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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of How to Get Married, Although a Woman, by
-Young Widow
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: How to Get Married, Although a Woman
-       or, The Art of Pleasing Men
-
-Author: Young Widow
-
-Release Date: September 11, 2021 [eBook #66270]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-Produced by: Demian Katz, Craig Kirkwood, and the Online Distributed
-             Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (Images courtesy of
-             the Digital Library@Villanova University.)
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO GET MARRIED, ALTHOUGH A
-WOMAN ***
-
-Transcriber’s Notes:
-
-Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_), and text
-enclosed by equal signs is in bold (=bold=).
-
-Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-
-
-
-HOW TO GET MARRIED ALTHOUGH A WOMAN;
-
-
-  OR, THE ART OF PLEASING MEN.
-
-  By “A YOUNG WIDOW.”
-
-  (COPYRIGHT 1892 BY J. S. OGILVIE PUBLISHING CO.)
-
-  OHIO CARD CO.,
-  COLUMBUS OHIO
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
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-
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-Tonic, Astringent and an Antiseptic Lotion, and while it is used by
-Physicians it is in every sense a Domestic Remedy and can be used by
-every one with Perfect Safety for the Prevention of Eye Troubles and
-for Affections and Diseases of the external surface of the Eye and Lids.
-
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-  MURINE EYE REMEDY CO.
-  No. Nine East Ohio Street,      CHICAGO, U. S. A.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS.
-
-
-  CHAPTER.                             PAGE.
-
-     I. Girls and Matrimony                5
-
-    II. The Girl whom Men Like            20
-
-   III. The Girl who Wins                 41
-
-    IV. The Girl who Fails                55
-
-     V. Some Unfailing Methods            84
-
-    VI. A Word of Warning                 91
-
-   VII. The Secret of the Widow’s Power  107
-
-  VIII. “Lady Beauty”                    119
-
-    IX. The Loved Wife                   128
-
-  Choice Selections in Poetry and Prose  145
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-HOW TO GET MARRIED, ALTHOUGH A WOMAN.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I. GIRLS AND MATRIMONY.
-
-
-It is natural for girls to wish to marry. The desire to do so is not to
-be condemned, but rather applauded, for it is Heaven-born. The Creator
-implanted it in the human heart, man and woman alike. God made man for
-woman and woman for man. He did not intend that they should live apart
-from each other. When He said, “It is not good for man to be alone,”
-He included woman in the man. It is not good for woman to live alone.
-He put a longing in the heart of man and woman alike which is only
-satisfied by the love of the other. He made a void in the heart which
-can only be filled by the companionship and love of one of the opposite
-sex. Man and woman are alike in this. It is as natural to her as to
-him: she can no more help it than he can. The unnatural part is that
-a woman must keep still about it, and if no one comes to woo, try to
-stifle the longing.
-
-There are plenty who hold up their hands in holy horror when it is
-said that a certain girl wishes to marry. It is nothing at all out of
-the way when _Mr. Jones_ says _he_ has determined to marry. If his
-sister Mollie gave voice to such a sentiment, it would be shocking,
-however. It would be shocking for her to give expression to the longing
-the all-wise Father has implanted in her heart. It is a heart, too,
-that will never be satisfied with yearning only, with fame, with any
-vocation, with dumb animals, with other people’s children; and it is a
-wise thing it will not. It is not a wise thing, however, that Mollie
-will be condemned because she cannot be satisfied without having a
-fireside and home of her own, because she wants a big loving fellow to
-care for her and to protect her, and whom she can love and make happy,
-because she wants her own home, no matter how small it is, to adorn
-and make pretty, her own housekeeping to look after, her own and his
-children to care for; because she wants her own wifehood, just as her
-brother wants a wife and home of his own and will not be satisfied to
-be a bachelor.
-
-Let him make up his mind to marry. The world will approve of his
-decision. Let Mollie do the same thing. I want to see girls marry. I am
-always glad when I hear that one is engaged to do so. To help some to
-do so, I write these few chapters. There are too many old maids. There
-are more than there need to be.
-
-I feel particularly sorry for the girl who has passed the line of youth
-and who has no admirers. Her brothers are all married, and most of her
-girlhood friends are absorbed in a husband and a baby. She has none,
-when doubtless she has it within her to make a good wife and mother.
-She is often restless, unsatisfied, disappointed. If she is at all
-weak-minded, she becomes sour as she grows older. She grows envious of
-all happily married women, and has a secret grudge toward men because
-she feels that she has been slighted by the sex generally. Many a girl
-who would make a good wife is soured by her failure to become one, and
-turns out an unpleasant member of society. All old maids are not by any
-means like this, however. There are many unmarried women in the world
-that will take up cheerfully any fate, turning their disappointment
-into a blessing for others.
-
-But I fear that, after all, they go through life with a heart
-unsatisfied. Alone, when they look into the secret chambers of that
-uncomplaining heart, they see there the old longings for love.
-
-There are unmarried women who do a great deal of good in the world.
-They accept their solitary lot as the will of the Heavenly Father.
-But is it His will? Does He give the heart longings which He will not
-satisfy? No. A thousand times, No. That would be tantalizing us. Too
-often we make mistakes in life, and then declare the consequences to be
-His will. It is so in failing to marry. Girls make mistakes in their
-conduct and remain spinsters. The fault is their own. They do not know
-how to attract, and so are passed by.
-
-Plenty of girls do so well understand the art of attracting men, that
-they have numberless offers of marriage. I know women who could not
-count up on their ten fingers the men who have been in love with them:
-among them men who for their sakes have remained unmarried through
-life. I have had personal acquaintance with women who have been married
-three times, and could, some of them, be married again. I know other
-women who have never had one admirer.
-
-I know girls who can attract men to them, and almost as soon as they
-are attracted, repel them. That sort of a girl never marries. She wants
-to do so, and acts through ignorance. I have sometimes felt like giving
-a girl a good shaking when I have seen her spoil her own chances. I
-have been dying to whisper a word of advice at times, but was too
-wise to do so, knowing it would not be well received. Girls know so
-fearfully much! The experiences of a mature woman count for nothing
-beside the wonderful knowledge some girls in their teens have! In the
-hope that some of these maidens will be willing to read what they would
-not hear, when it was too personal, I determined to write down what I
-know about being attractive to the other sex, what I know about girls’
-failures, and why they fail.
-
-Not long ago there appeared in “The Woman’s Department” of one of our
-daily papers a letter from a young girl, in which she confessed that
-she loved a young man who did not return her affection. She asked what
-she should do to win him. The editor could not tell her, advising her
-to give him up, very much as if it were a pleasure excursion the poor
-girl was writing about. There are times when it is necessary to give up
-all hope of winning a man. This, however, did not appear to have been
-one of them. The girl should have been told just how she could attract,
-then win him. Perhaps the editor did not herself know.
-
-If a girl is thrown much in the society of a young man whose affections
-are not previously engaged, and if she knows how to do it, she is
-quite sure to make him love her. If, however, he cares for some one
-else, who cares for him, no true woman will in any way try to come
-between the two: she will rather avoid doing so. If the girl has
-become interested before she knows of his engagement, it is a case of
-misplaced affections. There I must advise giving him up. Get interested
-in another man, and win that one. It might be well always for a girl
-to find out first whether or not a man is interested in some one else.
-That would often save a world of trouble. A misplaced affection, when
-foolishly adhered to will stand in the way of a happy marriage. It is
-not always the _man_ you love. Not unfrequently it is your ideal which
-you make a certain man fill. Often, if you are not blinded, you will
-see that instead of filling it, he “wobbles” around in the large space
-you have given him. That ideal can easily be transferred to another
-man. Very few hearts are so true that they love but once. They may do
-so in stories, but in real life we change. We rarely marry our first
-love, and almost always forget all about him.
-
-After marriage it is a different thing. Then it is no ideal: it is
-real. The man you love is real. The love is real, and continues even
-after “death do you part.”
-
-So, let no misplaced affection stand between you and marriage. Return
-a love if it is offered you and the man is desirable, or set yourself
-to win one. Do not go about sighing for a man who belongs to another
-girl. He never gives you a thought--they are hers. Have too much
-self-respect, and too high an opinion of your charms to think about
-him. In a few years, impossible as it may seem now, when you meet him
-middle-aged and a family man, you will wonder what you ever saw in
-him to care about. This sounds heartless, but it is true. It goes to
-prove that in early life before marriage it is the ideal and not the
-man a girl often loves. If I am mistaken in that, I am not mistaken
-in saying that a girl is happier married to a man for whom she cares
-less than she did for this ideal, than in remaining a spinster because
-some other girl bore off the heart she craved. To my mind a woman is
-happier married under almost any circumstances than single. That I know
-is against the teachings of to-day, and does not savor the least of
-woman’s rights. I believe her “rights” is to be married.
-
-Sometimes a girl who is attractive enough to win any man is kept from
-marriage by the selfish attentions of one man who either cannot or will
-not say anything to her about marrying him. This is not an unfrequent
-occurrence. A man who, on account of his circumstances, cannot marry,
-or who, because he prefers his freedom, will not marry, will pay
-attention to a girl for years. He wins her affections, and keeps away
-others who would be glad to marry her. Meantime she hopes that every
-day she will hear the words he has given her a right to expect to hear.
-In the end, if she allows this thing to continue, she will be an old
-maid.
-
-No matter how much you care for a man, give him up if, after a certain
-length of time, he says nothing to you about marriage. You will lose
-nothing in the end by doing so, and may gain him. If he really cares
-for you, the danger of losing you will make him more anxious to possess
-you. Then, if ever, he will find means to ask you to marry him. If he
-does not then, he never would. If giving him up hurts you, heal the
-wound by remembering that his intentions could not have been serious,
-and that he has allowed himself to lose you. Remember, too, that the
-hurt will come some time, anyway, and most likely when you are beyond
-the age to attract any one else. So giving him up while you are yet
-young means a marriage with some other man. Clinging weakly to him
-means, without doubt, that he will, when you are no longer young and
-attractive, cast you away for a fairer face.
-
-Never so far forget your self-respect as to ask a dilatory lover his
-intentions. Never allow your father or brother so to demean you. If a
-man has intentions, no matter how bashful he is, he will declare them.
-If he does not do so, he has none, and you had better give up all hope
-in that direction. There are always plenty more men about who will care
-for you, and who will let you know it too.
-
-Three such cases have come to my knowledge. The girl acted differently
-in each one. The first clung to her dilatory lover till he finally left
-her when she was too old to attract any one else. Now, alone in the
-world, she supports herself by keeping a boarding-house. The second one
-had her father ask the lover his intentions, and in that way roped him
-in. It was not a happy marriage. A third gave up the man who would not
-propose, and shortly afterwards married another man for whom she grew
-to care a great deal more.
-
-Some attractive girls live in small towns where they can meet no one
-whom they could or would marry. Consequently they have to remain
-single. In such a case a man would go out and seek a wife. A girl
-cannot exactly do that. She can, however, sometimes change her place
-of residence for that purpose. When it makes little difference, as
-far as business is concerned, where a family live, I believe a father
-owes this duty to his unmarried daughters. He can take her where she
-will be likely to meet an eligible man. I once knew a father with two
-young daughters who left his country home for their sakes. He took a
-nice house in Philadelphia, and remained there till they were both
-married, then returned home. A widow with three daughters left her
-farm and rented a large furnished house in New York City. As a means
-of support she took first-class boarders. The eldest was considerably
-over thirty, but they were all three attractive. Being so placed where
-they met gentlemen, none of them were long in marrying. A maiden lady
-of forty-one, very jolly, bright, and good-natured, interesting but not
-pretty, and so fleshy she was a sight, had never in the east met a man
-whom she could marry. She went to California to visit a sister, and in
-less than a year was married to a wealthy widower.
-
-Change of residence will often change the lonely spinster, young or
-advanced, into a happy wife.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II. THE GIRL WHOM MEN LIKE.
-
-
-Leaving matrimony out of the question, it is desirable for a girl to
-aim to be a favorite with men generally. She should be a girl whom all
-men like, whether or not that liking ripens into a feeling more tender.
-Then she always stands the chance of its so ripening. Many a man goes
-through life till he has made a success of his business without giving
-a thought to marriage. When he is ready to marry, he looks about him
-without any sentiment often to see whom of his lady friends he would
-like for a wife. Ten to one he hits upon a girl whose character has
-called forth his friendly admiration. This once settled he straightway
-falls in love with something to build upon. Widowers will frequently
-marry a girl of whom they thought well when the wife was yet living.
-
-Mere beauty counts for less in the long run than is generally supposed.
-It has less power in determining matrimonial choice than you would
-think. Its first effects are too strong in proportion to its other
-effects. It is seen at once, and instead of growing upon the beholder,
-its power rather lessens as it becomes familiar. The two most beautiful
-girls I ever met are now old maids. The most winning girl I ever
-knew had absolutely a plain face. There was a charm about her which
-attracted all men, and which made them swear, after they knew her, that
-she was a most beautiful creature. Even after she had refused a man, he
-loved and admired her.
-
-You all want to look as pretty as you can, but you must not place
-any dependence upon beauty to settle you in life. Many men prefer
-stylish girls to pretty ones. Look about you at the married women of
-your acquaintance. How few of them are pretty now, or were in their
-youth. Two of the worst wives I have ever known are pretty women.
-Their husbands made the mistake of marrying for beauty. A vain girl is
-generally selfish, and men do like an unselfish girl. A man wants an
-unselfish wife.
-
-If you wish men to admire you, you must first be a true woman with
-a noble character. Look to your home-life. Men catch glimpses of
-that when you least think it. They know well that an industrious,
-sweet-tempered, unselfish daughter makes an industrious,
-sweet-tempered, unselfish wife. A girl of whom her brother is very
-fond, and whose special friend she is, goes into the society of men,
-where it is known, with a wonderful recommendation. As a general thing
-you can tell how a girl will treat her husband by the way she treats
-her brother. I once knew a young man who asked a girl to marry him
-because he saw her tender, loving solicitude for her brother.
-
-Men like bright girls. Even the most sober prefer a jolly, laughing
-girl. As I once heard a man say about a very merry one, “Think of
-having such a creature always in your home! You wouldn’t have much
-chance for blues.” I knew a wonderfully homely girl who was so jolly
-that men surrounded her wherever she went. Men like a good time,
-and a lively girl will give it to them. If you cannot all be jolly,
-you can be bright, talkative, and interested. Jolly girls are never
-sentimental. A man hates a sentimental girl. Sentimental looks, long
-faces, teary expressions are only attractive in novels. Men, out of
-books, do not like to wipe away tears--they prefer to walk away from
-them. Never forget that a man is a selfish being. Keep that little fact
-in view continually; and if you want to please him, pander to it. If
-anything will disgust a man with a girl, it is to see her make a fuss.
-Even if you have real heart-sorrow, the more you control yourself,
-the more you will be admired. Remember you look your very worst when
-you cry. The tears do not “well up,” and “overflow,” “chasing each
-other down your alabaster cheeks like so many pearly drops,” as they
-do in novels. No: your face squints up, while your eyes and nose get
-red. Instead of being attractive, unless the man for whose benefit you
-have gotten up this scene loves you, he will walk away. It is manlike
-to walk off at the first sign of a storm, and to avoid everything
-uncomfortable. Bear that in mind. When you treat a man to a scene on
-any subject, you lose your hold upon him. Ten to one he will leave you
-to seek the society of some lively girl who is wise enough to hide her
-tears.
