 CHAPTER I. OF HINTS FOR LOVERS This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. HINTS FOR LOVERS by Theodore Arnold Houtain. PLEE. Confession and avoidance. Recording are seldom couched in such terms that they should be taken as they sound precisely, or according to the widest extent of signification, but do commonly need exposition and admit exception, otherwise frequently they would not only clash with reason and experience, but interfere, thwart, and supplant one another. HIZK BARROW The very essence of an aphorism is that slight exaggeration which makes it more biting whilst less rigidly accurate. CHAPTER I. ON GIRLS A Pearl, a Girl. BURNING. There are, of course, girls and girls. Yet at heart they are pretty much alike. In age, naturally, they differ wildly. But this is a thorny subject. Suffice it to say that all men love all girls, the maid or sweet sixteen, equally with a maid of untold age. There is something exasperatingly something or otherish about girls, and they know it, which makes them more something or otherish still. There is no other word for it. A girl is a complicated thing. It is made up of clothes, smiles, a pompadour, things of which space and prudence forbid the enumeration here. These things by themselves do not constitute a girl which is obvious, nor is any one girl without these things which is not too obvious. Where the things end and the girl begins, many men have tried to find out. Many girls would like to be men, except on occasions, and least so they say. But perhaps this is just a part of their something or otherishness. While they should want to be men, men cannot conceive. Men pale before them, go hot and cold before them, run before them and after them, swear by them and at them, and a bit of a chit of a thing in short skirts and lyle-thread stockings will twist able-bodied males round her little finger. It is an open secret that girls are fonder of men than they are of one another, which is very lucky for the men. Girls differ, and the same girl is different at different times. When she is by herself, she is one thing. When she is with other girls, she is another thing. When she is with a lot of men, she is a third sort of thing. When she is with a man. But this baffled even agor the son of Jaketh. As a rule, a man prefers a girl by herself. This is natural. And yet it said that you cannot have too much of a good thing. If this were true, a bevy of girls would be the height of happiness. Yet some men would sooner face the bulls of bashing. Some foolish men, probably poets, have sought for and asserted the existence of the ideal girl. This is sheer nonsense. There is no such thing. And if there were, she could not compare with a real girl, the girl of flesh and blood, which, as some would ought to have said, are excellent things in women. Other men, equally foolish, have regarded girls as play things. I wish these men had tried to play with them. They would have found that they were playing with fire and brimstone. Yet the various spitfire can be wondrous sweet. Sweet? Yes. On the whole, a girl is the sweetest thing known or knowable. On the sixth hole of this terrestrial sphere, nature has produced nothing more adorable than the high-spirited, high-bred girl. Of this, she is quite aware. To our cost, I speak as a man. The consequence is, her price has gone up. And man has to pay high and pay all sorts of things. Isis, sweets, champagne, drives, church goings, and sometimes spot cash. Man are always wishing they knew all about girls. It is a precious good thing that they don't. Not that this is, in any way, disparaging to the girls. The fact is, a girl is an infinite puzzle. And it is this puzzle that, among other things, tickles the men and rouses the curiosity. What a man doesn't know about a girl would fill a Saratoga trunk. What he does know about her would go into her work box. The littlest girl is a little woman. No boy knows this, and precious few grown-up men. Thus, many a grown-up man plays with a girl, then finds himself in love with her. As to the girl, always the girl knows whether the play is leading. She probably chooses the game. Very late in life does a man learn the truth and significance of the ancient proverb that kissing goes by favor. For the masculine mind is the slave of law and justice. Aphrodite never heard of law or justice. She was born at sea. That is to say, few are the men who at some time in their lives have not wondered at the vagaries of girlish complacence, the foolish, the narrow-duel, the bully, the careless, the cruel. It is to these often that a girl's caress is given, and, curiously enough, that is, curiously enough as it seems to provide love-lawing men, should the favored one be openly convicted, that alters not one whit his statue with a girl. For a girl having given her heart never recalls it not holy. She may regret she never recoils. In other words, to the man of her own free, lawless choice a girl is always loyal. To subsequent and subordinate attachments she is dutiful. So, even the renegade, if loved by a girl, will be upheld by that girl, through thick and thin. Secretly it may be, for often the girl, nevertheless devoidably, and only under compulsion, will he listen to the detractor. He may desert her, or, if he sticks to her, he may beat her. No matter. He holds her heart in the hollow of his hand. But, but, few things mystify poor law-abiding man than this, that the central, the profoundest, the most pretentious puzzle of the universe, the wheel of woe of too high aspiring, much enduring, youthful human souls should be the sport of what seems to him the various and merest chance. The unconscious search of sweet sixteen is for, in mathematical language, which will not sophisticate her, the integral of love. Yet, in the short years between sixteen and twenty, a girl's love will undergo rapid and startling developments. A girl with lots of brothers has more chances of matrimony than a girl with none. She knows more of men, especially of the weaknesses and idiosyncrasies. And to know the weaknesses and idiosyncrasies of men is perhaps a wife's chief task, unless they be to put up with them. Often enough, their freckled and frigging girl wins over the professional beauty. Sometimes, grown-up girls are just as shy as little ones, and for the same reasons because there is no one who knows how to play with them. Girls often play with love, as if it were one of the amusements of life. But a day comes when love proves itself the most sensuous thing on earth, and a girl is quick to discover the kind of love that is required of her. As a rule, many a girl who has been so put to it to prove herself wholehearted. For, of course, always every suitor expects wholeheartedness, and this every girl instinctively knows. Indeed, is not a half-hearted love or half-hearted acceptance of love a contradiction in terms. A certain measure of the sophisticated or unsophistication of a youthful damsel may be found in her manner of receiving the attentions of a stranger in a station different from her own. Young women, themselves but rarely unsophisticated, view with a certain pitying sort of curiosity, unsophisticatedness in men, and a young man's unsophisticatedness, it is a great delight to a woman to eradicate. Yet, a girl regards with complex emotions the man who had blossomed under the genial warmth of her rays. The flattery to own powers is counterbalanced by the evidence of lack of power in him. A girl thinks she detects flippancy and seriousness. A woman thinks she detects seriousness and flippancy. What would be conduct decidedly risque in a city-miss is often innocent playfulness in a country made. Between the ages of 16 and 18, girls play with love as if it were a doll. Very soon after 20, they discover it is a dynamo. This is why an early and clandestine engagement often works more havoc than happiness. For, either one of the parties to the concealed compact receives or pays attention which perturbed the other, or a subsequent and acknowledged lover looks a scans at the previous entanglement, since even if a clandestine engagement, as is usually the case, is merely a flirtation with the emuluments which accompany a promise to marry these emuluments, but not nice things full of subsequent and avowed lover, whether masculine or feminine, to think upon. Lastly, a laxity with regard to the claims of courtship is apt to breed a laxity with regard to the claims of wedlock. In short, flirtations by clandestine engagements are under front to love. Accordingly, an engagement ring should be as attached as much importance. As to the wedding ring, indeed, a difficult and delicate path is it that a girl has to tread through