan and Isolde a love-potion which was so powerful that it made not only both the victims die of the fever of Love, but united them even after death: "For from the grave of Tristan sprang a plant which descended into the grave of Yseult. Cut down thrice by order of the Cornish king, the irrepressible vegetable bloomed verdant as ever next morning, and even now casts its shadow over the tombs of the lovers—

In mediÆval times Personal Beauty was such a rare thing, and created such havoc among men, that the unhappy possessors of it were frequently accused of using forbidden Love-charms, and burnt at the stake as witches.

To-day, thanks to our superior sanitary and educational arrangements, Beauty is such a common affair that it has lost all its effect on the masculine heart; hence girls should carefully note a few of the ways by which a man may be irresistibly fascinated.

Italian girls practise the following method: A lizard is caught, drowned in wine, dried in the sun and reduced to powder, some of which is thrown on the obdurate man, who thenceforth is theirs for evermore.

A favourite Slavonic device is to cut the finger, let a few drops of her blood run into a glass of beer, and make the adored man drink it unknowingly. The same method is current in Hesse and Oldenburg, according to Dr. Ploss. In Bohemia, the girl who is afraid to wound her finger may substitute a few drops of bat’s blood.

Cases are known where invocations to the moon were followed by the bestowal of true Love. And if a girl will address the new moon as follows—

she will dream of him that very night.

A four-leaved clover secretly placed in a man’s shoes will make him the devoted lover of the woman who puts it in.

“Inside a frog is a certain crooked bone, which, when cleaned and dried over the fire on St. John’s Eve, and then ground fine and given in food to the lover, will at once win his love for the administerer.”

If a girl sees a man washing his hands—say at a picnic—and lends him her apron or handkerchief to dry them, he will forthwith declare himself her amorous slave to eternity.

There are men, however, who, owing to some constitutional defect or inherited anomaly, remain unaffected by these and similar arts. Should any woman be so foolish as to crave such a man’s Love, she will do well to bear in mind that Vanity is the backdoor by which every man’s heart may be entered. Thus Byron says of a Venetian flame of his: “But her great merit is finding out mine—there is nothing so amiable as discernment.” “Let her be,” says Thackeray, “if not a clever woman, an appreciator of cleverness in others, which, perhaps, clever folks like better.” “Ne’er,” says Scott,

Rousseau’s last love was inspired by a woman’s admiration of his writings. Balzac, celibate for many years, was at last captured by a woman who returned to a hotel room for a volume of his works she had left there, informing him, without suspecting who he was, that she never travelled without it and could not live without it.

“The story of the marriage of Lamartine,” says the author of Salad for the Solitary, “is also one of romantic interest. The lady, whose maiden name was Birch, was possessed of considerable property, and when past the bloom of youth she became passionately enamoured of the poet from the perusal of his Meditations. For some time she nursed this sentiment in secret, and, being apprised of the embarrassed state of his affairs, she wrote him, tendering him the bulk of her fortune. Touched with this remarkable proof of her generosity, and supposing it could only be caused by a preference for himself, he at once made an offer of his hand and heart. He judged rightly, and the poet was promptly accepted.”accepted.”

Sympathy, beauty, wit, elegant manners, amiability—these are woman’s arrows of Love, ever sure of their aim. “She loved me for the dangers I had passed,” says Othello, “and I loved her that she did pity them.” Or, as Professor Dowden comments on this passage, “the beautiful Italian girl is fascinated by the regal strength and grandeur, and tender protectiveness of the Moor. He is charmed by the sweetness, the sympathy, the gentle disposition the gracious womanliness of Desdemona.”

“The gracious womanliness of Desdemona.” There lies the secret—the charm of charms. It is fortunate that the political viragoes of to-day, who would remove woman from her domestic sphere, have opposed to them the greatest force in the universe—the power of man’s Love! When they have overcome that, they will find it easy to dam the current of the Niagara River, and curb the force of the ocean’s countless breakers.

PROPOSING

Countless as the stars, and only too apposite, are the jokes about lovers who evolve masterpieces of eloquence wherewith to lay their hearts at their idol’s feet; but who, when the crucial moment of the trial arrives, like Beckmesser in Wagner’s comic opera, stutter out the veriest parody of their song of Love. And no wonder, considering what is at stake; for the Yes or No decides whether the lover is to be—literally—the happiest or the unhappiest of all men for weeks or months to come.

Ovid cautions a man not to select a sweetheart in the twilight or lamplight, since “spots are invisible at night and every fault is overlooked; at that time almost every woman is held to be beautiful.”

But proposing is a different matter from selecting. When once the choice is made, and her choice alone remains to be decided, twilight is the only proper time to “pop the question.” For a maiden’s independence and Coyness are inversely related to the degree of light. In the morning, in broad daylight, she can boldly face even the terrible thought of being left an old maid; but in the twilight she feels the need of a man’s protection, and it is at that time that the imagination is least deaf to the whispered and self-suggested fancies of Romantic Love and wedded bliss. A man who proposes in the morning deserves, therefore, to be disappointed.

Nature herself has provided a safeguard against morning proposals. No woman is so beautiful in the daytime as is in the evening; and the moon’s romantic associations are largely due to its magic effect of beautifying the complexion and features of women, and thus urging the lover’s courage to the point of amorous confession.

There is still another reason why a tender and considerate lover should propose in the chiaroscuro of subdued light—to spare her blushes—

Not many years ago a plan was described in the newspapers by which a number of Southern youths who had not the courage to propose were happily mated and wedded. An elderly person was selected, vowed to eternal secrecy, and to him each youth and maiden who was in love confided in writing the name of the beloved. Those couples that had chosen one another were informed of the fact, and went away rejoicing, arm in arm.

A fairy story, on the face of it. A woman would sooner cut off her hand than write with it the secret of her Love before she knew it was returned; and that man that hath a tongue is, I say, no man, if he is afraid to ask for a woman’s hand—or to take it unasked, and let it respond to the touching question. “Love sought is good, but given unsought is better,” says Shakspere. The only true proposals are those where spoken words are dispensed with; where the magnetic thrill of the hands, the eloquence of the tell-tale eyes, draw the lovers into mutual embrace, and lips become glued on lips in unpremeditated ecstasy.

DIAGNOSIS OR SIGNS OF LOVE

Though women may often feel in doubt concerning the intentions of men who pay them attentions, they cannot help recognizing deep Love in a man instantly; for the symptoms, as described in a previous chapter, are absolutely unmistakable. A woman, too, who loves deeply, can hardly help betraying herself, by the sly opportunities she finds for meeting her lover (purely accidental, of course), and by the special pains she takes to make it clear to her friends that she does not care for that man certainly; often also by the fact, pointed out by Jean Paul, that “Love increases man’s delicacy and lessens woman’s”; tempting her occasionally to throw away all prudence and regard for public opinion, in the wild intoxication of her passion and her confidence in her lover.

But in cases of doubt—how is a lover to decide whether it is safe and worth while to proceed? A woman’s Coyness, of course, means nothing, and may have been brought on by an assumption of excessive confidence and boldness on the man’s part. Girls are like wild colts. They may be safely approached to a certain distance, whence one step more will cause them to stampede; but stand still at that point, and before long they will cast away fear and meet you half-way.

Trifles are the only safe tests of Love. For they are not so apt as weighty words and actions to be the outcome of a deliberate coquettish desire to deceive. To ascertain if you are loved—and this holds true for both sexes—allude (with a careless assumption of indifference) to some trifling details of previous conversation or common experience. If she (or he) remembers them all, especially if of remote occurrence, the chances are you are loved.

Shakspere evidently had this in mind when he wrote—