-
-A man likes a sensible girl. He likes real good common sense. Nothing
-is more trying than an unreasonable woman, and a man will not have
-anything to do with her when he does not have to do so. He may be
-politely pleasant to her, but he does not care to have her for his
-wife. To be sure plenty of unreasonable, trying women are wives.
-(I would they were not!) They had the faculty of hiding their real
-character before the binding vows were spoken. It is better to have
-nothing to hide. Be your honest true self always. If you are naturally
-endowed with common sense, try to cultivate it. Learn to be reasonable,
-and try not to be governed by your feelings. A man never cares for a
-girl whose feelings and not duty are her guide. Bear in mind that I
-am not talking about the man who is in love with you, but the one who
-views you calmly but may sometime love you.
-
-Men like good-natured girls. I know two sisters, the eldest of whom is
-quick-tempered, resentful, ill-spoken, and is over thirty without a
-gentleman friend. She never had one. The younger, not yet nineteen, is
-good-natured and lively. All the men who know her like her. One man, in
-fear of her being carried off by some one else, has secured her promise
-to marry him.
-
-A man likes to feel that the wife he takes to his home is going to
-brighten that home. He does not want a high temper to contend with. A
-girl never shows off to a worse advantage than when she is angry. Men
-are attracted by sweetness of disposition. No greater compliment could
-be paid to any woman than is paid to the Princess of Wales when she is
-called Her Royal Sweetness. Directly we hear that, we are drawn to her.
-
-Sweetness of mind and manner is woman’s greatest charm. A sweet woman
-is beloved by every one. It is woman’s province to be sweet. Gail
-Hamilton says, “It is the first duty of woman to be a lady.” I say, it
-is her first duty, after being a Christian (which is certainly first
-of everything), to be sweet. She says to be a lady is more than to be
-a prince. Let me add that to be Her Royal Sweetness is more than to be
-Her Royal Highness. We all are won by a sweet manner. A sweet smile
-will even draw us to a stranger. It can be yours if you will cultivate
-it. Begin at home. Lay the foundation there. Be sweet at heart. Do
-not put on gracious smiles and winning ways for the outside world
-only. If they are not natural, you will be caught tripping sometimes.
-Circumstances may arise when you will show the man whom you are the
-most anxious to win what you truly are. Although that will be a good
-thing for him, it will be bad for you. Be genuine. Counterfeit is
-detected in the long run. I know a woman who outside is the very ideal
-of sweetness, but who is a perfect demon at home. She won her husband,
-whom she now drives almost to madness, by that assumed sweetness. In
-spite of smiles and graciousness, she is the most friendless woman I
-know. The world demands genuine coin, and will detect counterfeit.
-So begin at home to be sweet, and unconsciously it will become your
-natural manner. You will not have to assume it: it will be your own.
-
-A girl may be more than plain, even homely, but if her manners are
-gentle, her voice sweet and low, her bearing womanly, her power is
-wonderful. A charming smile unlocks many a door which is barred to a
-stiff, ungracious manner. A charming smile warms every one it greets.
-It is particularly winning to a man. It has in it a welcome which
-fascinates him, and brings him to you again. A gracious, sweet manner
-is of more account in winning your way with the sterner sex than
-millions. More girls are married for their sweetness than for their
-money. A charming, bright greeting, will sometimes engage a man’s
-interest or attention on the spot.
-
-“Be courteous” at all times. “Be courteous” under all circumstances
-even the most trying, in your family, among friends, and with
-strangers. I remember it was said of a sweet girl at school, “She would
-be polite to Satan himself if he came to her room.” I almost believe
-it. I once heard a truly sweet girl say, “I was so provoked;” when
-another girl broke in, “I don’t believe that. Any one knows that you
-cannot get provoked.”
-
-Sensible men like an economical girl. A man does not want to feel that
-after marriage all his money, especially if he does not have much of
-it, is going to be wasted.
-
-Men like healthy girls. A man hates to hear a woman complain. He is
-not sympathetic. Men rarely are; but then you must take them as you
-find them, not as you would have them. Just there lies the secret of
-some girls’ failure to attract; they have no patience with a man’s
-imperfections, and are unwise enough to allow him to see that they have
-discovered them.
-
-Men like girls who are hearty and who have a hearty interest in things.
-A real live girl is always a favorite. A man avoids a sentimental girl.
-Do not quote poetry. Do not look languishing. Do not model your conduct
-after the heroines of novels. Study real life, and be real. Do not
-expect anything to occur to you as it does to girls in novels: it never
-will.
-
-Do not exact too much attention. A man hates to give it where it is
-exacted, even when it is your right. It is their way to pay it only
-when they feel like doing so. A man never wants to be controlled.
-Before he is in love, he is particularly alive to any effort to do so.
-When he is in love, he is more blind to it; but even then it is not
-well to press it.
-
-To be thoroughly attractive you must have a great deal of tact. Tact
-has been called the supremest weapon in a woman’s hands. Without it,
-she is helpless. With it, she is powerful. Tact will enable you to see
-just what to do, how to do it, what to say, and how to say it. Men are
-not all alike. What will please one may not please another. They are
-all built on the same general plan, however, and if you know one well,
-you know pretty much all there is to be known about the whole sex. Yet
-different lines of conduct are to be pursued with different men. A girl
-with tact grasps this in a moment. Indeed, she grasps the situation
-every time and pleases every time. You must understand man-nature.
-You can learn a great deal of it from your brother. Let me tell you
-too that if girls would more frequently advise with their brothers,
-they would get along a hundred-fold better. A brother can give you an
-insight into other men, and at the same time look after your interests.
-You will rarely fail to go right and to do right, if you will make him
-your confidant. Find out what he likes, and you will know what other
-men like.
-
-If you would be attractive, you must hide your feelings. I know of no
-time at home or abroad when it is well to show your real feelings if
-they are disagreeable. Bear in mind that I do not lay down a code of
-laws to be practised only abroad regardless of your home-life. Let the
-first man upon whom you try your winning arts be your father. Make him
-sure that you are the most perfect of girls. Then try your brothers. As
-the most lovely of daughters and sisters, you will be real when you are
-attracting other men by your winning manners.
-
-A man likes a girl who is read up--at least in the news of the day. He
-does not want to be instructed, and he never likes a girl who knows
-better than he does about things. If even you are sure he is wrong, do
-not correct him. That would be a wound to his vanity, which is itself
-a fatal thing to do. If you are better educated than he is, do not let
-him know it. Appear to receive instruction, and let your knowledge
-be a sort of cushion for his. Be interested in what he talks about,
-and willing to learn. Give him your full attention when he talks to
-you. It is a lack of tact that makes a girl show a want of interest.
-It is a lack of tact too that makes a girl let a man see what a good
-opinion she has of herself, when she ought to be showing him what a
-good opinion she has of him. It is very well to have it settled in
-your own mind just what you are, and what your attractions are, but do
-not let any know of that opinion. It is well to have a good opinion of
-yourself: it will give you an ease in society and a confidence to go
-ahead and win. Be sure, however, that you are worthy of that opinion.
-Be sure that you are not deceiving even yourself.
-
-Never allow a man to sacrifice his comfort for you. If he is rude
-enough even to ask to smoke in your presence, with your sweetest smile
-give him permission to do so. Promote his comfort in every possible
-way. They notice these things and like such attentions. Do not feel
-it your right always to have the best of everything and he the worst.
-Decline to accept the sacrifices that he as a gentleman will insist
-upon making. Some girls will heedlessly accept anything with a sort of
-blind gross selfishness. The girl who is unselfish at home, and who
-looks out for the comfort of her family before she does her own, will
-unconsciously carry the same winning spirit with her wherever she goes.
-The girl who is selfish at home, and who puts on her sweetness with
-company dress, will often forget all about it, especially under any
-excitement.
-
-Do not allow a man to spend much money upon you. He rarely cares to
-do so, but does it because it is customary among a certain class, and
-thinks that you expect it of him. Give him a pleasant surprise when
-he invites you into a restaurant or elsewhere, by declining. You do
-not want to be indebted to him in a monetary point of view--it lessens
-your dignity. It would not be a pleasant thing to hear him count up how
-much he has spent upon you. A man will do it, and make remarks about
-it to other men too. They have it all done to a fine point, and know
-just which girl is expensive in her tastes, and which one it costs the
-most to take out. I have heard them talk when I have been behind the
-scenes. Some girls, I am sorry to say, will even go so far as to hint
-that they would like to be taken to a certain entertainment or out for
-refreshments. There is much bitter truth in the jokes we read about the
-ice-cream girl. The writer of them, I always think, has smarted under
-the custom.
-
-No matter what a man is himself, he likes a modest girl. True modesty
-has a great charm. A girl without it is like a faded flower. As a
-general thing, her end is sad. Beauty is fleeting, but modesty gives
-a charm which outlasts youth. A retiring, gentle girl is something
-to seek after; and a man rather seek. A bold girl may receive more
-attentions from a certain class of men, but less love in the long run.
-That “certain class of men” you want to avoid instead of seeking to
-attract them. The real gentleman, the kind for whose attentions you
-care, never wants anything to do with a bold, loud girl. The loud girl
-is never a lady. Cultivate a low, sweet voice at all times. Abjure
-slang and chewing gum. Of the two evils I do not know which is the
-worst; but I do know that no true lady is addicted to either.
-
-Men like large-minded, large-hearted girls. They like girls who have no
-envy in their nature, who can be fair and just even to a rival, who
-will see good in every one, and speak of that instead of the evil.
-
-If you meet a girl whom you feel is your superior, emulate her; try to
-become all she is. At the same time, be large enough to acknowledge
-her excellence. Your very humility and sweet praise of her will be
-a winning grace. Ten to one the man will think how sweet you are
-instead of seeing the excellent traits you point out in her. Bitter,
-narrow-minded girls have an idea they can bring a superior girl down to
-their level by casting mud at her. It is a species of mud that always
-flies back, with a sort of a double back-action arrangement, and does
-all the harm to the thrower. In the first place, it is not Christ-like
-to speak unkindly of any one; in the second, men hate to hear it. It is
-only a weak one who will join in with you. In the third place, it is so
-small, and tells so plainly that you are narrow, envious, inferior.
-Instead of trying to pull a girl down, always try to climb up beyond
-her heights. Be large enough to discern and acknowledge whatever good
-you see in any one. Be charitable to the wrong-doings of your friends.
-Never mention the plainly seen faults of another girl. In this evil
-world, be as though you saw no evil. Be pure. “To the pure all things
-are pure.” Let all things and all people be pure in your sight.
-
-Make yourself worth having, and men will want to have you. Strive to
-cultivate a true womanliness and to become an efficient person. Be a
-girl who can help herself, who is not ignorant of work or too lazy to
-do it. Do not be a mere toy whom men will flirt with and then drop when
-they want to marry a woman who will be a helpmeet. Sensible men do not
-want to marry a bundle of nothing for a wife. When they are cheated
-into doing so, they repent it all their lives. You do not want to think
-that the man whom you will marry is going to repent the act. I know I
-would rather die on my wedding-day. I think that if a man to whom I was
-married should hint by word or deed of such a repentance, I would feel
-that my life was a complete failure, and should want to go out of it
-then and there.
-
-Be accomplished and brilliant if possible, but above all things prepare
-yourself to be a helpmeet for a man. Men like talents in a girl,
-especially music; but a man likes to have his wife know how to keep
-house. Learn that. Learn to make all sorts of garments and to cook,
-even if you are wealthy.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III. THE GIRL WHO WINS.
-
-
-Being an attractive girl whom all men like is not exactly the same
-thing as setting about deliberately to win some one man’s heart. It has
-been said that the girl thinks of matrimony before the man does. He
-goes on blindly and thoughtlessly until he is so deep in love that he
-cannot retreat; while from the very start she thinks whether or not she
-would like to wed him.
-
-It may be that you know some young man whom in a womanly way you would
-like to win. Let us suppose that in the secret recesses of your heart
-you have decided that you would like to marry him.
-
-In the first place, you must not fall deeply in love with him. If
-you fail, you do not want to be broken-hearted; and too, when a girl
-is really up and down in love, she loses control of herself. She is
-no longer sure of herself and of her conduct. You must keep cool and
-calculating. You must admire the man, and feel that at that time he is
-the only one you could love. Lose just enough of your heart so that,
-when he is won and asks for your love, you can give it to him.
-
-You must be able to arrange your mode of warfare, and always have
-perfect possession of yourself. There must be no silly excitement when
-he is present, and downcast face when he is away. Such a course would
-surely provoke comment; and your conduct must not be commented upon. No
-one must be allowed to suspect that you are interested in him. It is
-not your province in any way to go a-wooing; but you can work wonders
-in the way of winning the man you want. I have read that a woman may
-marry whom she will. I almost believe she can. You cannot, however, go
-about in an open way as a man can. With him the battle is sometimes
-half won when he makes it known that he wishes marriage. With you it
-would be all lost.
-
-You must never run after a man. Make yourself so attractive that he
-will seek you. Then it is all in your own hands. You can keep him
-beside you. You may have to wait some time for him to come. Be patient.
-Nothing is ever accomplished without patience. An impatient, nervous
-anxiety on your part will be likely to spoil everything. Never go where
-you know he will be and where he does not expect you, if you can avoid
-doing so. Better, by far, let him miss you where he anticipates seeing
-you than to see too much of you. His disappointment will show him how
-much he is interested in you.
-
-Do not hesitate to let him see that you have a modest, maidenly
-interest in him. Men like that. It must be done in a retiring way as
-if you did not intend to have him see it, but could not help yourself.
-While a man will boast of a girl running after him, this little secret
-of yours, which by his acuteness(!) he has discovered, he will keep
-sacredly to himself. The very modesty with which you try to veil it
-will heighten its value in his eyes.
-
-Do not hesitate to let him see by your greeting that he is welcome.
-I do not mean that you are to be effusive. It is done by your smile,
-your look, more than by words. Girls make the mistake of greeting a man
-coolly in fear of appearing forward or of showing a regard. Never be
-cool to the man you want to win. Ward McAllister says in his “Society
-as I Have Found It”: “The value of a pleasant manner is impossible to
-estimate. It is like sunshine; it gladdens. You feel it, and are at
-once attracted to the person without knowing why.”
-
-Young girls are rarely mistress of these sweet, little, but telling
-arts. The knowing just how comes later in life. Balzac has said that a
-woman of thirty is at her most fascinating and dangerous period. The
-women who have been the most famous for their power over hearts have
-all been nearer forty than twenty. This seems incredible to you yet
-in your teens. You now look upon twenty-five as a species of old age.
-At thirty, you think, as far as men are concerned, a woman is in the
-sere and yellow leaf; while at forty they are little less than in their
-dotage. Look out, that while you are counting on your youth to marry
-you, some of these females in the sere and yellow leaf, or even in
-their dotage, will carry off the prize, because she knows how and you
-do not. The fact is, the woman of thirty is still young now-a-days,
-whatever she was in our grandmothers’ time.
-
-She can win men’s love too. She knows the world so well that she takes
-men as she finds them, while the girl in her teens does not. The girl
-aspires too often to make them fit in her narrow mould. Girls are
-too often narrow in their ideas. In the secret acceptance of a man’s
-faults, or taking him as you find him, lies a great deal the secret
-of power over them. You girls are too sure of yourselves, too fixed
-in your opinions, too certain that you are right and that others are
-wrong. You are too anxious to set a man right. They have a way of their
-own of not wanting to be set right. They never want to be corrected. If
-they are wrong, their ignorance is bliss to them.