life, and often enough a dangerous. Yet with extraordinary deafness she treads it. She must win her a mate, yet has to pretend that the mate wins her. She makes believe to be captured, yet has herself to be intent on the chase. To be wooed and wedded is the law of her being. Yet not for one moment dare she to exhibit too great an alacrity to obey the law. But she knows instinctively that an easy victory prognosticates a fickle victor. Is she abundantly endowed with the very attributes that make for wife and motherhood? A strong and swaying passion and an affection unbounded. She must hold them in leash with exemplary patience. For, alas, I've been given the reign for a single passing moment instead of being accounted unto her her righteousness. They work her ruin. She must win her one man, and she must win him for life. But she cannot pick or choose, for she must wait to be asked. If she make test of many admirers, she is described as a flirt. If, conscientious and demure, she await her fate, a desirable fate is by no means assured. In truth it seems that too often a girl must disassemble, hateful as disassemblance in men. To his a hard road, indeed, that a girl has to travel. To win her a fellow fairer for life. She must go out of her way to accommodate so many travelers, and this one is lured by this, and that one by that, and another by something unnoticed by the throng. But, as she dissembles one iota too much, her fellow fairers look a scance, and he who eventually joins her for good, abrades her, for that by which she won. Dissemblance is indeed at once the boon and the bane of a girl. Without it she thinks too much overlooked. Often enough a preposterous assumption. With it she is looked upon too much, and always, always a girl has to pretend that never did she descend to dissemblance, which, nevertheless, is sometimes absolutely true, for, just now and then there happens that miracle of miracles where there flames up in the man, and there flames up in the maid, in both at once unaided and unlooked for, that divine and supermundane spark which moulders limit in every youthful breast, when maid and man take mutual fire at touch of hands and look of eyes, fire lit at that vestal altar which knows no source and burns for eye. Recording by Jennifer Stearns, Concord, New Hampshire. For man, the overgrown boy, life has commonly two and only two sides, work and play. Happy he who has for a helpmate, one who possesses the faculty of increasing a zeal for the first, and of adding a zest to the second. Wherein, O woman, thou mayest happily find the twofold secret of thy life work, for man is a greedy animal, he wants all or nothing, and fortunately for him, women tacitly extol man's greed, they will not be shared any more than they will share. There is something canine in the masculine nature, like a dog over a bone, it snarls at the very approach of a rival. It is curious, but it is true, that proud man becomes prouder, and more curious still, at the same time humbler, when weak woman gives him something, a look, a smile, a locket, her hair, a kiss, herself. The greater a man's faith in himself, the greater his mistress hers in him, and perhaps, the greater his mistress her faith in a man, the greater his in himself, for a woman's faith in a man works wonders. A man to whom a woman cannot look up, she cannot love, yet it is marvellous how a woman contrives to find something to look up to in a man. Many men forget the artistic tendency of the feminine temperament, a tendency which shows itself in many ways, their love of pretty things, of pretty ways, and of pretty words, from which three alone we may deduce the rule that, 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 embarrassments 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 thinks he can play one woman off against another. For in matters of emotional finesse the masculine instance is nowhere. It is blinded, be fogged, be fooled at every turn. Heaven helped 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 great soever his acumen is astuteness or his zeal. A woman, a racehorse, 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 uncomplimented by a 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 not, if there be not at his side a sharer of his wheel. 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 one? Not one of these things would he do. CHAPTER III. ON WOMEN. Eryt Defanin. Shiller. From woman who ere 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 mean. 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 succumbs 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 passion, of sympathy or charm, is to say nothing saves that we know not. What it is. All unknown to herself, it wraps its own round with airs. The witch to breathe uplifts the spirit. And yet, maybe, 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 exalts. 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 snatches 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. Availed in mysterious force. Sometimes the monocle, 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 women were not such a mystery, she would not be such an attraction. For again, what is known is ignored. But women need have no cause for apprehension. Besides, men may be classified, 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 races 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 of the mystic flame that burns ever in the vestal breast. Every true woman's orbit 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. A woman's heart is an unfathomable ocean, nothing ever filled it, no one ever plumbed it. At the surface are glancing waves, or flying spume, or it may be raging billows. Beneath our silent depths, invisible to man, a thousand streams flow into it, in vain. Towards varying coastlines it bears itself variously. Here, placid and content, there, dashing furious. But none ever stamped his marked upon its brim, and always it remains the refluent, reluctant sea. Of it man knows only the waves that break or ripple at his feet. It betrays no secrets. It asks not to be understood. Storm and calm, but stir or still its surface. And what things it hides forever engulfed? No one may learn. Subtle, yet mighty. An eternal and entrancing mystery to man. A man's heart is the enclosing shore, measurable, impressionable, definite, and overt. Thinking to house that sea, shaping it, overlooking it, and staying and governing its tides. Yet changed by it, crumbling before it, yielding to it, at once its guardian and its slave. Yet perhaps the placidess of seas is that which is wholly landlocked. Women, apparently, were made for men. Men for themselves. Certainly men seem to carry out this design of nature, that they should be ministered to by women. A woman asks a woman questions in order to discover something. She asks a man questions in order to discover the man. The last thing that a woman will risk is her personal appearance, which is saying a good deal, for a woman will risk an interview at an unseasonable hour, but not in an unseasonable frock. Never, never take a woman a pied de la lete. Women's rights are to be loved. Women's duties are to love. There is always something sovereign and monarchial about a woman. Like a queen's her wishes are her commands, and in matrimony women's sovereignty is not abdicated. By no means it is only transformed from an absolute into a constitutional monarch. She acts then, by and with, the advice of her first lord. This is the ideal state. Women's true function as a citizen in this world is to spur men onto high and noble action. And this, quite unconsciously, she does. Women's true function as a woman in the world is to evoke man's most fervid emotions and at the same time to keep them at their highest level. And this she also does, perhaps not quite so unconsciously. They are who call women illogical. Feminine logic is inexorable, but it proceeds per saltum. It is man who has laboriously to reason step by step. The most wayward woman craves control. To let a woman have her own way is interpreted by her as indifference, and the surest way to fail to please a woman is to let her do what she pleases. Women is born to acting as the sparks fly upward. And what a woman really is, nobody knows, least of all herself. To see a woman as she really is, one must see her with her babe. For it is curious, but it is true, that not even before the passionate and accepted lover, to whom she has utterly devoted herself, can a woman bear her heart, as can she to her babe. Perhaps we may go so far as to say that motherhood always partially eclipses lifehood. When the child comes, the man stands aside. For it is not within the capability of man to evoke or to develop the totality of woman. There are feminine potentialities he is powerless to awake. There is a portion of womanliness always hidden from him. To her babe alone, she opens the innermost recesses of her soul. For him she wears no masks, affect no accent, plays no part. Even her features take on a different and unique expression before the offspring of her womb. Never is she more womanly, never so strong, never so quite, never so self-contained, never so completely herself, and never so beautify when bending over her helpless infant son. And naturally, for say what one will, motherhood is the goal of womanhood. And howsoever she comes by it, a woman's birthing, is always to her that holy thing. So no one knows what a woman is like, so she is a mother. In other words, motherhood reveals womanhood. And be it remembered, there be childless women, both spinsters and wives, who could mother mankind in their bosoms. Such women wield great influence, for many a mere man there is has owed his all to a motherly woman. Nor speech not restore, nor expression of feature, nor all combined, will ever reveal the real feelings of a woman. To unbuzz them herself is impossible to woman, do not expect it. For definite and accurate utterance is not given to woman. The chief business of woman is, first, to get married, second, to get others married. It is difficult to say which have played the greater havoc among men. The women with too much conscience, or the woman with none. When a woman repulses, beware. When a woman beckons, be wearier. Women are always prepared for emergencies. With woman, tact and jealousy rarely go hand in hand. Tact and spite never. The only instance in which a woman's tact is apt to be at fault is in detraction of a woman whom she regards as her rival. The instance in which a woman's tact is seen as its best is in deploying the men who she knows are rivals for her hand. And usually, when a woman has more than one admirer, she not only deploys them, but tries to make them advance on echelon. For few things disconcert a woman more than a multiple and simultaneous attack delivered front of front. But the way in which a woman will maneuver her attackers is marvelous. They say a woman cannot argue. Hear her explain an indiscretion. An independent woman is a contradiction in terms. For woman's chief want is to feel that she is wanted. Therefore, it is that with women, cruelty is more easily born than coldness. Indeed, it is astonishing how much downright cruelty a woman will stand from the man she loves or has loved. On the other hand, melancholy also attracts women. Naturally, women are made to soothe, to pity, to comfort, to delight. Therefore, it is that to see a strong man in a weak woman's arms is a sight which should arouse not our laughter, but our, see footnote one, envy, and so it does. Footnote one, common gender, end of footnote one. Let not the simpleton think a woman will sympathize with his simplicity. No woman is a simpleton. What women admire is a subtle combination of forcefulness and gentleness. If a woman has to choose between forcefulness and gentleness, she will sacrifice the latter. And it is astonishing to what lengths forcefulness can go without endangering a woman's admiration. If it sweeps her off her feet, well, and nothing does a woman so clearly exhibit the inherent femininity of her nature, as in the delight with which, at the bottom of her heart, she recalls moments when she has been swept off her feet. She may sigh over them, but generally a woman's sighs are by no means those of remorse. A woman never brings pure reason to bear upon her actions. She acts by sentiment, and she judges her acts by sentiment. This is why even when a woman has deceived and betrayed, she does not regard herself culpable. Always she says to herself, she was driven to it, and therefore she is blameless. Accordingly, a penitent woman is rare. Even when a man, with his so-called superior reason, thinks he has proved her wrong, at the bottom of her heart she knows herself right. Many have been the discussions as to women's most powerful weapon. The simple fact is she is armed capope, see footnote two. Indeed, every woman is a sort of feminine produce. Not only in the myriad shapes she assumes, but also in her amenability to nothing but superior force. Women form, perhaps, where men are concerned. The single exception to the rule that in union there is strength. One woman, often enough, is irrepressible. Two, be the second her own mother, break the charm. An association of women is the feeblest of forces. Footnote two, confer with cowper. End of footnote two. They are all women, and they dart like porcupines. From every part. Ana creontics. All women are rivals. And this they never forget. Consequently mistrusts a truce between hostile ladies. Amongst women, modesty is of infinitely more potent influence than is ability. Yet to a woman's modesty, ability is a wonderfully enhancing setting. And modesty is the most complex, and the most varied of emotions. Perhaps when modesty and frailty go hand in hand, there is no more delectable combination known to men. And Aphrodite has not the subtle charm of a Cynthia. Perhaps this is why such a wondrous halo of romance hangs about in the name of a Heloise, of a Marguerite, of a Mariana Alcofrado, of a Conchetta, of Afragola, of a Catalina, of Robert Le Diablo's Helena, of Izzold, of Lucia of Bologna, the Enchantress of Ottaviano, of Francesca, of Guinevere, of the sweet 17-year-old novice of Andouille, Marguerita, the Phil who was rosy as the mourn, of the Beguine who nursed Captain Shandy, of the Phil the Chumber who walked along the Quay de Conte with Yorick, of Amelia Viviani, the Inspirer of Shelley's most ecstatic lyric of Dryden's mask-loving Lucretia. For, after all, is the star any less starry to the rapt star-gazer when he finds it to be a tremulous planet? Cynthia may have blushed in heaven, but did the blush maker any less lovely to the Latmian? Only in the clear and unclouded pool is the star undimmed, embuzzled. They say a woman is capricious, but the consistency of woman's capriciousness is only exceeded by the capriciousness of man's consistency. Man calls woman capricious simply because he is too stupid to comprehend the laws by which she is swayed. Woman does not call man capricious. The inference is obvious. To women, the profoundest mysteries of the universe give place to two things, a lover and a baby. But perhaps these are the profoundest mysteries of the universe. How many women there be who, deeming themselves fitted to be the consorts of kings, yet comport themselves dutifully, as the wives of wasterals, and indeed given beauty, cleverness, and grace, there is no position to which a woman could not aspire for being woman she is ex-officio, queen. Speak to a woman disparagingly of her sex. She is up in arms. Speak to her disparagingly of a member of her sex, while she will not be up in arms. The reason for her bellicosity in the former case is the fact that a woman always interprets abstract disparagement of her sex personally, and she is perfectly right. It is not only the woman who cannot be accounted quite as stainless as the stars that sometimes trade on their charms. When a strong-sold woman wholly and unreservedly loves, her love will go to lengths passing the comprehension of man, for women prefer and despot to a dependent. It is marvelous to what a pitch of demure-ness features by nature that the most coquettish can be set. A man's features are often a clue to his character, a woman's rarely. So it comes about that the owner of a serific face is often the owner of a temper satanic, nevertheless. Often enough a spice of Diablerie in a woman at once enhances all her charms. It is indeed fortunate for the men that so many women are unaware of the power of their charms. A woman would rather you lie to her concerning herself than that you told her something unpleasant to hear. Some women seem to be envious of some men's familiarity with immorality. It is by a woman that a woman will be first suspected, and it is by a woman she will be last forgiven. The last thing a woman will ask you for is your esteem, and yet cast a slur upon a woman's character, and you are considered indiscreet. Cast a slur upon a woman's personal appearance, and you are considered culpable. Fashion is a woman's sole law, and the surest evidence of strong-mindedness in women is to fly in the fact of fashion. Ridicule is woman's keenest weapon. It is the poisoned arrow in her quiver. Well is it for the men that she never, or so rarely, has recourse to it. A woman is quick to discern the quality of the admiration bestowed