-
-Girls have little charity. They are generally hard in their judgments
-of everything and of everybody. They take delight in showing off what
-they know, and making a man feel like a fool. A man never allows the
-same girl to make him feel like a fool twice. Once is enough for any
-man. He seeks the society of another straightway. Girls are given to
-display a superiority, and make a man feel small. Again he walks off.
-A man never falls in love with a girl who makes him feel small. Now
-the charming girl hides her own opinions--her superiority, and brings
-out what is best in the man. This is what you must do every time. When
-you seek to win a man, make him pleased with himself. The better he is
-pleased with himself the better he will like you. This is not done by
-bold, outspoken flattery (although a man will swallow larger doses of
-that than you suppose), but by adroitly showing him his own best side.
-If you have to touch his tender places, do it with a soft hand that
-will soothe instead of wound.
-
-A man likes a smart girl. Your smartness or your brilliancy must,
-however, be kept in the background. You must not use it to dazzle him,
-but to make him feel that he is brilliant. If he is witty, never try to
-be more so than he is. If he is highly educated and you are more so,
-still be willing to be instructed by him. Never aspire to teach him. A
-man does not want to be set right by a woman.
-
-If he is a talker, so manage that he will do all the talking, if he
-wishes to, while you are the interested listener. I do not mean that
-you are to be mum: you are to be so interested that you cannot help
-sometimes breaking in. All your remarks should be to the point, and so
-worded that he will be led on until he is even surprised at his own
-powers of conversation and brilliancy. There is no surer way than this
-to keep him at your side. If he looks at his watch it will be to see
-how much longer he can remain with you, not because he wishes to hurry
-away. When he finally must leave you, he will have so much better an
-opinion of himself that he will be quite a new man. His thoughts of you
-will be most flattering. He will not know why. Men rarely analyze their
-emotions. If they did, it would be worse for us and our little arts. In
-a certain way they go about blindly.
-
-A man is self-centred. He loves to talk about himself. His vanity is
-his weak point. If he is no talker, and all other topics fail, lead him
-to talk about himself. Only one man in a hundred will fail to respond
-to this bait. He does not know that he is engrossing the conversation
-in this way: he only knows that you are delightful.
-
-The wonderful charm some girls have for men lies in the interest she
-shows in him, and the tact with which she makes him think well of
-himself.
-
-A man will not be snubbed. In novels, especially of the Duchess kind,
-the abject small creature whom she calls the hero thrives upon it. His
-love feeds upon snubbing, and grows more intense. He falls in love at
-first sight, and the worse his charmer treats him the more he loves
-her. This is not true to life. These books are full of false ideas, and
-do much harm to the girl who reads them.
-
-It seems almost coarse to advise flattery. Flattery is coarse. You can,
-however, discover a man’s good qualities, talents, etc., and praise
-them without limit. Men will swallow large doses of praise without so
-much as a wink. They do not even know you are praising them; they are
-only conscious of being pleased. You must be discreet, however, in
-giving your doses, and above all things avoid getting the name of being
-a flatterer. You can sometimes give praise with an unsparing hand, but
-you must be sure of the right occasion. A public man may be praised _ad
-libitum_. In fact, a man who sings, acts, speaks in public needs it.
-
-The private man wants it too. He gets less of it from the world in
-general, and your good opinion, delicately expressed, will be all the
-more acceptable. When you have a field all to yourself, be sure and
-improve the occasion.
-
-The girl who is affectionate wins. I do not mean to imply that you are
-to embrace every man you meet or to allow anything of the kind from
-them. You are to show a certain warmth of feeling. No man likes a cold
-girl. Ice repels. A friend of mine, whose great attraction was her
-warmth of manner, mowed down hearts like ten-pins Her greeting always
-was more than cordial. She gave almost an affectionate grasp of the
-hand, allowing her hand to lie there a mere shadow of time, while her
-beaming smile showed her delight at the meeting. There was life and
-warm blood in the touch of her slender fingers which made many a man’s
-heart beat quickly for her. She made a man feel that in winning her he
-would be winning a loving wife, and that is what a man always wants.
-
-Another equally successful girl made the man with whom she was talking
-feel that he was the only man of much importance in the world; all her
-interest was in him--just in him. Every look was flattery of the worst
-kind.
-
-We sometimes say that a girl has an indescribable charm and a way with
-her that no man can withstand. I think her power is simply that she
-makes a man think better of himself. She gives him a confidence in
-himself. She makes him pleased with himself. She shows an interest
-in his greatest interest, himself. Instead of wounding his vanity,
-which is almost greater than his heart, she flatters it. Men rarely
-overlook an insult to the former. A girl who has made a man think less
-of himself may give that man up on the spot. She is crossed off of his
-books forever.
-
-There are occasions when you must exercise a good deal of forbearance
-with a man if you wish to win him. A man is prone to wander. He may be
-paying attention to some other girl when you most want him. Although
-it is very annoying, there must be nothing cold in your greeting when
-he comes to you again. You must not reproach him. You must simply make
-yourself a great deal more fascinating than she is. You must be more
-sweet and winning if possible than you were before. Take pains never
-to speak ill of this possible rival. It is neither Christian-like or
-lady-like to do so. It is bad taste. The man knows you are jealous.
-He hates to hear bitter words. It looks very much as if you could and
-would make bitter remarks to your husband. If you reproach him now
-for wandering, he may judge truly that your husband will have little
-liberty. If you are jealous and inclined to make a fuss before there is
-even any engagement, what will you be like after marriage?
-
-If you would win, cultivate a sweet, gentle, forbearing spirit. Be
-always gracious. Cultivate a kindly manner. “Be free from arrogance,
-self-assertion, self-consciousness, considerate of the feelings of
-others.” Be courteous and kind in manners to every one.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV. THE GIRL WHO FAILS.
-
-
-“The young man fights shy of the girl who makes a dead set after him,”
-was the inelegant, but o’er-true paragraph I read in the paper not long
-since. The paragraphist was evidently a man and knew his sex.
-
-The girl who runs after a man fails. She more likely disgusts him
-than flatters him. He does not want her or her attentions when he can
-have them without the seeking. It is man’s province to woo, and his
-whole nature seems to revolt against a turning of the tables. I call
-to mind a schoolmate who on this account was a complete failure. She
-was pretty, bright, even witty, well educated, moved in good society,
-and had money, but no man wanted her. Her boldness disgusted all of
-them. When she saw one she fancied, she paid such open court to him
-that he avoided her. Some time afterwards, when she saw the uselessness
-of pursuit there, she turned her attentions elsewhere, running after
-another man. Although naturally attractive, I never knew a man who
-wanted her.
-
-I have known of other girls who have never married for this same
-reason. It seems to be a common fault. It is a serious one. If you are
-at all inclined to be forward with men, stop it. You will not only
-fail to marry, you will lose respect. You gain nothing and lose all.
-You cheapen yourself and your charms when you “throw yourself at a
-man’s head.” As it has been decreed from the beginning of the world
-that man is the head of the woman, so it is decreed that as he shall
-protect her, he is the one to woo and she the one to be won. You will
-meet coarse men who will respond to all your advances. They will pay
-you attention just for the fun of the thing. They will never marry
-you, and it would be a good lesson to you if you could hear them talk
-of you among themselves. A man never spares a girl who has no respect
-for herself. A man whom you run after may even say many tender things
-to you. He may lead you up to the point where, if you had not begun
-it, you would have a right to expect him to ask you to marry him. He
-doesn’t. He stops just there.
-
-A girl’s great charm is a sweet, womanly modesty, which appears to hide
-a love she cannot help feeling.
-
-It is a great mistake to let your male friends see you with any
-blemishes upon you. If you have a breaking-out on the face, a swollen
-cheek, a red nose, or anything which disfigures you, hide yourself
-till it is over. Men like to idealize a girl whom they admire, and
-they cannot idealize a swollen face or a red nose. I knew a girl who
-continually had styes on her eyes. She was not wise enough to hide
-herself at the time, but continued to go out where she would meet her
-male friends. She has never married, and I have always thought that
-this is the reason. Another girl had her front teeth drawn, and went
-about toothless for a while. Other girls do not hesitate to let men see
-them with their bangs in curl-papers. A man will never let you see him
-with his hair not combed or with his face lathered for shaving.
-
-Be tidy always. Have your hair combed, your dress neat, even if it is
-old. Patches are to be respected, while holes mark the sloven. Always,
-even if you are scrubbing the floor, be ready to see any one who
-comes. The very one in whose eyes you most desire to appear well may
-come then. Some men have a way of dropping in at such unexpected times.
-Many a man has been disillusionized by a dirty dress or a frowsy head.
-Men like a nice appearance. They never want to marry a sloven if they
-know it. A bright and interesting writer has never married for this
-reason. Her head is never combed, and there is always a rip somewhere
-in her dress. Her hands are generally touched off with ink.
-
-The independent, self-reliant girl is rarely a favorite with men. A
-man loves to protect. He does not like a masterful, bossy girl. He
-does not want to follow as if he were a spaniel. It is a poor specimen
-of a man who does not want to lead. Three sisters were left with a
-very little money at the death of their father. They were self-reliant
-and thorough business women. They invested their money to such good
-advantage in real estate that in a few years they became wealthy women.
-They were never married. It would have been impossible for any man with
-any self-respect to have loved either of them: they were so mannish,
-independent, and self-reliant.
-
-Do not be of the so-called woman’s rights order. Men hate strong-minded
-women who are forever harping on the wrongs of women and of the rights
-they are going to have. That kind of girl generally does have a
-wrong--the wrong of being neglected by the sterner sex. A woman’s right
-is a husband, a home, and children. It is her right to have something
-to love and to make happy. When she wants to usurp a man’s place, she
-is going out of her sphere and makes a failure of her life. If you have
-a leaning towards “woman’s rights,” erect yourself and lean the other
-way. If you do not, you are doomed to unattractive spinsterhood, dress
-reform, and the lecture platform, and to feed on husks. That sweet
-little wife yonder, who hardly knows who is being voted for, and whose
-horizon is bounded by her husband, is feeding on corn. She believes
-that her rights are wifehood and motherhood, and she has them.
-
-A self-assertive girl fails. A self-assertive, selfish, self-centred
-girl is no man’s ideal. It is unwomanish as well as unwomanly. A girl
-who can push ahead and take her own part is generally allowed to do so.
-It is a mistake to be anything that is unfeminine. Men never admire
-girls who have masculine characteristics. Only a fool will marry her.
-Do not ape men in dress or manner. Strive to be womanish and womanly
-at all times in every way. The attractive woman is womanly sweetness
-personified.
-
-The girl who insists upon attentions gets none. The girl who looks upon
-her escort as her slave _pro tem._ loses him. You must never treat a
-man as if he were your servant. He will not stand it from you, although
-you may be attractive in other ways. His manhood will assert itself,
-and no matter how much he has loved you, that love will be killed. It
-is a poor outlook for married happiness. He does not care to wed where
-he knows he will be henpecked.
-
-A poor girl will marry before a wealthy one will. The latter has it
-written upon her that it costs a mint to keep her. She may be much
-admired, but she is an expensive luxury. Unless a young man has
-exceptional means, he must give her up. You will find numbers of
-unmarried women in the highest society everywhere. Men are afraid to
-marry the daughters of millionnaires, unless a large dowry is going to
-be among the wedding presents. Extravagant habits, they know, have
-been her rule. She has never been taught to economize in anything. She
-must have an establishment as elegant as her father’s. She could not
-think of beginning as humbly as her parents likely did. So she either
-fails to marry at all, or marries late in life, when the death of her
-parents has given her an independent fortune.
-
-A girl who shows her anxiety to marry generally fails to do so. A man
-feels that it is marriage and not himself that she wants. That wounds
-his vanity. She is never self-possessed in the society of men. She is
-so anxious to please that she plans beforehand what she will say. When
-she says it, it comes out wrong and does not fit in. She is trembling
-and eager even if she does not run after him. Like vaulting ambition,
-she o’erleaps herself. Every time you meet her, she has new and fresh
-hopes. She is waiting always anxiously for a proposal, and would
-accept any man who offered himself regardless of creed (almost color),
-circumstances, character, and condition.
-
-The sharp, snubby girl never succeeds. A man will not stay where he is
-snubbed or where his vanity is wounded. Some girls, especially very
-young ones, have an idea that they are saying smart things where they
-are only saying sharp things. You hardly realize what a great mistake
-you are making when you try to be witty at a man’s expense. You only
-make a greater one when you are cutting in your remarks. Girls have an
-idea that it does a young man good to have, as they express it, “the
-conceit taken out of him.” I doubt if it does, and even so, you are
-not the one to do it. Let him have a good opinion of himself in his
-youth. Help him to it, rather than to try to take it away from him.
-The outside world will give him knocks enough as he battles his way
-up in it, to take any amount of conceit out of him. Maybe he comes to
-you sometimes just smarting from one. Let him find for his wounds a
-balm. Learn to soothe and sympathize instead of hurting. Your tongue
-is sometimes so unwittingly cruel. Your laugh is so heartless that you
-make a man with a rhinoceros skin shrink. It all flies back upon your
-own head, however. You will suffer for it afterwards. It will only
-drive him from you. Girls often can attract who cannot keep a beau.
-Notice them. See if they have not sharp tongues and do not love to take
-the conceit out of a man. “He has too good an opinion of himself, but I
-let him know what I thought of him,” I have heard girls say. One thing
-is certain--if you have done that, you will never hear from him that he
-thinks much of you.
-
-So round off your sharp corners. Remember that the young man with a
-good opinion of himself is the more easy to win, because you can play
-upon his vanity.
-
-Do not speak your mind plainly. Certain persons pride themselves on
-plain speaking, as if there were a virtue in hurting some one else’s
-feelings. When you hear any one say, “I always speak my mind,” you may
-know she says disagreeable things. She thinks when she has said that
-that she can go ahead, cutting right and left with her tongue. They are
-never people who praise. It appears that those who say “just what they
-think” generally think unkind things.
-
-Avoid doing so, especially to a man. It is unkind. It makes more
-enemies the world over than anything else. Men will swallow praise _ad
-nauseum_, but they will not take censure.
-
-The eccentric girl had better never have been born, as far as men are
-concerned. They will have nothing to do with her. If you are eccentric
-and have prided yourself upon it, the sooner you become like folks
-the better for you. A man will not pay attention to an oddity. An
-outlandish hat that causes comment will sometimes drive him away. He
-may not know what is the matter with it, but he knows he will not ask
-you out while there is any danger of your wearing it. It is a mistake
-to be odd in your conduct or language. Eccentricity grows upon one. If
-you are given to it in your youth, what will you be in your old age? A
-man would know that if he were rash enough to marry you, every day you
-would make him ashamed.
-
-The girl who has too many gentlemen friends hardly ever marries. There
-is something in every man’s heart which subscribes to
-
-  “The rose that all are praising,
-   Is not the rose for me.”
-
-There are cases where jealousy of another’s man’s attentions will
-hasten a proposal. But two are in the case there, however, and both
-are in love. Avoid many gentlemen callers. Do not allow your house
-to become a meeting-place. A man will not fall in love where he sees
-you smile as sweetly on another man as you do upon him. He will reign
-alone. He never goes on shares where a heart is concerned. A man may
-call often, where he knows he will meet other men, but it is only as
-a friend. He does not fall in love with his hostess. When he marries
-it will likely be some little modest girl who hardly knows any man but
-himself.
-
-When I was very young I remember hoping that when I grew older I would
-have as many gentlemen callers as a certain young lady who lived near
-us. Every night her parlors were thronged. It seemed to be a general
-meeting-place for young men. Her sister and herself lavished their
-smiles upon them. She never married. Her sister married a man whom she
-met in another place, and who hardly ever came to the house. Another
-girl had quite as many callers. She must have seen her danger, for she
-ceased to receive them. Some time later she married.
-
-It is flattering to your vanity to have a great many gentlemen friends
-who call, and who take you out, but it will certainly stand in the
-way of marriage. It is fun, doubtless, to count up a long list of
-escorts, but the girl who can do so rarely counts up a long list of
-offers. A girl who was so retiring that she was rarely invited out by a
-gentleman, was loved by almost every man who got well-acquainted with
-her. She could have counted up a long list of offers but a short list
-of escorts. At a party she was a wall-flower. She had few gentlemen
-callers, yet it seems as though all men longed to possess her. She
-passed most of her evenings alone with her family, and married well. So
-it shows that knowing many men would rather indicate no marriage than a
-surety of one.
-
-The cold girl never succeeds. A man would as soon make love to an
-icicle. A man prefers fire. He likes a warm, living heart. He wants to
-see that a girl has that heart. A pretty, stylish young girl whom I
-want to see settled in life is failing to do so on just that account.
-She in not naturally cold, but when she is at all interested in a man,
-she becomes almost frigid in his presence. She is too afraid of showing
-her interest in him to allow him to see that she responds to his. A man
-wants an affectionate, warm-hearted wife. So he will marry what seems
-to him to be an affectionate girl. There is a certain warmth of manner
-that will show this disposition.
-
-A girl fails who will not let the man who is beginning to love her see
-that she can return love. It must be shown modestly, however. You must
-be sympathetic. Man has his success and his failures in life. As he
-comes to you, he is thinking of them more than he is of you. He wants
-to talk of them. If you do not show a sympathetic interest, he will go
-where he can get it. Draw him out on his favorite topic, no matter if
-it is himself. I remember once walking two squares with a gentleman who
-talked of nothing else but a slight injury on his hand.
-
-An interesting, intellectual lady is going through life unmarried
-for no other reason, I believe, than her lack of sympathy. You are
-conscious of this lack whenever you converse with her. If you mention
-yourself, your humble aim and ambitions, a dead silence falls. You feel
-as if you were undone and wish you could hide your head. A woman will
-hasten to change the subject and to make amends. A man leaves and never
-returns.
-
-A man likes to look, as it were, in a mirror. He likes to see himself
-reflected in the eyes that meet his. He wants to feel that the girl has
-so much interest in him that she is interested in every word he says
-about himself.
-
-The girl who talks about herself usurps his prerogative. He does not
-relish that, and her society is stupid to him. _I_ is a man’s pronoun.
-_You_ is a woman’s. Very young girls who are filled with themselves
-and their own affairs are very much given to this. As they grow older,
-they see it does not do. Bear in mind that no matter how pretty you are
-or how sweet, if you will talk about yourself to a man, you become “as
-tedious as a twice-told tale vexing the dull ears of a drowsy man.”
-There is an old witticism which tells the truth in a nutshell: “What
-is a bore? A man who talks about himself when you want to talk about
-yourself.”
-
-The high-tempered girl fails. A man bent upon matrimony avoids her if
-he is aware of it. If you have such an infirmity, try to get rid of it
-as you would a facial blemish. Try harder; for it is indeed far worse
-than any bodily disfigurement. Our Lord, whose strength is sufficient
-for you always, will help you to do so. Some girls falsely call it a
-high spirit. It is anything but that. It is a weak spirit. A girl who
-gives way to temper has no control over herself. She is weak instead of
-high and strong. Her doors are always open, and whoever will may come
-in and upset her. Instead of being proud of it, be ashamed of it. While
-possessing it, your life is a failure everywhere.
-
-A sweet, interesting, lively conversationalist is one thing, and a girl
-with a long tongue is another. Avoid gossip and meddling.
-
-It is a mistake to entertain a gentleman with an account of your
-neighbor’s failings and backslidings. His interests are broader. He
-rarely stoops to such little things, and they weary him. Men never care
-for girls who have the reputation for being gossips. Fill your mind
-with better things. Read and enlarge your powers of conversation.
-
-It is a mistake to be inquisitive. While a man likes a girl to be
-interested in him and in his doings, he does not want to be questioned
-about them. A walking interrogation point is never a pleasant
-companion. When you draw him out it must be with tact.
-
-A precise, prim, what we call an old maidish girl is a failure. She is
-born to a lonely life of spinsterhood. Unless she change she cannot
-escape her fate. At heart she may be all that is true and good, but
-no man will ever find that out. As a rule men judge of us by outward
-appearances. They take women more for what they seem to be than for
-what they are. The good qualities of the prim girl are all lost upon
-him.
-
-With gentlemen a loud girl never succeeds. She can always attract the
-attentions of coarse men, but a well-bred man avoids her. He loves
-modesty. He does not want the girl whom he escorts to be conspicuous
-by boisterous talking and laughing. He does not want her to be
-hail-fellow-well-met with every man they meet. It shows she has no
-modesty. He cannot respect her and will not marry her. It is never nice
-to be “gay” or “fast.” The men whom you attract about you by it are not
-the men you want to marry. They are the kind who do not want to marry
-you or any one else.
-
-Loud, conspicuous dressing is never an attraction. Men like stylish,
-well-dressed girls, but they never like anything that is flashy or that
-attracts attention.
-
-The girl who imagines every man she meets is in love with her rarely
-is loved by one. This is a common fault with young girls. It comes
-either from innate silliness or from the reading of too many novels.
-The worst of it is, she is not even cured of her folly when the men
-do not propose to her, but do to some other girl. She imagines some
-insurmountable difficulty was in his way, and that he has only married
-the other girl out of pique. That is the way it was in the last novel
-she read. Girls, be sensible. Every man you meet will not fall in love
-with you. When one does, he will let you know it. Men are not given to
-sighing in secret over one girl, then marrying another without love. A
-man who loves you will be open about it. He will not avoid you. He acts
-on the spot: sometimes without much thought. So when a man does not pay
-attention to you, rest assured, unless you have offended him, that he
-does not want to do so. He is not in love with you. He is more likely
-to pay attention without loving, than to love without paying attentions.
-
-A vain girl fails. The pretty girl who depends altogether upon her
-looks and is proud of her beauty, rarely marries. I have spoken of this
-before. It has been thought that in matrimony, as in other fields, the
-plain-featured girl has the greatest success. A pretty girl starts out
-with false notions of her charms. She thinks that she has only to be
-seen to be loved. She overestimates her one gift, and does not try to
-cultivate others. Youths who easily fall in love and as easily out
-again are caught by a merely pretty face. Men want something more.
-
-Let me quote from an article on this subject which I read the other
-day: “Look about you and count the number of faded, thwarted beauties
-you know, who are embittered dependents, or else late in life have
-picked up a broken stick in the shape of a partner to help disguise
-their crippled vanity. In fact, so frequently is this the case that
-between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six only extraordinary virtue
-and talent ever saves a belle from grievous folly in her aspirations.”
-So if you are a beauty and wish to marry, I advise you strongly to put
-aside all vanity, and to cultivate the superior charms of your plainer
-sisters.
-
-Never allow your mother to do the courting. There are times when a girl
-can win a man against his will, and he will never know that it was she
-who did it. A mother never can do this. A man knows it every time. When
-he sees her efforts, he is forewarned and on his guard. It is all done
-in cold blood and deliberately by the mother. The daughter has less
-deliberation and a great deal of warm blood when she attempts it. He is
-likely to think: “What an interesting girl! I believe I could get her
-if I tried,” and may try. Of the mother’s efforts, he thinks: “That old
-woman wants me to marry her daughter. I can see through her. I won’t do
-it.”
-
-A mother may make herself so attractive that, if she were a girl, she
-would win him. Notwithstanding that, he hardens his heart against the
-daughter. A lady who, even as a grandmother, is attractive to men,
-tried in her early married days to win a young man for her sister. He
-responded quickly to her overtures, and seemed glad to come to the
-house. She thought she was succeeding, when one day he said to her:
-“I know what you are about. You might as well give it up, you won’t
-accomplish it. If you were not married, however, I would propose to you
-to-day.”
-
-She did give it up.
-
-A girl makes a mistake who brags of her conquests. She should never
-speak of them to any one. If a man whom you cannot accept offers you
-his hand, forget that he did so. By your manner to him when you meet
-afterwards, endeavor to make him forget it. The girl who tells about
-the hearts she has won, wins no more. Men grow afraid of her. She is
-not to be trusted, they think. If she will lead other men on to propose
-only to reject them, then tell of it, she will do the same to them.
-
-A girl who fears that the man to whom she only is pleasant will
-think she is in love with him, is not likely to accomplish much
-matrimonially. She grows too self-conscious and stiff in her manner.
-You must forget yourself, or remember only that a man is won by a
-pleasant manner. If he did think you were a bit interested in him, he
-would be flattered by it, and might return it shortly.
-
-By a pleasant manner I do not mean a continual giggling. While you must
-be animated and lively, you cannot laugh continually. A sensible girl
-can be grave as well as gay. There are times, and plenty of them, when
-laughter jars. There is certainly a time to laugh and a time to cry;
-but there is never a time to giggle. Solomon gives a list of almost
-everything for which we have time, but he never says a word about
-giggling. A bright, animated manner and continual giggling are two
-different things. A bright girl is everywhere a success. A giggler is
-generally considered half-witted. A giggler has no depth of feeling. A
-bright, lively girl generally has a great deal of feeling; she is not
-slow to show it, either.
-
-Do not laugh when you talk. Do not laugh the moment a man speaks to
-you, keeping it up all the time he is with you. It looks as if you were
-delighted out of your senses. Do not laugh every time he looks at you
-till he begins to wonder if there is a black spot on his nose. Some men
-may prefer a grave girl any way. You might study the man and the place
-before you are too lively.
-
-It may be that some of you who read these chapters have failed so far
-to win any man’s love. Examine yourself and your peculiarities to see
-wherein the trouble lies. When you have found it, strive to overcome
-the difficulty. You cannot do it in your own strength. The Lord will
-help you. He will give you grace to overcome every evil temper, every
-disagreeable habit, every unlovely manner. If you ask Him, He will
-make you sweet and lovely. Rest assured that He is interested in your
-success; for He did not intend woman to live alone.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V. SOME UNFAILING METHODS.
-
-
-It is universally known that when a man and woman have a mutual
-interest, they get interested in each other. When they are in any way
-drawn together, they soon find that they cannot live apart. When a man
-grows accustomed to a woman with whom he is pleased, he desires to keep
-her with him. So we may consider that a companionship with a man is
-an unfailing way to win him. This companionship unfortunately is not
-always easy to arrange.
-
-It is often difficult to get up a mutual interest. When you can, be
-sure to do so. It must come naturally however. A forced arrangement,
-plainly seen, would defeat itself.
-
-Marriages frequently take place between parties who board in the same
-house. Seeing each other daily, getting well acquainted, and the
-mutual interest, even of the table, will draw them together. A young
-lady boarded, with her brother, in a house where there were no other
-young ladies, but a number of gentlemen. All admired her, several were
-smitten with her, and two asked her hand in marriage. A third began to
-think more of her than of the girl to whom he was engaged.
-
-A widow, with a nice home of her own, took two clergymen to board. It
-was not long before both wanted to marry her. She did not want either
-of them, but took the one who was the most persistent.
-
-Singing together is another mutual interest. It is the means of many
-a marriage. In a quartette, the soprano and tenor marry, the bass and
-alto. The singer may marry his accompanist. Jennie Lind married her
-unknown pianist, Goldschmidt, who was younger than herself. Actors, who
-are always thrown much together, marry and unmarry _ad libitum_ in a
-disgraceful way.
-
-The marriage of the type-writer and her employer is so frequent that it
-has passed into a joke. They grow interested in each other from mere
-companionship.
-
-A student falls in love with the sister of his friend where he visits
-during vacation. The late Henry Ward Beecher met his wife at her
-father’s home whither he had gone with a college chum, her brother.
-I had an aunt who had offers from two students brought home by her
-brothers. This is such a common occurrence that enterprising mothers
-sometimes urge sons to bring home desirable students to introduce to
-her daughters.
-
-A lawyer will marry a fair client. I might add that he is the more
-likely to do so if he is settling up a large estate for her.
-
-A physician rarely marries a patient. If your heart is set upon a
-certain physician do not play the rôle of an invalid. When you are sick
-you should have a married physician. A young lady was taken ill with
-pneumonia. Her family were strangers in the place, and, without knowing
-it, called in an unmarried physician. He was interested in the case,
-but not in the least in her. A year later he met her, when in perfect
-health, at the house of a mutual friend and fell in love with her.
-
-Living next door to each other will often make young people interested
-in each other. Church-work which brings young men and maidens together
-is fruitful of many marriages. A young man was put on a fair-table with
-a number of ladies. He fell in love with the only unmarried one on it.
-A young clergyman comes in contact with so many girls, and is so run
-after, that going to his church and entering into the work for his sake
-is but lost labor. If you want to work in a Church, do it for the Lord,
-without a thought of who has charge of that body of worshippers.
-
-We learn from Abelard and Heloise what the pupil will become to the
-teacher. Almost always, when neither are married, free lessons in
-love accompany another kind of a lesson--that is, if the lessons are
-private. Men fall in love with a lady who teaches them anything. A
-young lady was taught Hebrew by an unmarried clergyman. They married
-about a year after the lessons began.
-
-A man and woman who are in business together almost always marry. An
-author has been known to marry her publisher. A Mr. Maxwell published
-Miss Braddon’s novels, and now she is Mrs. Maxwell. Margaret Sydney
-is the _nom de plume_ of a writer who married her publisher, Daniel
-Lothrop, of Lothrop and Co.
-
-An almost certain way to win a man’s love is to win his confidence.
-When a man talks to a woman about his greatest interest, he becomes
-interested in her. When he opens his whole heart to her, he gives her
-that heart. I never knew this to fail. How to win this confidence is
-the puzzle. The very man you want may be the one who knows the most
-about keeping his affairs to himself. You will have to use tact and
-patience in drawing him out. Get him to talk about his business, or
-make him talk of his books, his pleasures, his family: always about
-himself. Persist in this gently. Show him you can keep a secret.
-Encourage him to talk about himself until he touches upon something
-that is nearest his heart. Some men will do this sooner than others.
-The man who readily confides in you, readily falls in love--and almost
-as readily falls out. It is said that the heart which is easily won is
-hard to keep; and that the heart which is hard to win you never lose.
-When you have drawn any man to tell you his heart unreservedly, he is
-yours.
-
-A young man was in love with a girl of whom his mother did not approve.