upon her. No one, not even herself, knows what a woman will do next. Doubtless is this trite, but it is true as trite, yet men rarely find it out till late in life, and forget it as soon as found out. A woman can say more in a sigh than a man can say in a sermon. Nothing peaks a woman so much as indifference to her favors, indifference to her undiscovered passion she quite otherwise regards. The woman knows the male heart probably better than does it itself. She knows above all things that to hold the heart she must never wholly satisfy it. And many, and multi-form, and marvelous are the ruses by which she accomplishes that end. And yet women there are who firmly believe that were they to try, they could enthrall any man beyond possibility of extrication, and so perhaps they could. But the achievement would require as much unscrupulousness as it would seductiveness. The seductive and unscrupulous woman is the hatred of women. Under the gaze of a group of men whom she knows that her brilliancy dazzles, a woman, like the snow-clad hearth, sparkles under the gaze of a man by whom she knows she is passionately desired, like the same earth under the lordly sun she melts. All women think they can cozen men, few women think they can cozen women. The women who perturb men most are those who combine too effectively adorableness with desirableness, as in nature so in humanity. Flight on the part of the lady is not always symbol of unwillingness of pursuit. On the other hand, feminine audacity by no means betokens feminine immodesty. Feminine abduracy is invincible by man. Luckily it is rare. Men call women variable. Did she not vary? Men would tire. This women instinctively know. Women rightly dislike and discuss variability in men, for women like best to be liked. To lead gives them but paltry and temporary pleasure. Though this they do not always instinctively know, or if they do, they conceal their knowledge. And variability is incompatible with leadership. How delicately a loving woman reproves. How defiantly an unloving. How many lonely women married and unmarried the world contains. Only these lonely women know. The feminine métier, par excellence, is to allure. And the subtle and elaborate means by which women will devise to intensify the lure. Passes the comprehension of men. Yet in all ages to make herself attractive was as right and proper for the woman as to make herself feared was for the man. Besides, with women the art of attracting has long since become second nature. Women are quick to recognize a rake. For a rake always arouses curiosity, never aversion. A worsted woman always either silently or volubly. Calls down a curse upon her successful rival and tis a curse that too often fails. Many women handicap other women and they handicap them in multifarious ways. Probably the one most frequently used is lavishness of favors. The woman who is lavish of favors is hated of her stricter sisters. But before these what an heir of bravado she wears. As a rule women are far better readers of characters than are men. A woman will often startle a man by her penetrating insight into character and many a man has been put on his guard by female institution. The fragile woman will be ill content with suppressed embraces. And the abeless bodied woman loves being petted. Even a prude is a shy coquette. The man who judges of a woman by her letters is a fool. Her gesture will contain more matter than her journal. Besides, the woman who could punctuate could reason. The debut of a younger sister evokes mixed emotions. The prayer uttered or unexpressed of many an undoubbed young woman is, may a moneyed man fall in love with me. And she is not always over-careful to add. And may I fall in love with that moneyed man. If the new woman, footnote three, turns out to be a fitter companion for men than the old, no man will complain of her novelty. Yet men regard the advent of the new woman rather askance. Why? Because to judge from certain feminine utterances, the new woman seems more inclined to aim at rivalry than at companionship with man. However, there need be no fears as to the result, since such is the mysterious potency of womanhood, that, whether new or old, woman will always lead man captive. Besides, as every new variety of fashion in dress seems becoming to women, so it is probable every variety of fashion in manners will become them also. But probably the phrase the new woman is not unlike the phrase the new chemistry. The materials are the same. What is new is the nomenclature. Footnote three, a phrase and not much more than a phrase. Much in vogue in Europe and America in the last two decades of the 19th century of the area known as Christian. End of footnote three, a woman's peccadillos are generally worse than a man's. At all events they are more reprobated. Abachment intensifies a woman's love for him, so making her abashed. And there is a shame that is sweeter than joy, as there is a fear more tremulous than delight. For mastery is a woman's standard of man, and there is an element of the freest and frankest savagery in the most refined and spiritual of women. How otherwise can anyone explain the extraordinary fable of Celine and Pan? See footnote four, and man. But that man was ever a savage. It may be added that the defenselessness of woman is a conventional fiction. She can avert and attack by a look. She can terminate a siege by a taunt. Footnote four, though Browning tried. See dramatic idols. Pan and Luna. End of footnote four. Solomon has objurgated the inventively garrulous woman. The infinitbly taciturn woman is so rare as to have escaped objurgation, yet she too is a terror to men. Every woman is suspicious and jealous of any woman that opens a man's eyes, even though she knows that never was there a woman who could in wood who could in wood deliberately wholly enlighten a man. And yet marvelous and curious amongst things, curious and marvelous, will but woman fling artifice to the winds and look and act and say as great nature prompts wildly, willfully, wantonly, that woman will captivate as no feminine wiles will ever captivate. If the man were worth it, many a woman would dispense with the marriage ceremony. For ah, love, love, love, given love, what else is needed? Unfortunately, love can never be sure of itself, much less of anything else. Accordingly, the marriage contract is a device on the part of the community to provide for the preservation of the home. It makes the party's promise fidelity, but precious few are the men who are worth the risking. Unfortunately, more women succumb to strength of will than to strength of character. Neither in general are women over curious to inquire whether the strength of character. Neither in general are women over curious to inquire whether the strength of the masculine will make for good or for evil. So long as the masculine will over master the feminine, the feminine mind is satisfied. Of course there are exceptions, but as a rule, women, whether young or old, married or single, strong-minded or weak, are never happier than when they can depend on a man. Accordingly, the lover or the husband who is weaker than and depends upon the woman will someday rue his weakness and dependence, and yet to see a strong male at her feet that is exquisite to the woman, so exquisite that it is with difficulty that a woman refrains from exhibiting a man's servitude to others. On the other hand, there is an element of intimidation in a resplendent woman, and of this she is aware, hence perhaps her power. A woman will attain her ends by a droid finesse, where a man would blunder into open hostility, and it is well that man should blind his eyes to feminine wiles, since always a woman kindly pretends oblivion of masculine blunders. The woman whose tastes and refinements are above her station is impitiable plight. She is too fastidious to espouse the men who would marry her, the men she would marry. She rarely meets, for the only thing that to love is insupportable is vulgarity. Since love, romantic love, the efflorescence and bloom of life is besmirched unless tenderly touched, to generalize passes the wits of woman, but in penetration she is preternatural. What fascinates woman is the man who unwittingly attracts her against her will, but such a man rouses a combination of emotions comprehensible only by women. A woman's answer to an insuperable argument is a look, and a most cogent answer it is. Indeed, speech is a woman's least effective weapon, rarely if ever does she resort to it. In the affairs of life, as in the affairs of love, where men are concerned, it is upon her personality that she relies, not upon her speech, whether written or uttered. Her personal appearance is to a woman, but his personal honor is to a man. It must be immaculate, constant with the fashion of the hour, and strictly in accordance with her or his status in society. Accordingly, dressing demeanor, these form the code of feminine ethics. Even deception on the part of a woman is merely diplomacy. Women deceive only because man is too blind to see. That is to say, since man in past ages has never allowed women either freedom of action or frankness of speech, it is not to be expected of her that she should be all at once an adept in their use. To her credit, be it said that generally a woman deceives only in order to arouse or to retain the admiration of man. For example, many a woman has surrepetitiously made love to the man and few are the men who have detected it. Why this woman fascinates all who come within the sphere of their influence and that women does not? No earthly sage will ever know. As well ask what makes one man a Napoleon, another a paltrune. So too, it is impossible for a woman to say, I will be loved as it is for a man to say, I will be obeyed. Perhaps love and power are divine miracles. At the risk of treading on delicate ground, ground off which I shall be hooted by the modern woman, I venture to say that the idea that a woman is the property of the man of her choice, rail as it the woman may, has not yet been ousted from the feminine mind and heart. Indeed, so firmly implanted in the feminine breast is the idea of the ownership of her by the man, that it is to the man who assumes and exercises ownership that she clings. This is why a woman easily changes her allegiance. Since allegiance to a woman means loyalty to the man who assumes and exercises ownership over her. Let a man who a fractional part of the second events the shadow of a doubt of his proprietorship, at once he undermines a woman's allegiance. Consequently, it is his folly for men to express amazement at the ease with which a woman will transfer herself and her affections. A woman will transfer herself bodily over and over again, but only because the previous owner, lightly esteemed or weakly maintained his ownership. As a matter of fact, in pristine days, woman was naturally and necessarily the property, the chattel of the man. Marriage was not then a matrimonial syndicate of two. Marriage meant that a woman sought a provider, a supporter, a defender, the man a mate for his delight, his comfort, and his solace. A keeper of his cave or hut, a mother and nurse for his heirs, and provision, support, and defense, being in pristine days matters of strength, prowess, or cunning. Naturally and necessarily pristine man gained him and kept him a mate by strength, prowess, or cunning. He regarded that mate as his by right of force, not as partner in a compact. And the most complicated of modern communities has no wit altered the relationship of man to mate, conceal though it may the origin and history of marriage. Finally, no woman at the bottom of her heart has any objection to being owned. Indeed, though no woman would say it, a man may. Every woman at the bottom of her heart delights to be owned. Antacitly and secretly seeks the man who she thinks will glory in that ownership and keep his property safe, not only from material harms, but from temptations to changes of ownership. In which last little fact lies a curious truth. Women like to be defended against themselves. And this little matter, men and women differ, that any other man should dare for one instance to covets or alienate, see footnote five, that most precious of his possessions, his mate. Nothing rouses to a higher pitch man's unappeasable wrath than this, against the man so daring, a woman's wrath is never roused, rather she regards him as one having discernment, and his daring is a commendable compliment to herself. In fine and in short, allegiance to a man, on the part of a woman, means in her eyes loyalty to him who properly exercises the rights of ownership. In simple truth, a woman gives herself to a man. To the man who proves himself worthy the gift, she is true. And this is why women, all women, even the new ones, love being petted and admired and made much of all their lives. This but proves the possession of the gift to be appreciated. Besides, the male is the dominant animal, not necessarily in his cave or his hut, by no means, but in the stress and struggle of life, and women tacitly, though never openly, look up to and admire this dominance, even when exercised over themselves. Since this, in turn, proves the masterfulness, the worth, of the man, albeit sometimes they rebel against it, if carried too far. At least until a man continues to exhibit his appreciation of the gift by word as well as by deed, the woman is apt to imagine that that appreciation is on the wane. Footnote five, how women must laugh in their sleeves at the fact that one man may sue another in a court of law for alienating his wife's affections. End of footnote five, end of chapter three, recording by Ryan Duramos, D-E-R-A-M-O-S, media.com. Chapter four of Hints for Lovers. This is LibriVox Recording. All LibriVox Recordings are on the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Hints for Lovers by Theodore Arnold Haldane. Chapter four on Love. Amore ke wo ve il sol illa il tristella. Dante. The beginning, middle, and end of love is a sigh. All things point to the infinite and love more than all things else. Complex as is the character of love, here are two things which love always does. Always it refines the thoughts and heart enlarges, Milton. And love dies all things a cerulean hue. What a pity it is not a fast color. Love is the most antimonial of emotions. It worships, yet it will not stop at sacrilege. It will build about its object a temple of adoration, then desecrate the fin. It will give all, yet ruthlessly seize everything. It delights in pleasing, yet it sometimes wittingly wounds. Its ineffable tenderness often merges into an inclement see extraordinary. Symbol of universal duality, it is at once demonical and angelic. Nothing stands still in this world, not even love. It must grow or it withers. And perhaps that is the strongest love which surmounts the greatest number of obstacles. Love to some is an intoxicant, to others an ailment to all it is a necessity. As is one's character, so is one's love. And perhaps the deepest love is the quietest. Love is as implacable as it is unappeasable. Nay more, love is merciless as merciless to its watery as to its victim. For love would rather slay than surrender, would force wear rather than forego. Some loves, like some fevers, render the patient immune at all events to that particular kind of contagion. Many lovers are vaccinated in early youth. Only love can comprehend and reciprocate love. This is why, if of two sensitive human souls, the one loves passionately, and the other not at all. The other is unwittingly blind and deaf to love's clamours and claims. The one may ardently urge the other but passively yields. Only the famished understands, only the famished understand the pangs of the hungered. Of a great and reciprocated love, there is one and only one sign, the expression of the eyes. Who that has seen it was ever deceived by its counterfeit? Did ever the same love light shine in the same eyes twice? The light of love in the eyes may take on a thousand forms, exultant jubilation, a trustful happiness, infinite appeasement or promises untold, an adoration supreme, or a complex ablation, tenderness ineffable or heroic resolves, implicit faith, unquestioning confidence, a bounding pity, unabashed desire. He who shall count the stars of heaven shall enumerate the radiances of love. There is no art of loving. Footnote, Ovid wrote not art of loving. As a Mandi, he wrote on the Amatorial art, as Amatoria, and Footnote. Though, as Ovid says, love must be guided by art. Footnote, art legandis amor, as Amatoria, I4, and Footnote. Yet, if love did not come by chance, it would never come at all. To each of us himself is the center of the visible universe, but when love comes, it alters this Ptolemaic theory. Yet, it is a significant fact that love, which more than any other thing in this world is the great bringer together of hearts, begins its mysterious work as a separator and put her at a distance. For, when love first dawns in the breast of youth, it throws around objects a sacred Oreo, which oars at the same time that it inspires the faithful worshiper. Can only two walk a breast in the path of love? How many try to widen that straight and narrow way? Love raises everything to a higher plane, but nothing higher than the man or woman who is loved. Is there anything about which love