-He was much distressed by the fuss she made. He did not want to give
-up the girl or to pain his mother. He must talk of his trouble to some
-one, and he selected a young girl who was visiting the family. He told
-her all his troubles. She encouraged him with infinite tact until he
-spoke unreservedly. Whenever he could find her alone he talked of that
-and of nothing else. Then he planned to be alone with her. Before three
-months he loved her better than he did the first one.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI. A WORD OF WARNING.
-
-
-The greatest mistake a girl can make is to allow familiarities
-from men. A girl must be circumspect in her conduct. She must be
-self-respecting. Having a proper self-respect and being a prude are two
-different things. A man never likes a prude. He never, in his heart,
-cares for one who has no self-respect. A man, of a certain class, will
-pay her attention and take advantage of the liberties she allows, but
-he never marries her.
-
-You are not safe if you allow the least digression from the right path.
-A slip once made can never be recalled, and the second follows very
-easily on the first. Then comes the third, and so on, till ruin is the
-end for you--not for him.
-
-It is a girl’s own fault if she fall. It is her place to guard her
-honor.
-
-You will meet many a man who is lover-like and fascinating, but if he
-says nothing about marriage, leave him alone. You do not want to hear
-of love, if that is all he has to say. Never mind if you do love him.
-If he loves you and finds he cannot possess you otherwise, he will want
-to marry you.
-
-Beware of the beginning. Be careful of your conversation. Never smile
-at a joke with a double meaning. Meet it with silence. Do not pretend
-you do not understand if you do: there are men who would take pleasure
-in enlightening you. There are times when it is well to show that you
-do not approve of it; you may even have to rebuke it. Thereafter avoid
-that man. If he cares to continue your friendship, he will know how he
-must behave himself.
-
-Never let a young man repeat a story to you that he would not repeat
-if your mother were present. A man who would do that, means no good
-to you. An old and excellent rule is, never talk about anything to a
-man you would not talk about before a third party; and never talk to a
-girl as you would not talk if a man were present. Never say anything to
-either which you would not repeat to your mother. A well-known writer
-has lately said: “It is always a mistake for a young girl to talk
-to a man as if she were _blasé_ and widely experienced in all human
-emotions, frailties, and faults. Many inexperienced, innocent girls
-adopt this manner, thinking it will render them fascinating in the eyes
-of men. Men take us for what we seem, not for what we are. The most
-hardened _mondaine_ who wears a mask of frank innocence fares better
-with them than the good, sweet-hearted girl who puts on _blasé_ airs
-and pretends to be a little wicked.”
-
-Let your heart be pure. Keep your lips pure. God can make and keep them
-so. He can take away all interest in sin.
-
-Never make an appointment with a young man of which you cannot tell
-your mother. When a young man urges you to deceive your mother, he
-means to deceive you. Your mother is your best friend; make her your
-confidante in all things, then you will never go astray. On the first
-approach of familiarities, consult her and be guided by her advice.
-
-Men do not have to be told: they know what girl they may approach
-familiarly and what one they must treat with respect. You may be sure
-there is something wrong in your conduct if you are approached as you
-do not wish to be.
-
-Be careful not to call a man by his first name unless he is a relative.
-A well-bred lady will not even address a man thus whom she has known
-in her childhood. Do not allow a man to call you by your first name.
-You can easily show by your manner that it is distasteful to you. Check
-even the liberty of your Christian name with the prefix Miss. Although
-you may have an older sister, you have a right to your father’s name.
-If you cannot be Miss Jones, you can be Miss Mary Jones.
-
-When you are out walking with a gentleman, do not allow him to grasp
-your elbow. Some men do this instead of offering the arm. He is
-ill-bred if he attempts it. It is too familiar altogether, and is
-becoming too common. A polished gentleman will not do it. He will offer
-his arm.
-
-Beware of allowing a caress from a man to whom you are not engaged.
-Stifle in the beginning any attempt to do so. Do not so much as allow
-him to hold your hand. No matter if you do like him, and if his warm
-grasp does send the happy blood to your heart, it is a happiness you
-have no right to--neither has he, until he has spoken. Sometimes these
-things, small as they seem, are but the first step on the broad path
-that leads to destruction. Perhaps you like as much to feel that strong
-arm about you as he does to put it there. It is in his power to make it
-right to do so; it is not in yours, so refuse it. Believe me, you will
-gain nothing by it, and may lose all. If a man finds he cannot embrace
-you unengaged, he will take steps to be engaged to you if he loves you.
-
-Poor child! You allow it because you love him. It may be anything but
-love for you and your good that prompts his action. A man rarely binds
-himself to a girl who allows his caresses without it. Another thing,
-while you are treasuring up this caress as a closely-guarded secret,
-he is doubtlessly telling his comrades what liberties be can take with
-you. That is too true. The indiscretions which a girl will hide, he
-will boast of--it is a man’s nature. He judges you by himself, too.
-He knows that he kisses other girls when he can get a chance, and he
-supposes that you allow other men’s caresses. A man cares more for the
-caress than for the girl. When he is not genuinely in love, one girl
-will do almost as well as another. He supposes it is the same with you.
-He argues that if you are cheap to him, you will be cheap to other men.
-
-“Never speak of love till your lover speaks of marriage,” is a good old
-rule. Men do not talk much about marriage to a girl who will profess
-her love before he asks her to be his wife.
-
-Be careful to whom you give your photograph. Like figures, they cannot
-lie. If you have given it, you cannot deny doing so: it is there, a
-fact, in the young man’s possession--he may show it to whom he pleases.
-He generally pleases to show it to all his male friends. It is another
-thing which cheapens you. Your picture is one of a collection he has of
-girls. Maybe for a while, when exhibiting his gallery of beauties, he
-may call you his best girl. He does it all lightly, and as the young
-men look over the collection, they will make remarks about you all
-which, if you heard them, would make you blush. If a girl has no more
-respect for herself than to give a picture to every man who asks for
-it, you must not expect men to respect her. It is no sign a man loves
-you because he asks for your picture. If he does, let him ask for you
-first. He more likely wants to enlarge his collection of photographs.
-If you went into his room, you would see it stuck up in his mirror with
-a dozen or so of others.
-
-It is a mistake to imagine that an engagement breaks down all barriers.
-Engagements are so frequently broken. Instead of being almost as
-sacred as marriage, they are held lightly. You must continue after
-your engagement to be careful of your conduct and not to allow any
-undue liberties. Do not let your lover’s caresses be too frequent or
-passionate. Some young people act as if they only become engaged so
-they might kiss each other--they spend all their time at it when they
-are alone. Some of these things are sweeter if they are waited for.
-Couples who are parted during their engagement generally are the most
-happy when they are married. They have not exhausted their affection;
-instead of its being an old story, it is fresh.
-
-If it were worth the while, I would advise you not to sit on a man’s
-lap till you were his wife. It is quite customary with lovers, I know;
-but it seems to me to be letting down bars which should be left up.
-Engagements are so easily broken that there should be stricter lines
-drawn. Surely no true woman who has entered upon her second engagement
-wants to remember how she sat on the lap of the first betrothed. While
-there is no harm in so doing, you will be on the safe side not to.
-
-It is wrong to take money from your betrothed. If you live on dry
-crusts and work till you drop, refuse it. Be married in calico rather
-than have his money buy your wedding-dress. Sometimes girls will urge
-a speedy wedding-day. You have no more right to do that than you have
-to ask him to marry you--the two go together. If he is too slow and
-you know of no reason why he should be, he does not care much for
-you; you had better break the engagement. However, if your heart would
-break with the engagement, try to make him more anxious to have you all
-to himself. It is not a girl’s place to be eager for the marriage. If
-you are self-supporting and want to marry him because you are tired of
-working, you wrong him. No matter what reason you may have for wishing
-an early marriage, it is never your right to propose it.
-
-Attentions from a married man are blasting to a girl’s reputation. No
-matter how fascinating he is, how much you admire him, how much you
-like his attentions, refuse to accept them. He is desecrating the most
-sacred ordinance, marriage. He is insulting you and wronging his wife.
-Eventually he will return to her, leaving you with a tarnished name.
-His wife will forgive him, and society will forget he went astray; but
-his wife will never forgive you, and society will never forget it.
-You will always be spoken of as the girl that was “crazy after him.”
-It will stand in the way of a marriage for you. Men do not care to
-marry a girl who has been talked about, or whose name was coupled with
-a married man’s. You lose everything by it, almost your character.
-There is no such food for gossip as the attentions of a married man to
-a girl. They suspect you are not all you ought to be, they have good
-reason to do so. They may think if you will encourage a man to trample
-on his marriage vows, you would trample on your own. You are condemned
-by every one.
-
-Your vanity may lead you to feel a degree of triumph in winning a
-husband from a wife. It is no triumph, however, to do so. The man who
-will be so won is in most cases extremely weak and decidedly untrue.
-It is not that your attractions are superior to hers, it is that he
-is fickle, and you were the first girl who accepts his unlawful love.
-Instead of being a triumph, it is a sin. Instead of being a subject
-for boasting, it is something to be ashamed of. Instead of encouraging
-him for one moment, flee from him. Instead of looking upon him as your
-lover, consider him your worst enemy: an enemy who for the selfish
-indulgence of the time would ruin your whole life. In this world of
-sin and sorrowful consequences of sin, you cannot be too careful of
-yourself, your conduct, and your associates. If a man is known by the
-company he keeps, much more is a girl. Much misery will come from one
-imprudent, maybe innocent, act. A trifle may sometimes be what starts
-you on the road to destruction. That road is broad, and very enticing
-to some; but the end is death. Never drink with a man. The pity of it
-that this should have to be written down! There is a class of girls who
-aim to be a little fast. They think they make themselves attractive to
-men by keeping pace with all their sins. They think men will like them
-if they have a “good time” with them. They call this a “good time.” It
-is an unmitigated bad time; a time that will make you and him bad too.
-You will fail in your object, for you will not attract him. It is a low
-man who will care for a girl who cares so little for herself.
-
-Instead of drinking with a man, keep him from doing so. Your power
-over men is very great, girls; it is much greater than you think. You
-can make him good or bad, if he loves you. If he is only your friend,
-you can help him withstand temptation and turn him from wrong. Try to
-exhibit the ideal woman always. Let your character be so elevated that
-you will raise the man who walks beside you. Be a pure, true girl, and
-he will be a better, purer man. The very thought of you, as he goes out
-into a sinful world and meets temptations of which you are ignorant,
-will be a shield to him. Next to the strength God can give him, will be
-the remembrance of your goodness and purity. He will, for your sake,
-abhor things which before had a fascination for him.
-
-Always be wrapt in a cloak of sweet maidenly reserve and dignity.
-Then no tongue can assail you, no man will dare to offer you any
-familiarity; the conversation and conduct of men will take a better
-tone in your society.
-
-Try to make every man you meet, even a passing acquaintance, better.
-Resolve that you will know no man whom you will not influence decidedly
-for good. So act that when you look back in after years you can
-honestly say that you tried to make every man whom you knew well, a
-Christian. So strive to lead young men to Christ that you will see the
-fruits of your efforts dotted all along your path of life. Let every
-man whom you know be able to say, as he looks back, “I have been a
-better man for knowing her.”
-
-In all your intercourse with men, do everything to ennoble and nothing
-to lower his character. “Let him see that you are a true woman and a
-Christian: one whose life is beautiful in its maidenly dignity and
-attractive loveliness.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII. THE SECRET OF THE WIDOW’S POWER.
-
-
-There is no doubt that a widow can, if she choose, attract a man where
-a girl is powerless to do so. She has a charm which is irresistible
-when she pleases to exercise it. This power lies greatly in her
-knowledge of man-nature. It lies also in her taking a man just as he
-is. Instead of wounding his vanity by trying to make him conform to her
-ideas, she makes him pleased with himself as he is. Girls have sharp
-corners which hurt a man if he runs against them; widows never have.
-Girls are unkind; widows never are. Girls like to tease and ridicule a
-man; a widow is too wise to do so. Girls will wound even a man who is
-not sensitive; a widow soothes. Girls never remember a man’s feelings;
-a widow never forgets them.
-
-She has studied one man thoroughly. She knows his peculiarities, his
-weaknesses, his strong points, his likes and dislikes. In knowing one
-man well, she knows his sex. She has learned well what will please
-one man. In learning that she knows what will please all men. She has
-learned to sink her own individuality. She has learned to follow,
-and has no desire to lead. She knows that men like to be obeyed. She
-knows they like their ease. She knows they would rather be amused,
-entertained, than to dance attendance. She knows that the best way to
-entertain a man is to make him talk of himself or his hobby. She never
-minds how much he rides this hobby when he is with her. A girl would
-forbid its entrance. A widow may even get up and ride with him. When
-a girl would show a man she has no interest in his affairs, a widow
-would make him believe she was even more interested than he was. A girl
-would say, “I get so sick of hearing that man talk on that subject that
-I won’t listen to him.” The widow draws him out. Where a girl would cut
-him short, she encourages him to go on at length. He begins to connect
-her with his hobby. He learns to come eagerly to her with every new
-development, sure of sympathy. When he is downcast about it, he comes
-to her as quickly for the encouragement he is sure to get. He begins to
-feel that there is no one in the world who understands and appreciates
-him as she does. The rest soon follows.
-
-A widow is sympathetic--she is sincere in that sympathy. She has
-suffered and feels for all who suffer. She can understand a heartache,
-because she knows what it is to have her dearest earthly hopes
-shattered. Her life is a disappointment, and she can weep with those
-who have been disappointed. She has found out that life is not a bed of
-roses only, but has many thorns. She will help soothe the wounds that
-thorns have made in other hearts. She knows that men have troubles,
-little or great; and she knows too much to give him any more. She has
-stood by one man as he has fought with the world, and knows that it is
-woman’s province to strengthen him by her sympathy and helpful word for
-the battle. She knows that when a man seeks a woman’s society he wants
-peace. She knows his vanity is wounded every day in his contact with
-men, and that when he comes to her he wants it flattered.
-
-So a widow tries to make a man happy and comfortable. She rarely
-alludes to her own grief. It is more interesting because she does not.
-She mutely appeals for sympathy, while she gives that same sympathy.
-Few young girls know anything about sorrow; they cannot understand
-what it is. They are generally so full of themselves they cannot
-sympathize. Herein lies their weakness, and herein lies a widow’s
-strength. Sympathy is a woman’s greatest power. Girls are self-centred;
-a widow never is. A girl is absorbed in her own pleasure; a widow has
-learned to make the pleasures of another hers. A girl puts herself
-forward prominently; a widow sinks her personality. She has learned to
-do so. She knows the man with whom she is talking is more interested in
-himself than he is in her. She knows that no man cares as much for her
-interests, plans, hopes, as he does for his own; and she talks of his
-only. She lets him take the lead in the conversation, she follows.
-
-A young girl has moods; a widow has none. She is always the same. A
-man is sure of her. He knows when he leaves her, she will be the same
-when he meets her again. I have known girls to lose an admirer by a
-cool greeting or change of demeanor. A widow never would. It is said
-that Madame Recamier’s great charm was her gracious sweetness, which
-was under all circumstances the same.
-
-A girl fancies that a man thinks of her all the time, as she does of
-him. She likely thinks of him all day and dreams of him by night. A
-man, out in the world, is engrossed in business--that is his first
-consideration. It is only his leisure he can give to her. He goes to
-her for his pleasure. A widow knows this. She has other things to
-occupy her mind, and comes as fresh to him as he does to her. She knows
-that he has not lived over and over her last remarks, and she has not
-dwelt upon his. She makes no mistakes in estimating his affection for
-her.