does not shed a halo? Indeed, love is a sort of transfiguration, and when on the mount we can very truly say, it is good for us to be here. If there is any sublunary thing equal in value to the true love of a faithful woman, it has not yet entered into the heart of man to conceive. True love makes all things lovable, except perhaps the chaperone. Was there ever man or woman yet who was not bettered by a true love? True love is ever different and fearful of its own venturesomeness. Footnot. Confer, la valote no ra di la moa no ra timida. Voltaire, la pussaire. Shan six. End footnot. But this not every woman understands. Too often the phantasm of love and not the verity wins the day. Footnot. Celia pari. Soria del genere umano. Where the verities of truth and love and justice never leave the throne of jove, but their phantasms are sent down amongst men. End footnot. Women who seek a real lover should beware the overbold one. To merge the thee and the me into one, that is ever the attempt of love. It is impossible. Yet perhaps they are happiest who can longest disbelieve in the impossibility of this amateurial fusion, for it may be that such incredulity is favourable to romance. Love is not exactly a sacrifice. It is an exchange. The lover indeed gives his heart. He expects another in return. Love is like life. No apparatus can manufacture it. Kill it. And nothing in the heavens above or in the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth will resuscitate it. How many a fallen white has tried to resuscitate love? To such heights does love exalt the lover that he or she will live for days in the remembered delights of a look or word, a gesture. But one thing is impossible to love. Love cannot create love. The intensest and most fervent love is powerless to evoke a scintillation of love. Love may worship. It may adore. It may transfigure. It may exalt the object of its devotion to the skies. But it cannot cause the object to emit one ray of love in return. Hate may be concealed. Love never. The greater the imaginative altitude of love, the lower the boiling point. But love cannot always be kept at high pleasure. The young think love is the winning post of life. The old know it is a turn in the course. Nevertheless, it is a faithful turn. In love, the imagination plays a very large part. And this may be variously interpreted. Thus, by man, love is regarded as a sort of sacred religion, by women, as her everyday morality. The former is the more exhilarating, but the latter is more serviceable. Indeed, love and religion are very near akin. Both inspire and both elevate. And if faith, hope and charity are the basis of religion, there never was such a religion as love. And love is the only religion in which there have been no heretics. Why? Because women are at once its object and its priesthood. Love, art and religion are about different phases of the same emotion. Or reverence, worship and sacrifice in the presence of the supreme ideal. Love knows no creed. Nay more, love acknowledges no deity, but itself, and accepts no sanctions but its own. It is autonomous. And yet, and yet, love sometimes feels constrained to offer a liturgical acquiescence to the rubric of reason. In short, between the prolactical domination of reason and the recusing protestantism of love, there has ever been strife. Or, in plain language, there are two codes of ethics, one of the romantic heart, the other that of the practical head. Who shall assimilate them? The heart, in its profoundest depth, feels that something is due to reason, and reason, in its highest flight, feels that something is due to the heart. Is there a divine duplicity in the human soul? And yet, after all, all love seeks is love. Yet love little knows that in seeking love, love enters on an endless search, since love is an endless effort to realize the ideal. For love always beckons over insurmountable barriers to uninhabitable realms, promises insupportable possibilities, lures to an unimaginable goal. Yet love has a myriad counterfeits. And men and women interpret the word differently. Even different women interpret the word love differently. Thus, to one woman, love is as the rising of the sun. It shines but once in her whole life day. It floods everything with its light. It brightens the world. It dazzles her. To another woman, love is as the rising of a star. A fresh one may appear every hour of her life. And nor she, nor her world, is one with affected by its rays. Indeed, one would hardly err if he said that many a woman really does not know whether she is in love or not. She is sought that she perceives, but which of her seekers is worthiest, which most zealous, which merely takes her fancy and which appeals to her heart. On these matters, she meditates long to the exasperation, of course, of the individual seeker. Accordingly, men carried away by their own passionate impulse the test calculation of the part of women. Since he stakes his all on impulse in the matter of love, says man, why should women stay to consider? Foolish man. He forgets that a woman always wears a man's declaration of love, and legitimately, and naturally, perhaps legitimately, because naturally. For what a woman stays to consider in the matter of love is not the potency of the impulse of the moment, but the permanent efficacy of the emotion. Therefore, it is that woman unwittingly obeys great nature's laws. Many imagine that love is a thing like a chemical element, with a fixed symbol and a rigid atomic equivalent. And so it may be. But, like the philosopher Stone, hitherto, it has defied detection in its elemental form. The fact is probably that love may be compared to a substance that is never found free, and which not only combines in all sorts of relationships with all sorts of substances, but also, like many another chemical body, takes on the most varied forms not only in these relationships, but also in the varying pressures and temperatures. Or perhaps it would be better to say that love may be compared to a musical note. To the unthinking, it is a simple sound. To the more experienced, it is known to consist of endless and complicated harmonical vibrations, harmonising with some and making discord with others, notes by regular but unknown laws, differing according to the timber of the emitter, reverberating under certain conditions, lost to the years in others, and only responding to resonators vibrating synchronously with itself. Lastly, there is a whole gamut of love. Changing that simile, we may say that love is not like the sun, a unit and practically the same wherever seen, it is like light, all pervading, universally diffused, and reflected and absorbed in varying degrees and varying manners by various objects. And then a great and pure love can anyone point to anything on earth, greater and more purifying. The lesser luminary perturbs the tide of human passion, the greater light draws it upward, nonetheless veritably because in tinted formless vapour, this is symbolical of love. It is the nascent thing that evokes the keenest emotions, the bud, the babe, dawn, and the first beginnings of love. So love, like sunlight, wears its most tender tints at dawn. It still remains a mystery that, out of a town full of folk, two particular hearts should worry themselves into early graves because this one cannot get that other. Yet it is almost enough to destroy one's faith in the uniqueness of love to see from how narrow a circle of acquaintances, men and women, chose their spouses, were Plato's two half-souls separated by the diameter of the globe that were lamentable. The man often argues that esteem will grow into passion. The woman knows that the argument is utterly fallacious. Yet, unless passion is guarded by esteem as the chalice encheats the corolla, the former is prone to wither. In youthful love, as in the unfolded bud, esteem and passion, like chalice and corolla, seem one and identical. It is only the full-blown flower that displays its constituent parts. Would that love could remain ever in bud? To some, love comes like a flash to others as the burning of tinder. In all, when real love is kindled, it devours all that is combustible. But all love, like all fire, needs not only ventilation but replenishing. Unless the primal spark is nourished, it will not glow. Stifle love, and it dies down. So even the love of a married pair, unless it retains something of the romance of courtship, is apt to go out. Love takes no door surroundings, an empty compartment is as good as a corpus. Give it privacy, it is satisfied. In love, we would much rather give than take. Yet, if the giving is one-sided, there is trouble. And love breaks no half-measures. Again, trust a woman to calculate the breaking strain of her lover's heart. But she will never let him off with less than the maximum stress. When love is dead, it is perhaps best soon as buried. To determine the motions of three bodies, mutually attractive, is admittedly difficult. It is easy compared with the same problem in love. A man's work and a woman's love, though to each the sum total of life, are often things wholly and totally dissociated. Man, the egoist, thinks that if a woman loves him, by consequence she will love his work. It may be, but usually, non-sequitura, for few other women who can understand a man's work. For thousands of years, man has worked in the hunting field, in the marketplace in the camp. For an equal length of time, woman has worked by the cradle, by the heart. Accordingly, man has two sides to his nature, woman but one. Man wears one aspect when facing the world, he wears quite another aspect when facing women. At their work, men are rigid, frigid, austere, severe, peremptory, tyrannical, downright. With women, wherefore, or strenuous and high-aspiring man, in thy work, seek not from woman's love what woman's love cannot give, but set thy face as a flint. They think thee of the fate of Antony, for man's chief business in the world is work. Woman's chief business in the world is love. Man's love, perhaps just because it is his plaything, not his business, is more finely tempered than his woman's, and takes on a finer edge. For this very reason, it is the more easily turned, and is the less useful. It is the pocket knife, not the lancet, that is often called inter-requisition. Also, man's love is usually a highly ephemeral affair. With a man, love is like hunger or thirst. He makes a great fuss over it. He forgets when it is appeased. Yet, when passion's trance is overpast, it is fortunate if affection takes its place. So too, in love, it is the man who protests, and that man is fortunate who, after marriage, has not some dubious reflection as to whether he has protested over much. For in love, it is the man, generally, who makes a fool of himself. Love, like murder, will out, but Jill keeps her secret better than Jack. For a woman, generally controls love, a man is controlled by it, and Jill's very power of making belief to be fancy-free exasperates Jack. It is a purely feminine ruse to apply a test to love, both her own and that of a lover, to prove it true. A man would as soon as think of applying a match to a powder magazine to prove it combustible. Love in women's eyes is a supreme and ultimate arbitrator. If she is loved, love in her eyes will condone anything, anything. For to prefer honour to love is a maxim to women unknown. With them, love is honour, and therefore the maxim is meaningless and needless. It is a sort of legal, or rather charitable, fiction that women should surrender only to love. In fact, do not even the lightest of lazies and theses make a show of being swayed by love, and no woman by too much love was ever spoiled. Man, remember that. The logic of the emotions differs from the logic of the intellect. As to the senses, a lackaday. The senses never reason. Love sometimes wrecks its back upon the rocks to prove that they harbour no mirage. Love sometimes forgets that it is possible to probe too far. Love in pursuit of love, sometimes vivisects as unconsciously as a science in pursuit of life. Women detect the dawn of love while it is still midnight with a man. That is to say, a woman knows a man is in love with her long before he is aware of it himself. Except perhaps in this once circumstance, when she herself is in love with somebody else, and this is a highly important circumstance, wholly to satisfy masculine infatuation is given to no woman, and perhaps wholly to satisfy feminine caprice is given to no man. So sometimes the last refuge of an unrequited love is the belief that love will create love. Nothing can be more futile than such a faith. Yet love without hope has its mitigations. But how to alleviate the pain of a love that mistook a simulated love for a true one? A simulated love is a contradiction in terms. Either one loves or one does not. That is the conclusion of the whole matter. Love would rather suffer than forget. Love would give the world to be able to exculpate a languid lover. A passionate love is perhaps always poignant. Love disdains pity. A wounded love carries his car to the grave. In love, when honour is lost, loss of shame soon follows. Then indeed the downward patch becomes precipitous. To some love never comes. To some it comes too often. But the same love never occurs, as never a bud opens twice. Happy he or she is who gains bud, blossom and fruit. Since the sweetest love is that wherein the odourous flower of passion ripens into the nourishing fruiting of affection. But love requires careful nature. And the more exotic the love, the more difficult its culture. True and awkward male life on air, yes, but how torrid and vapor is an air. Your sturdy measletoe thrives on the humble apple. A catelier requires a Colombian forest. Youth wanders at the amatory successes of middle age. Youth knows not that in matters amatory, age is no handicap. A girl in her teens will make love to a gentleman of forty and vice versa. In fact, the indiscreet impetuosity of youth succumbs before the astuteness of age. The bachelor and the spinster both sometimes wonder that the benetic and the bride are still their rivals. For they know not that in the amateur art, matrimony is no handicap. In short, there is no barrier at which love will walk. Nay more, love will forgive anything. Did love demand it? Love, though it might blush, would not blench. And often love itself stands amazed at its own divine audacity. Indeed, love loves to emulate itself for love. Knowing that to love, nothing is common or unclean. For love, like charity, thinketh no evil. But remember that it is only the Uranian Aphrodite, footnote, see Plato Symposium as sick, and footnote, that dares essay a divine audacity. Nevertheless, love is the most vulnerable of the emotions. And a love doubtful of itself would be cautiously accepted. It is not a fact that to try to feel one's own pulse is to make the heart beat irregularly. So, to try to see in a mirror the love light in one's own eyes is to be dimmet. So too, if passion is not linked with affection, woe was the day when the troth was plighted. But given passion linked with affection, ah, nothing, nothing is criminal to love. For love knows not conscience, or rather love upsets all conventional conditions. For love creates a world of its own, a world populated by two, and these make their own laws, or make none. So a woman will imbrew her hands with blood, and a man will fling honour to the winds, and yet they twain regard each other as impeccant and impeccable, till Pippa passes, then love always awakes, with the fact that not even a community of two can live without law, and that though human laws may be outraged, those divine may not. And assuredly, the ideal love is the divine love, and an ideal love, strange, strange, but true, in a great and ardent love, when at last that is offered, which was long sought. There supravenes upon the lovers a great tenderness, which hesitates to make their own that for which they yearned. Almost it were as if a psychic monitor warned the conqueror to be clement, and the captive to be kind. This tenderness is the worship of the soul by the soul, and of all tests of love, tenderness is the truest. But indeed, indeed in love there are heights above heights, depths beneath depths. Who shall scale them? Who shall plumb? End of chapter 4 on love. Chapter 5 of Hints for Lovers This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Patty Cunningham. Hints for Lovers by Theodore Arnold Halton. Chapter 5 On Lovers C. V. Amari Amma, Seneca Lovers think the world was made for them, and so perhaps it was. To each other, lovers are the most interesting personages alive, but onlookers regard them partly with amusement, partly with pity, partly with compassion, in the etymological sense of that word. The first wonder of every accepted lover is that he should be the accepted lover of such a woman. What the woman thinks, what the woman thinks probably not even she herself knows. Probably each woman thinks her own thoughts. To doubt whether one is in love is to prove oneself out of it. To impress upon the lover the still existing necessity of refining gold or painting the lily is out of the question, yet every woman attempts it. If there is one proverb more distasteful than another to a hot-headed lover, it is that half a loaf is better than no bread. Children, dogs, and old people are difficult to