-
-She never puts his affection to a test. Girls love to do so. A widow
-knows that it will have to be a pretty strong one that will stand it.
-She never makes any experiments. She knows him in and out. She knows
-what will please him and what will not please him. She knows what
-flatters his vanity and what will drive him away. Her lessons have been
-too thorough to allow any mistake.
-
-Experience has taught her that the best way to win a man is to make him
-think more of himself. Experience has taught her that she can have her
-own way easily by proper management. A girl fights openly for her own
-way. She is unsuccessful as her plans are open.
-
-A widow knows that the royal road to a man’s heart lies through his
-stomach. Her little dinners and tempting lunches are a part of her
-mode of warfare. A man will always go where he can get a good dinner.
-He does not wait for a second invitation, and hardly a first. A man is
-always pleased with himself (unless he is a bad case of dyspepsia) when
-he has a good dinner. When he is pleased with himself, he is pleased
-with those about him.
-
-When a man knows that an evening call means a pretty little lunch, he
-is quite sure to come again. He goes first for the sake of his stomach,
-and later for the sake of his heart.
-
-A widow never forgets that the better friends she and the man become,
-the more likely he is to love her. With a man and woman there is but a
-short step from friendship to love. It has been said that there is no
-such thing as Platonic friendships between the two sexes. A widow knows
-that friendship ripens more quickly over the well-laden table than
-under any other circumstances. A girl trusts to romantic surroundings.
-A widow never does. She has found out that her hero was fleshly, and
-she knows that all men are. She knows that only a boy, wildly in love,
-prefers moonlight to a substantial meal.
-
-If a girl takes a meal with a man it is always at his expense. A widow
-never allows a man to spend much, if any, money upon her. She knows
-just how little he cares about doing so. She has heard the opinion
-of one man strongly expressed on that subject. She will not put one
-stumbling-block in a man’s way.
-
-A widow knows how to dress. She knows just the kind of dresses a
-man likes. She rarely is given to display. She chooses quiet tones
-or continues to wear black. Costly apparel she is well aware will
-frighten away a man of limited means. She studies herself, and how to
-dress, so as to make the best of both. Her art is so perfect that it is
-hidden.
-
-A widow is in no haste to wed. Many do not wish to do so at any time.
-She does not have to marry for a home: she either has inherited one or
-is able to support herself. She has no fear before her eyes of being
-an old maid. Years do not lessen her chances, as they do a girl’s. She
-does not pretend to be young. Youth is not her attraction. In these
-respects she is as independent as a man. It is not matrimony alone she
-cares for, if she marries, but a congenial companion. If she does not
-meet the right one this year, she may the next. She can afford to wait.
-
-A widow is conscious of her power. That gives her a good command of
-herself. She knows, from one man at least, if not from more, the full
-value of her charms. She knows her power to retain one man’s love even
-until the end. She knows how to make a man happy. She has done so.
-She knows that what once won love will do so again. She knows a man’s
-weak points: she knows his strong ones. She knows her own weak points:
-she may have been told of them very plainly. These she takes pains to
-strengthen.
-
-Old bachelors are proverbially hard to win. When one does marry it
-is almost always a widow. She only seems to know how to attract him.
-She knows what a hard fight it will be, and sets deliberately about
-doing it. She knows he is selfish. Only a selfish man tries to avoid
-family ties and troubles. Your warm-hearted, unselfish men always
-marry. A widow is not shocked at his selfishness. She has not looked
-for perfection. She helps him be selfish. She makes him look upon her
-as one who will encourage his pet foibles. She shows him that she will
-help him with them; instead of having to give up for her “my dog and my
-cat,” she will pet “my dog and my cat.”
-
-Yet a widow has a great drawback. There are some men at whom she can
-never get a chance. A man who does not wish to marry avoids a widow. He
-will pay attention to a young girl perfectly sure he can withstand her
-charms; but the young widow is a different person. He knows that if he
-allows himself to begin there, he cannot break off. Dickens gave the
-key-note to the whole situation when he said, “Samivel, beware of the
-widders.” For ages Samivels who do not wish to marry have obeyed that
-injunction.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII. “LADY BEAUTY.”
-
-
-The following is quoted, verbatim, from an English novel entitled,
-“Lady Beauty; or, Charming to Her Latest Day.” As it bears upon this
-subject, and many may not have read the book, I copy some parts.
-
-“You will find that your own enjoyment is heightened by the
-consciousness of power to please others.... Let this ever be in
-your mind: ‘I am a creature formed to give pleasure.’ Be courteous,
-be gentle, be refined, be sweet in all your dealings. Never lose
-your temper: it ruins the face; and it always leaves a disagreeable
-impression which nothing rubs out. Depend upon it, men may respect
-those creatures who are called women of character, which generally
-means women who perform awkwardly duties which with a little thought
-they might perform in a charming way: men may respect them, but when
-they want enjoyment they turn to women who study the art of pleasing.
-Now, what I want to teach you is, to be solid and pleasing too. Believe
-me a woman is seldom called upon to do anything which she may not do in
-an agreeable style if she will only take pains.... Never disarrange for
-an instant the drapery of pleasantness which a woman ought always to
-wear: keep it on you even for your husbands.... Be agreeable even when
-you are alone with your looking-glass. Please everybody as far as you
-can. Study morning, noon, and night to be agreeable.
-
-“Don’t expect too much of men and women, and you will learn to be
-good-humored over their selfishness and hypocrisy.
-
-“Learned talk is very affected. Be as well-educated as you please, but
-don’t seem so.
-
-“She had a frank, spontaneous sympathy with life all around and in
-every part, such as I never met in any one beside herself. By reason
-of this virtue she was always interested in what was going on, and
-the very quality which subdued her individuality in one way made her
-character fresh and delightful in another. She resolved to charm others
-with happiness and goodness in view, not mere society conquests.... She
-used worldly methods for most unworldly means. The polish, the graces,
-the social attractions, the accomplishments, literature, and wit, which
-some despise, she used as the very material out of which her noble
-purpose must be woven.... In the secret interior of her intentions she
-was truly devoted, trying by the spell of a beautiful womanhood to
-make those with whom she lived better and happier.
-
-“‘Tell me about it,’ she whispers, oh so low, so deliciously. She
-meant, ‘Anything you say will be sweet to hear.’
-
-“Too womanly for coquetry or coyness, she gave her answer at once.
-
-“Warmth, purity, tenderness, principle, all the finer parts of
-character were hers.... Her face was beautiful because it was the image
-of the soul.
-
-“It is a good maxim: ‘Never really be angry.’
-
-“To the opposite, her sister relied on her beauty for a place among
-her sex, and was at no pains to cultivate conversation, letters, or
-any branch of the art of pleasing except the setting forth of her
-personal charms. Had her manner and her talk been what she might easily
-have made them, she would have shone out as a beauty in the prime of
-her womanhood. She had no lack of sense nor of education, either; but
-proudly reposing on her incontestable loveliness, she rather withdrew
-than put forward her attractions.
-
-“I wish to convince women that it is a great mistake on their part to
-suppose that their power to please departs with youth. At all times
-I have noticed that men of sense seldom admire--or grow enamored
-of--women for beauty alone, but for character, manner, taste, and
-conversation. Now, while beauty, we must admit, lessens with time,
-character, manner, taste, and conversation may each be refined and
-enriched.... Mere beauty is but one bright unchanging beam: it will
-even grow wearisome; but wit, sense, courtesy, and humanity are forever
-casting forth new and unexpected rays and enlivening intercourse with
-agreeable surprises.
-
-“She was the best dresser I ever knew. Her appearance pleased numbers
-of people before they saw her face.... She managed through all the
-changes of fashion to respect herself and her own figure and face: in
-the fashion she would always be; but still she would modulate it so as
-to be the queen and not the slave.
-
-“Her manners in society were captivating. With what graceful attention
-she heard what you had to say. How modestly she gave her own
-opinion.... She tried to please. She knew that a woman ought to be
-an object of admiration and affection, and she ruled her whole life
-with a view to this fact. Her religion gave a richness, a sweetness, a
-seriousness to all her charms.
-
-“You will laugh when I tell you that Lady Beauty at the age of
-fifty-three had a new lover.”
-
-
-“BEAUTY RULES.”
-
-“Rule One.--A woman’s power in the world is measured by her power to
-please. Whatever she will wish to accomplish, she will manage it best
-by pleasing. A woman’s grand social aim should be to please.
-
-“Rule Two.--Modesty is the ground on which all a woman’s charms appear
-to the best advantage. In manner, dress, conversation, remember always
-that modesty must not be forgotten.... Not prudery. Modesty is of the
-soul. Prudery is on the surface.
-
-“Rule Three.--So the woman’s aim is to please, and modesty is the first
-principle.
-
-“Rule Four.--Always dress up to your age or a little beyond it. Let
-your face be the youngest thing about you, not the oldest.
-
-“Rule Five.--Remember that what women admire in themselves is seldom
-what men admire in them.
-
-“Rule Six.--Women’s beauties are seldom men’s beauties.
-
-“Rule Seven.--Gayety tempered by seriousness is the happiest manner in
-society.
-
-“Rule Eight.--Always speak low.
-
-“Rule Nine.--A plain woman can never be pretty. She can always be
-fascinating if she takes pains. I remember well a man who was a great
-admirer of our sex telling me that one of the most fascinating women he
-ever knew was not only not pretty, but as to her face decidedly plain.
-‘Her figure,’ he said, ‘was neat, her dressing faultless, her every
-movement graceful; her conversation was clever and animated, and she
-always tried to please. She was one of the most acceptable women in
-society I ever knew. She married brilliantly.
-
-“Rule Ten.--Every year a woman lives, the more pains she must take
-with her dress.
-
-“Rule Eleven.--In all things, let a woman ask what will please a man
-of sense before she asks what will please the men of fashion. You see,
-if a woman lives for the commendation of men of fashion, she will, if
-pretty, piquant, or what not, have a reign of ten years. But if she
-remembers that she has charms of mind and character and taste, as well
-as charms of figure and complexion, the men of sense will follow her
-for a half century; and in the long run the men of fashion will be led
-by the men of sense.
-
-“I have often asked myself, ‘What is the secret of her character?’ and
-I have always come to the same conclusion: that if her religious faith
-were deducted from her, she would not be what she is, but must become a
-less agreeable and not so good a woman.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX. THE LOVED WIFE.
-
-
-Our life-story does not end, as it does in the novel, when the
-wedding-bells ring. After that comes the real life. The wedding-bells
-are but the call to more faithful duties, more earnest, unselfish love,
-greater effort to be attractive, more pains to make the husband happy
-than were taken to win his love. They ring out the birth of a love that
-is until death. They ring out the knell of all coyness and romance.
-The hero becomes the very human man: the shy girl is a woman who is to
-be his helpmeet. They ring out the beginning of a battle where man and
-woman must stand shoulder to shoulder if they would win. They tell
-of a conflict where there will be strength in union, but in division
-weakness, destruction of happiness, complete failure, disgrace, and
-sometimes even death.
-
-A girl rarely considers the deep responsibilities she takes upon
-herself when she marries. She is more often thinking of the happiness
-it will give her than of what she is to be to the man. She does not
-stop to think whether or not she is going to make her husband happy.
-She forgets that from that time his whole happiness, his success in
-life, almost his soul, are in her keeping. “A man must ask his wife’s
-leave to thrive” is altogether true. A wife may be a dead weight or
-an inspiration. The dead weight drags even the strongest down, and an
-inspiration helps him to conquer every time. I have heard a man with a
-bad wife say: “Oh, I have no heart in me to do anything. She takes it
-all out of me.” I have known a man with less ability, but with a true
-wife to inspire him, to conquer where the other failed.
-
-Marriage itself is not happiness unalloyed. Life never is in any state.
-You are happier married than single, but marriage has its hard places.
-The romance soon dies out. Real life comes. The every day living
-together brings friction. It is for better and for worse. It seems a
-light thing to say at the time when you are sure it will all be for
-the better. You fancy you have only half learned his goodness. In many
-cases that is so. In many more it is not: it is for the worse. Then
-the break comes. Gradually his weaknesses will be revealed to you. The
-golden idol shows clay feet. Slowly the gilding is all rubbed off, and
-the idol is seen to be clay all through. Many a woman meets with this
-disappointment. It is the great disappointment of her life. God help
-the woman who finds that her husband is unworthy of her love! A weak
-woman sinks under the blow, and drags him even farther down. A strong
-woman will stand up bravely and in the end draw him up to her heights.
-
-She must gather together all her love for him. She must allow religion
-to take the helm with this love or all is lost. Sometimes love reels:
-sometimes the senses do. Then, of all times, a woman must watch herself
-well. She is fighting a terrible battle with her disappointment as well
-as with his faults. They must be silent battles: the more silent the
-stronger they will be, and the more sure she will be of victory. She
-must never by hint or word let any one outside know of his failings.
-If they are of the kind which go before or which are well known by the
-community, she must show the world that she is blind to them. She must
-never speak against her husband even to her own mother. She must never
-admit that he has a fault. She has entered into a partnership where
-one partner cannot be untrue to the other. She has promised before
-God to honor him. Her loyalty may save him. It is certain that if she
-does talk about him, and it comes to his ears, it will drive him away
-from her. When a breach is made between husband and wife, it widens
-continually. What in the beginning is a tiny thread soon becomes a
-broad gulf. It is really wonderful what a little while it takes for
-this breach to widen, and how disastrous are the effects. Our daily
-papers are a continual illustration of that fact.
-
-A perfect wife will never allow her opinion of her unworthy husband to
-be known. If he is unkind to her, she hides it as she hides her own
-misdeeds. Indeed, she would rather take upon herself the blame for
-any trouble others may have seen. She is pleased always with any kind
-attention he receives. A lady wrote her sister, with whom her husband
-was stopping for a few days: “He writes me you are doing every thing to
-make his visit pleasant. Thank you. Whatever kindness you bestow upon
-him you bestow upon me.”
-
-You will find plenty of listeners when you tell of your husband’s
-faults and your own wrongs. They will be your apparent sympathizers.
-Not one, however, will respect you for doing so. No one will care about
-you. Almost all will repeat it to some one else. It will be generally
-said that you live unhappily with your husband. You will have as much
-blame as he has. It is the way of the world. It knows pretty well that
-the wife who so far forgets herself as to talk against her husband
-is as much to blame for the trouble as he is. She cannot be a good,
-loving, Christian wife, who is trying to lead him to better things.
-Such a woman would hold her tongue. In telling, you have simply opened
-all the doors and windows of your house and invited the community to
-look their fill at your most private affairs. The rest of the doors
-and windows of the community are closed. You have noticed--have you
-not?--that your confidence has not been returned. No, indeed. It is
-well known that the woman who cannot guard her husband’s honor cannot
-respect another’s confidence. If only in the sight of men then, the
-untrue wife is the loser. She sends him into greater wrong. She undoes
-herself as she undoes him. Together they must rise or fall. Many a
-woman in her blind anger at her husband has tried to crush him. Like
-Samson, when he would crush the Philistines, she has succeeded, but
-only to bury herself in the ruins with him.
-
-That her husband is not what she thought him, is no excuse: she took
-him for worse as well as better. She is simply showing that she is not
-one whit above him, and that he has been decidedly deceived in her. He
-has gotten the worse too.