deceive. Lovers who have to use circumspection should remember this. A doubting lover should mark how and for whom his woman dresses. To die for a woman would perhaps, to a young and ardent lover, not be difficult. To wage incessant warfare with the world for her, that perhaps is not so easy, but it is the better test of love, and perhaps also the better preserver and replenisher of love. For little as people seem to be aware of it, love requires constant replenishing. No flame can burn without a feeding-oil, no pool overflow without a pearling brook. Yet the first exceses of love often blind both lover and lass to the care necessary for the nurture of love. Indeed, too many treat love as if it were a passing whim, whereas in sober reality it is, or should be, a lasting emotion. Love with a woman is like the tides, and few women know the high watermark of their love. They are always harboring the belief that it may rise still higher, and often they await that rise. It is but the reflection of himself in his mistress that many a foolish lover loves. That aged spencer is a rare one who does not regret she did not accept one of her lovers, but that younger spencer is not to be envied who has to make choice of several. Youth glories in the multiplicity of its lovers. Age sometimes wishes it had had but one. The unloved think love the one thing needful. The beloved know that an ocean of love could be swallowed up, and the parched soul cry out a thirst. It is not well either to confide or confess too much. A very small rock will wreck a very big ship, and a very small slip will spoil a very long life. The pain which lovers cause each other, through fickleness, languidness, jealousy, and the thousand natural shocks that love is heir to, is not altogether pain, though at the moment it may seem the most poignant anguish the human soul could suffer. One proof of this lies in the fact that there are few who would choose to have missed love's pangs altogether. Perhaps the pleasure intermixed with love's pangs arises from the thought that the other is the cause of our suffering. For all in all it is the sacrifice of oneself for the other that brings keenest joy, and yet there is an element of self-love in the very extremist of love, since love after all is a debtor and creditor affair, whoever loved with no hope of return. It is when one of the parties declares him or herself insolvent that the account is closed, with many tears and sighs on the part of the chief creditor. At all events the intenser the love, the more flawless does its object appear. For the surest test of the sincerity of love is that it thinketh no evil, the surest test of a waning love is that it begins not to content itself when it sees its object suffer, the surest test of a dead love is that it forgets how to be jealous. The falling out of lovers true is a renewing maybe of love. Footnote 1. Amontium arae amoris integratus est. Terence. Andrea 3. 23. End of footnote 1. Still it is not to be recommended. In fact, it might be said that every falling out of lovers true is a nail in love's coffin, yet a blessing it is that in love we remember the sweet rather than the bitter, for love was ever bitter sweet. Footnote 2. But I suppose innumerable people have said this before. No matter. End of footnote 2. The heart of a lover is like that bottom of a well. All the beauties of the starry heavens are revealed in it, but when it sheds the light of its countenance upon it all else is obliterated. Was any lover ever loved enough? Or did any ever hear of a tired lover? Nevertheless, often, drink to me only with thine eyes, says the youthful lover, but when the seance is over he goes out and orders beef steak and bottled beer. What it really craves, the lover's heart is impotent to express, yet it is ever attempting. A lover is full of wishes as an egg is full of meat, but what it really wishes, no lover seems able to say. As a matter of fact, the endless task which the lover is ever attempting is a search for a formula for the summation of an infinite series of which love is the variable. Few lovers seem to understand this. To kindle aspiration in her lover, a woman herself need not be aspiring, for 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 shine as the sun. Indeed, physicists may talk as they like, but lovers know a more subtle and 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. If you wish to ascertain the relationship 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 worships her remembrance of her God and puts together in treasures the broken pieces. When the idol into which has converted his loved one is dethroned, he generally changes his creed. A circumspecting 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 shield 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 scrape. 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 broken girlhood, footnote 4, standing with a reluctant feet where the broken river meet, long fellow, maidenhood, end of footnote 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. The languishing lover has gone out of date, he has been replaced by the diverting one, and the change is significant of much. The early 19th century maid pretended to ignorance. The early 20th century maid to omniscience. The early 19th century suitor protested, but the early 20th 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 relationship between the sexes 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 paradiscically pristine. Would the most emancipated 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, fashion-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 passion is usually an affair more of the senses or of the imagination than of the heart, with a woman every passion's 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 women'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 a 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. In 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 wit 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, and illicit love beautifies and consecrates nothing? A maud leaves the daisies rosy, not so Faustine. Many a woman has given her heart to one lover and herself to another. The first is always one. The second is sometimes extorted. Yet it is wonderful how a woman will contrive to make all her lovers believe they are winners. It often gives a lady pleasure to give her lover a pang. Not many but have tasted the bitterness of the conflict between the desire of the flesh and the resentment of the spirit. Explain these terms, who may. To attempt by airing to cure an airing lover is to administer not an antidote, but an adjuvant. It works poison in the blood. When and if, in a tortuous love, a man arrives at a don't give a damn stage, he is not to be classed with the animals known as docile, and as to a woman, but polite language has its limits. Many a man has been exasperated not only by the audacity of his rival, but by the equanimity with which his lady love views that audacity. He forgets that, as a rule, feminine complacence varies directly as masculine audacity. And yet often enough, as a simple matter of fact, masculine diffidence is vastly more potent than masculine audacity. And further, rarely need the complacence that audacity evokes perturbed the diffident man, since the true women may give her fingertips to the galant. She gives herself to the worshipper. The piteo it is that the worshipper cannot away with the complacence that permits a woman to give even her fingertips to the galant, and fewer the women who have plumbed the silent and sensitive depths of the diffidence of her devotee. The worst of it is, the devotee assays two things. He would apothecise the object of his adoration and place her as a constellation among the stars, yet he would have her at the same time terrestrial and tangible. When the woman shows herself terrestrial and tangible to others than he, the faith of the devotee is shaken. In fine, every lover attempts that impossible task, the realization of the heavenly ideal. Perhaps it is in the aphelion that the corona appears most splendid, where perihelion to result is coalescence. Perhaps the photosphere would be proved composed of terrestrial vapours. And if it did, as no doubt it would, would it be at all bedimmed? Four to the devout astrologer. Nothing, nothing, will ever destroy beauty, and therefore wonder. So bodily beauty, where love is priestess, is a datal spur to the loftiest worship. The lover is ever worshipful. And where is worship? Nothing can be profane. So in love there is nor taint nor stain. Therefore make, O youthful lover, the best and most of youth and love. Never will either recur.