-
-Unfortunately true, good men have bad wives, too--they are not confined
-to bad husbands only. There are wives of good men who forget that the
-husband’s whole happiness depends upon them. Many a wife forgets this
-great responsibility. His business may be successful and everything
-outside going along satisfactorily, but if he has no peace at home
-he has no happiness. A woman who does not make her husband happy
-fails in her great life-work. She is unworthy to be the mother of his
-children. God gave woman to man to be his helpmeet; she is no helpmeet
-if she makes his life wretched. It is her highest pleasure, her great
-“rights,” to smooth his path. If she fail there, she far better never
-have married.
-
-What a man wants in his wife is companionship, sympathy, and love.
-He wants to feel that she is his best friend. He never wants to look
-anywhere else for sympathy and help: he never will if he can get all
-he needs from her. His life has many hard places: he needs a companion
-to go over them with him. He is often overtaken by misfortunes: he
-needs some one to stand by him and sympathize as she helps him to bear
-them. He has to fight with poverty often, and he needs a woman whom
-he feels, when he puts his arms about her, is worth fighting for.
-He has many enemies: he needs a wife whose loving words will make up
-for the bitter ones he hears from them. He needs a wife who will make
-him forget, when he is in her presence, that there is an unkind world
-outside. He meets sin everywhere: he wants a wife who will give him
-words of counsel, and who will take his hands and lead him to greater
-faith in, and love for, the Father. Storms will come all through life,
-he must encounter them. He needs a woman who will cling to him through
-the hardest. He needs her love through sunshine and victory as well.
-
-He wants to feel through all that his refuge is in her arms as hers is
-in his. He wants a wife upon whose breast he can lay his head, when
-sorrows come, and weep. He wants one who will make him feel that no
-matter where else death strikes, as long as he has her he can endure
-life. I remember a man who, when his dearly-beloved sister died, laid
-his head on his wife’s shoulder, weeping, and said, “If it were you I
-should die.”
-
-There are in history women upon whose strong hearts strong men have
-leaned and have become more strengthened in that leaning. Weak men have
-become manly through a womanly wife. Strong men have been weakened by
-a weak, wicked wife. Truly a man is made or marred when he marries. He
-must indeed ask his wife leave to thrive.
-
-It is in every woman’s power to be a well-loved wife. She cannot exact
-it: she must win it. She has his affection to start upon. She must
-increase it, instead of allowing it to decrease. She must not go upon
-the principle that because she is his wife it is his duty to worship
-her. If she does, she will be bankrupt as far as his affection is
-concerned. Men are not made in that way, as I have said before, and you
-must take them as you find them if you take one at all. Many a wife has
-allowed her husband’s affection to die. She has fancied, maybe, that
-she was lowering her dignity to try to keep what she considered was her
-due. Nothing is our due of which we are not worthy. We are not worthy
-of a love we do not try to keep. Women who are exacting after marriage
-are generally the ones who tried the hardest to attract the man at
-first. It is generally the girl who runs after a man till she gets him
-who makes no effort after marriage to retain his love, and who talks
-the loudest about her “rights, and not grovelling at his feet,” if it
-is suggested that she do better.
-
-Before she married she dressed for him. Nothing she owned was too
-pretty to put on when she knew he would see her. She was careful to
-be tidy in her person. She would never let him see a room in her home
-which was in disorder. She was courteous always. She never said an
-impatient word to him or before him. If he was cross, she bore it like
-an angel. She greeted him always when he came with a sweet smile and
-caress. She had loving words for him as she told him how she wanted to
-see him every minute since they had parted. She desired in every way
-to appear at her best before him. She hid every defect of temper or
-disposition.
-
-After marriage she does not care how untidy she is when he comes home.
-She never thinks of dressing for him. She is not courteous to him. She
-has no loving word, and she never hesitates to speak a cross one to
-him. She has smiles yet for the outside world, but none for the man
-whom she has promised to love and honor. She talks to him as she would
-be ashamed to have any one hear her speak. She never bears with him. If
-he is cross, she is crosser. Is it any wonder she loses his love? She
-is not what he thought she was, or what he thought he was marrying. If
-he had seen her in her true colors before the fatal words were spoken,
-he never would have bound himself to her. The beautiful soul, the sweet
-smile that won him, are gone. The gentle spirit he fancied he detected,
-was a delusion. What he loved, he does not possess. He possesses an
-unwomanly wife, and that he did not woo. With a weak man there comes a
-break. He often seeks his happiness with another woman. A strong man
-endures in silence, growing old and sad, broken in his youth.
-
-Ought this to be? There is no reason, because you have grown familiar
-to each other, you should not try to hide your temper as you did
-before. There is no reason, because he is “caught” and cannot get away
-from you, that you should cease to be attractive to him. You spread
-your net well. Now make the nest so attractive that he will be glad
-that he was “caught.” Be all that you led him to fancy you were.
-
-Why should not a woman dress for her husband? Why should she not
-cultivate a sweet disposition for him and endeavor to make his home
-the happiest spot on earth? Why not try to banish from it every cloud,
-everything that will annoy or irritate? Is it of no use? It is of the
-greatest earthly use. It is a means of helping you both on to Heaven.
-If you must be selfish, remember it is making yourself happier to have
-your husband love you as he loves no other earthly being. Men, after
-all, are easily pleased--you found that out in your courtship days.
-They are easily managed too. A man will do almost everything for the
-wife that makes him happy. He is almost too much of a slave to her.
-She can do what she will to him. With him, getting her own way is only
-a matter of tact and sweetness. Husbands are almost all like the man
-in the fable of the wind and sun. The sun beat in the end. Warmth of
-love and sweetness of manner will gain a victory, where an ill-tempered
-insisting upon “rights” fails completely.
-
-Ward McAllister says in his “Society as I Have Found It,” “My advice to
-all married women is to keep up flirting with their husbands as much
-after marriage as before; to make themselves as attractive after their
-marriage as they were when they captivated them; not to neglect their
-toilet, but rather to improve it: to be as coquettish and coy after
-they are bound together as before when no ties held them.”
-
-
-
-
-Choice Selections in Poetry and Prose.
-
-
-Compiled by RHODUM L. GRIGGS.
-
-
-INTRODUCTION.
-
-We know that there is an unfortunate tendency in human nature to treat
-with levity the subject of love, courtship and marriage. But a moment’s
-consideration should convince you how utterly repugnant it is to all
-manly feelings to jest in these matters. They are the most serious
-questions of your life, as your weal or woe, and the weal and woe of
-those who come after you, depend in great measure, upon the wisdom and
-virtue with which you conduct your preparations for marriage. The whole
-tendency of such lightness is to cause the marriage relation to be
-lightly esteemed, and the true aim of courtship to be lost sight of,
-for unless you view it in its true light, with that sober earnestness
-which the subject demands, your courtship will be nothing more than a
-grand game of hypocrisy, resulting in misery the most deplorable.
-
-
-LOVE.
-
-Love is an actual need, an urgent requirement of the heart. Every
-properly constituted human being who entertains an appreciation of
-loneliness and looks forward to a home of happiness and content, feels
-the necessity of loving.
-
-Without love, life is unfinished; hope, without aim; nature defective,
-and man miserable. Love is the ruling element of life; the great
-instrument of nature; that soft, subduing sun against whose melting
-beams there is not one human soul in a million, not a thousand men in
-all earth’s domain, whose hearts are hardened. Love, if pure, unselfish
-and discreet, constitutes the chief happiness of human life. No man
-or woman is complete in their experience of life until they have been
-subdued into union with the world through their affections. The bosom
-which does not feel love is cold; the mind which does not conceive
-it is dull; the philosophy which does not accept it is false; the
-only true religion in the world has pure, undying love for its basis.
-Look back over your life; if there is a bright spot to be seen, it is
-where the star of love shed its light; if there is a plant, flower or
-any beautiful thing visible it is where the smiles and tears of your
-affections were spent; where some fond eye met your own; where some
-endearing heart was clasped to yours.
-
-Love, to make your life and home beautiful, must shine on through
-years, and its radiance linger till the shadows of death darken
-altogether.
-
-
-COURTSHIP
-
-Is the first turning point in your life, crowded with perils and
-temptations. The rose tints of affection dazzle and bewilder your
-imagination. You should not trust too much to the impulse of the heart,
-or be too easily captivated by a winning exterior.
-
-Not once in a hundred times do two natures, brought side by side,
-harmonize in every part. While always bearing in mind that life without
-love is a wilderness, it should not be overlooked that true affection
-requires solid support. Your object in courtship should not be to
-charm, gratify, nor please simply for the present pleasure, but for
-the selection of a companion who must bear, suffer and enjoy life
-with you in all its forms; one who will walk pleasantly, willingly
-and confidingly by your side through all the intricate and changing
-vicissitudes incident to mortal life; one possessed of a constitution
-of soul similar to your own; of similar age, opinions, tastes, habits,
-modes of thought and feeling; one who under any given combination of
-circumstances would be affected as you would; one who would approve
-what you approve and condemn what you condemn; not for the purpose of
-agreeing with you but of her own free will; one who is already united
-to you by the ties of spiritual harmony. In the selection of a wife, a
-pure, loving heart and good common sense are many times more valuable
-than personal beauty or wealth, for once installed in the affections
-of such a woman, you have a life claim on her good offices, and no
-sacrifice that she can make is too great, no adversity so strong
-that it can shake her firmness. True courtship is withal a beautiful
-sight. Only the coarse and illiterate can see there aught for ridicule
-or jest. It is the flowing together of two separate lives that have
-heretofore been divided, now mysteriously brought together, to flow on
-through all time, and only God in His infinite wisdom knows how far in
-the shadowy hereafter.
-
-
-MARRIAGE.
-
-For all professions, trades and callings in life, men and women prepare
-themselves by previous attention to their principles and duties. They
-study them, devote time and money to them. Every imaginable case,
-difficulty or trial is considered and duly disposed of according to
-the general principles of the trade or profession. But marriage, the
-most important and holy relation of life, involving the most sacred
-responsibilities and influences, social, civil and religious, that bear
-upon men and women, is entered upon in hot haste or blind stupidity by
-a great majority of the men and women of to-day.
-
-No man has a right to ask a woman to enter matrimonial bonds with him
-unless he is thoroughly acquainted with the female constitution and
-character, for he who knows not her nature knows not how to gratify
-or satisfy that nature. It is ignorance in these matters that causes
-a great amount of matrimonial infelicity. Marriage, to be a blessing,
-must be properly entered. It has its fundamental laws, which must be
-obeyed.
-
-The conditions upon which its joys and advantages are realized may be
-learned beforehand, and should not be entered in blindness, but in
-the light of a perfect knowledge of its rules and regulations, its
-promises, conditions, laws and privileges, so that no uncertainty shall
-follow a knowledge of its reality. Some are disappointed in marriage
-because they expect too much from it. Their imagination has pictured a
-condition of things never experienced on this side of heaven. With the
-marriage ceremony you enter a new world, if you enter understandingly,
-and live as becomes thoughtful, considerate human beings, each
-trying to bear with the other’s infirmities, and to consider the
-other’s happiness as paramount to their own. Marriage then becomes a
-delightful scene of domestic happiness, to which all true men and women
-look forward as the condition of life most consonant to their true
-happiness.
-
-
-SELECTION OF A HUSBAND.
-
-To the young woman who is just about to determine her start in life,
-we would say: Give up your whole mind to this problem of finding a
-husband whom you can love, and who can love you. It is worthy of your
-utmost effort. Remember that in selecting the father of your child
-the qualities which will show in the little one have no relation to
-his accomplishments, and that even the homeliest features may become
-beautiful, shining with the light of his noble qualities.
-
-The profession of motherhood stands ready to give you every repayment
-if you will but devote to fitting yourself for its duties the same
-patient effort you would give to the study of any science, or the same
-energy you would throw into social duties.
-
-Unlike social distinction, it will not be disappointing; but as the
-years go by, loving children will stand ready to enthrone you in their
-hearts and gratefully recognize your every effort in their behalf.
-
-_First_--Give perfect truth and exact it.
-
-_Second_--Use every endeavor to eradicate your own faults, and gently,
-patiently and lovingly help your companion to do the same.
-
-_Third_--Do not expect too much from either yourself or your mate. Be
-humble, with a clear understanding of your own limitations; but be firm
-in the determination that with each day you will climb together to a
-higher level.
-
-_Fourth_--Do not be discouraged at slow progress. Do not doubt that in
-the end you will be repaid for all effort. So also do not doubt that if
-you are careless, selfish or deceitful you will be planting seeds for
-eventual catastrophe.
-
-
-WHAT PLEASES MEN AND WOMEN.
-
-
-THE WOMAN.
-
-It pleases her to be told that she is fascinating; to be called well
-dressed; to be called sensible; to depend on some man and pretend
-that she is ruling him; to be told that she improves man by her
-companionship; to be treated courteously and with respect, and to be
-talked to reasonably.
-
-It pleases her to be treated sensibly and honestly; to be considered
-and questioned, and not treated as a butterfly with no head or heart.
-It pleases her to be loved and admired by a man who is strong enough
-to subdue her and make _his_ way her way; to lead her and take care
-of her; and it pleases her to find happiness in being ruled by an
-intellect that she can look up to admiringly, and one to whom her mind
-bows in reverence.
-
-
-THE MAN.
-
-It pleases the man to have a woman love him; to have her lead him in
-the way he wants to go; to have her sometimes treat him as a great big
-baby, to be cared for, petted and caressed; also to have her think
-him great, and good, and true, and favor him with her attentions
-accordingly. It pleases him to have a woman’s bright eyes expressing
-the approbation, approval and admiration the lips do not speak.
-
-It pleases him to have her hand smooth away the careworn expression
-and wrinkles from his brow, and to have her strength to help him over
-the weak places in life. It pleases a worthy man who tries to be good
-to have a sweet woman lead him in the way called beautiful. A woman
-can sink a man to the depths of misery or help him to the zenith of
-happiness; her smile inspires him.
-
-
-MOODY’S EULOGY ON WOMEN.
-
-“I think that the Almighty intended the work of woman in this world
-should be, above all, the rearing of a family. He gave into her keeping
-the souls and characters of the young, to make or mar. And surely there
-is no nobler or more responsible work than this. From the home--the
-domain of woman--spring most of the highest impulses of humanity. And
-to fit woman for her great work the Creator made her of a finer cast
-than man; there is nothing on earth so noble, so pure, so exalted, so
-near the ideal of character, as a woman. Woman can rise higher than
-man, but she can likewise sink lower. The very height which she can
-attain seems to make her fall the greater when she does fall. There
-is great strength and great weakness in woman’s character; and it is
-a vital duty of men, whose greater evenness of temperament gives them
-greater self-control, and consequently a commanding position, to do
-everything in their power to enable the woman to be true to her higher
-nature.
-
-“I believe that, other things being equal, the happiest woman is the
-woman who is a mother and the maker of a home; but if she cannot fulfil
-her true destiny, if she must enter the business world, she should be
-given the greatest consideration, simply because she is a woman. I have
-heard women say that they ask for nothing on the ground of sex. Perhaps
-they don’t, but personally I cannot forget their sex. Even in a purely
-business matter, my attitude and manner toward them are not just what
-they would be toward men.”--_Dwight L. Moody._
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-“God has made the mind of woman the complement to the mind of man.
-
-“When properly coupled they are a source of strength to each other.
-As steel and flint strike fire, so the brightest wit and best thought
-spring from the intellectual union of man and wife. Beginning as a
-stimulus to research and higher endeavor, each learns to know the mind
-of the other. A glance often reads thought without the spoken word.”
-
-
-A MOTHER’S SMILE.
-
-  Though a mother may seem void of beauty,
-    Her tongue have no art to beguile,
-  To her children there’s nothing so lovely
-    As her face when bright with a smile.
-
-  When they wake from the slumbers of childhood,
-    And gaze on the world, half afraid,
-  If they see mother’s face bending o’er them,
-    Their swift-starting fears are allayed.
-
-  To their fingers her cheek is the softest,
-    Though care may have hardened its lines,
-  And their bruises are healed by her kisses,
-    From lips on which age has its signs.
-
-  She’s a comrade to share in their pastimes,
-    A refuge if dangers betide,
-  There is always a comfort in troubles,
-    A haven of peace at her side.
-
-  Oh, ye mothers, smile oft on your children,
-    For blest is the woman whose face,
-  Once impressed on these hearts in their childhood,
-    Nor distance nor time can efface.
-
-  And more happy the man or the woman,
-    Immersed in the world’s snare and wile,
-  Who bears upon memory’s tablets
-    The thought of a mother’s fond smile.
-
-
-A LOW VOICE IN WOMAN.
-
-Yes, we agree with that old poet, who said that a low, soft voice
-was an excellent thing in woman. Indeed, we feel inclined to go much
-farther than he has on the subject, and call it one of her crowning
-charms. How often the spell of beauty is rudely broken by coarse, loud
-talking! How often you are irresistibly drawn to a plain, unassuming
-woman, whose soft, silvery tones render her positively attractive. In
-the social circle, how pleasant it is to hear a woman talk in that
-low key which always characterizes the true lady. In the sanctuary of
-home how such a voice soothes the fretful child and cheers the weary
-husband.
-
-
-CONNUBIALITIES.
-
-It is the hardest thing in love to feign it where it is not, or hide it
-where it is; but it is easier counterfeited than concealed. The face
-of her we love is the fairest of sights, and her voice the sweetest
-harmony in the world. A man is more reserved in his friend’s concerns
-than in his own; a woman, on the contrary, keeps her own concerns
-better than another’s. A woman will think herself slighted if she is
-not courted, yet pretends to know herself too well to believe your
-flattery. Absence is to love what fasting is to the body; a little
-stimulates it, but a long abstinence is fatal. The greatest pleasure
-of life is love; the greatest treasure, contentment; the greatest
-possession, health; the greatest ease is sleep; and the greatest
-medicine, a true friend.
-
-
-LOVE.
-
-  “It helps us to bear with the trouble,
-   It helps us to stand in the strife,
-   It brightens the skies for the sorrowing eyes,
-   And lightens the burdens of life.
-
-  “It makes the rose bloom in the desert,
-   And brings down the dew on the sod;
-   The tempest may beat, but the pathway is sweet
-   With the roses and lilies of God.”
-
-
-YOU KISSED ME.
-
-  “My forehead drooped low on your breast,
-   With a feeling of shelter and infinite rest,
-   While the holy emotion my tongue dared not speak
-   Flashed up like a flame from my heart to my cheek.
-
-  “Your arms held me fast--Oh! your arms were so bold--
-   Heart beat against heart in that passionate fold.
-   Your glances seemed drawing my soul through my eyes,
-   As the sun draws the mist from the sea to the skies.
-
-  “You kissed me! My heart and my breath and my will,
-   In delicious joy, for the moment, stood still.
-   Life had for me then no temptations, no charms,
-   No vision of pleasure outside of your arms.”
-
-
-THE MARRIAGE QUESTION.
-
-“Thousands marry and the majority of them live together all their
-lives. But I think that not more than one couple in ten love each
-other, continuously, during that time.
-
-“As soon as they have taken the marriage vows they feel an ownership
-of each other, feel that they are bound so that they cannot get away,
-and so grow careless about each other’s comforts and pleasures, until,
-before they realize it, love has flown, and then it depends upon the
-dispositions of the two whether it is a cat-and-dog life or one of
-friendship and companionship without love. Remember this: It is nature
-to love, and if you do not retain the love of your husband or wife,
-some one else is liable to do so.
-
-“For a while you may bind a person to you by marriage vows, but love
-can only be bound by love, and it takes the same devotion, the same
-love after it is won that it takes to win it in the first place.”--_Goe
-Van Hise_, Glendale, Cal.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Many boys and girls enter matrimony before they are old enough to
-realize the responsibility they assume, and they frequently fill
-their lives with bitterness by acting so rashly. Wait till you are
-old enough to exercise judgment in the choice of your companion; then
-choose wisely, and enthrone the goddess of Love upon a heart stamped
-with eternal fidelity, and be your home a palace or a cottage, it will
-indeed be a “sweet, sweet home.”
-
-
-THE AGES OF LOVE.
-
-The Outlook, in the Thorwaldsen Gallery, Copenhagen.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Friend--It reminds me forcibly of the time when “they were both naked
-and were not ashamed.” Indeed, it gave me a new comprehension of the
-meaning of that text.
-
-Guide--Which of all Thorwaldsen’s works did you like the best?
-
-Philosopher--How is it possible to tell? There were at least a dozen
-best.
-
-Friend--The “Ages of Love,” because it suggested a sermon to me which I
-am going to preach some time.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The “Ages of Love” is a bas-relief consisting essentially of six
-figures, though so combined as to make, as it were, one tableau. In
-the first, a covered basket contains a number of imprisoned Cupids,
-and a child is curiously lifting a corner of the cover to look in
-and learn what love is like. In the second an attendant female
-figure--Venus?--has taken a Cupid out of the basket, and a maiden is
-eagerly and imploringly reaching out both hands to receive it. In the
-third her prayer has been granted, and the woman clasps the Cupid
-to her breast. In the fourth the woman is still holding Cupid, but
-carelessly by the wings, her mind evidently on other things intent. In
-the fifth a man sits looking upon the ground, while Cupid sits perched
-upon his back, and he knows not why he is there. In the sixth Cupid
-has taken his flight and is just beyond the reach of an old man, who
-stretches out his hands in vain to recover the fugitive.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Guide--And pray, parson, what would your sermon be?
-
-Friend--Just Thorwaldsen’s sermon; nothing more. It would be in five
-subdivisions. First: Childhood inquiring into love. It is right to
-inquire. The father and mother should answer the inquiry and not leave
-the child to learn of this most sacred mystery of life from profane
-lips. Second: Maidenhood seeking love. She is right to seek it. It
-is idle to sing, “Love not, love not! the thing you love will die.”
-Love is “the greatest thing in the world,” above all others best worth
-seeking. Third: Motherhood possessing. Love is wealth indeed, and the
-only wealth worth having. The poorest is rich if he have love, and the
-richest is poor if he have it not. Fourth: Manhood forgetting love.
-Alas, that so many of us no sooner possess love than we forget it, and
-are indifferent to it, and put it aside. Love, the most valuable of all
-knowledge, has been bestowed on us, and we forget it; the most sacred
-of all possessions has been given us, and we turn our backs upon it.
-Ambition usurps love’s crown, and the true king is forgotten. And
-thus, fifth, and last of all: Love, forgotten, flies away, and the
-unloved old man looks longingly about for some one to love him, and
-there is none, and he drops into his grave unloved and not missed. It
-is the tragedy of life: youth inquiring; maidenhood seeking; motherhood
-possessing; manhood forgetting; old age losing.
-
-Guide--When you preach that sermon, give us notice and we will come to
-hear it.
-
-Friend--Better, instead, buy a photograph of Thorwaldsen’s bas-relief
-and study that. The sermon is all there--and more is there besides.
-
-
-WHICH ONE?
-
-  One of us, dear, with grief untold,
-  Must the other’s death with pain behold,
-  Must stand with hand in living hold
-  Of stiffened fingers growing cold.
-              Dearest, which one?
-
-  One of us, dear, bereft of cheer,
-  Must pause beside a flower-strewn bier,
-  Must kneel alone and drop a tear
-  Upon a form to heart so dear.
-              Dearest, which one?
-
-  One of us, dear, with heart like lead,
-  Must stand beside a narrow bed,
-  Must hear the sod fall on the dead
-  With anguished breath and nameless dread.
-              Dearest, which one?
-
-  One of us, dear, with stifled moan,
-  Must henceforth walk the world alone;
-  Must ever yearn for a tender tone,
-  Heard only around the Great White Throne.
-              Dearest, which one?
-
-
-KIND WORDS.
-
-Kind words may prove pearls of the highest price; soften and turn away
-wrath; make friendship out of enmity, and build a monument of good that
-the storms of time cannot destroy. Cherish them, dear boys and girls. A
-kind heart full of love and sympathy and loving words, will spring to
-your lips to bless, to help and to comfort all around you. “That which
-the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.”
-
-  Better to hope, though the clouds hang low,
-    And to keep the eyes still lifted,
-  For the still blue sky will still peep through
-    When the ominous clouds are rifted.
-
-  There was never a night without a day,
-    Or an evening without a morning;
-  And the darkest hour, as the proverb goes,
-    “Is the hour before the dawning.”
-
-A life of real virtue, of nobleness, of true greatness, is not an
-accident. It comes, if it comes at all, from lofty aspirations, from
-incorruptible motives, long cherished, and held sacred as life.
-
-
-SIN.
-
-“Sin is the most expensive thing possible. It wastes money. It wears
-the body into decay. But, bad as these things are, there are even worse
-behind, for it blights the intellect and withers the moral nature
-of man. It weakens the will; it blunts the conscience; it hardens
-the heart. It dries up all the finer feelings of the soul, so that
-ultimately all regard for truth and holiness and purity is gone. But
-worse yet, sin is an enslaving thing. It becomes the master of the
-man who indulges in it and sets him to do the hardest drudgery. It
-hires him out, as it were, to feed swine, leaving him to feed along
-with them. That which was at first a joy becomes in the end a bondage.
-That which was first a pleasant companion becomes at length a cruel
-task-master, which compels him to make bricks without straw, and
-sometimes even without clay.”--_Dr. W. M. Taylor._
-
-Let not sin, therefore, reign in your M-O-R-T-A-L body.--Rom. vi. 12.
-
-
-A HYMN.
-
-  “O, help me, Lord, by grace to win
-   The victory o’er this world of sin,
-   For I am weak when left alone,
-   I have no strength to call my own.
-
-  “O! lead me by Thy gentle hand,
-   Across this desert’s burning sand,
-   And when I’m weary let me rest
-   My aching head upon Thy breast.
-
-  “Direct my mind to things divine,
-   And keep my thoughts as pure as Thine;
-   Oh, let no wicked thoughts come in.
-   Let nothing cause my soul to sin.
-
-  “Upon Thy bosom let me lean
-   And keep my words so pure and clean
-   That angels hearing would not blush,
-   Nor heaven’s cry my voice to hush.
-
-  “REFRAIN.
-
-  “O, help me, Lord, by grace to win
-   The victory o’er this world of sin,
-   And o’er the billows safely guide
-   Me to life’s port on the other side.”
-
-  JOHN W. GRIGGS,
-   Upshaw, Ala.
-  Jan. 26, 1903.
-
-
-THE SCULPTOR’S DREAM.
-
-  “Chisel in hand stood a sculptor boy,
-     With his marble block before him,
-   And his face lit up with a smile of joy,
-     As an angel dream passed o’er him.
-   He carved the dream on that shapeless stone,
-     With many a sharp incision;
-   With heaven’s own light the sculptor shone--
-     He had caught the angel-vision.
-
-  “Sculptors of life are we, as we stand,
-     With our soul uncarved before us,
-   Waiting the hour, when at God’s command,
-     Our life-dream passes o’er us.
-   If we carve it then on the yielding stone,
-     With many a sharp incision,
-   Its heavenly beauty shall be our own--
-     Our lives that angel-vision.”
-
-  BISHOP G. W. DOANE.
-
-
-BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.
-
-  “If you have a gray-haired mother
-     In the old home far away,
-   Sit down and write the letter
-     You put off day by day.
-   Don’t wait until her tired steps
-     Reach heaven’s pearly gate--
-   But show her that you think of her
-     Before it is too late.
-
-  “If you’ve a tender message
-     Or a loving word to say,
-   Don’t wait till you forget it,
-     But whisper it to-day.
-   Who knows what bitter memories
-     May haunt you if you wait?--
-   So make your loved ones happy
-     Before it is too late.
-
-  “We live but in the present,
-     The future is unknown--
-   To-morrow is a mystery,
-     To-day is all our own.
-   The chance that fortune lends to us
-     May vanish while we wait,
-   So spend your life’s rich treasure
-     Before it is too late.
-
-  “The tender words unspoken,
-     The letter never sent,
-   The long-forgotten messages,
-     The wealth of love unspent.
-   For these some hearts are breaking,
-     For these some loved ones wait--
-   So show them that you care for them
-     Before it is too late.”
-
-
-HOW TO TALK TO MEN.
-
-There are many young girls who complain that they do not know how to
-talk to men. They have probably been brought up almost exclusively
-among their own sex, and, therefore, look upon men very much as upon
-beings of another world, and when they find themselves in masculine
-society they are at a loss to know how to make themselves agreeable,
-and what to talk about. Their task would be lightened if they realized
-that men are, after all, very nearly akin to themselves, and that they
-have very much the same ideas, feelings and sentiments. The failure
-to recognize this fact generally earns them the character among their
-male acquaintances for unamiability or pride; seldom, indeed, are they
-credited with the timidity of ignorance. The girl who generally is
-acceptable with men is without self-consciousness, and talks to a man
-much in the same style as she would to a girl friend.
-
-She is not always thinking of herself and the impression she creates,
-but she is kind and sympathetic, and she interests herself in him and
-his affairs, and lets him feel it; always, however, taking care to
-avoid excess in this respect. When talking with him she shows interest
-in the matter under discussion, but, while holding to her own opinions,
-she takes care not to assert them with too great eagerness.
-
-No man was ever really influenced by a self-assertive, dogmatic woman,
-and the woman who wishes to have men friends must remember that the
-secret of both her power and her popularity lies in her gentleness,
-sweetness and good temper. She must be cheery, too, and ready with
-her smiles; but that is quite another thing, be it remembered, from
-the senseless giggling which some girls seem to fancy is particularly
-charming to the other sex.
-
-
-ABOUT ATTRACTING HUSBANDS.
-
-Men have, since the world began, been angled for deliberately by girls,
-and times out of count have been caught.
-
-Girls will continue to fish for husbands, and will continue to catch
-them as long as marriage is a fashion--a state likely to coincide with
-the length of time the world lasts.
-
-But for all that, it need not be asserted, as it so often is, that
-all girls angle. Why should the word be used, moreover, with such
-bitterness? Surely it is not wrong of girls to behave charmingly and
-make themselves look attractive and pretty, and especially so in the
-eyes of those men for whose good opinion they are most anxious? If they
-were to wear sackcloth and go about veritable kill-joys, is it likely
-that they would succeed in winning what they want?
-
-It is said that love is never evenly distributed, and that in every
-engaged couple there is more love on one side than on the other. Women
-fall in love with the opposite sex just as often as the opposite sex
-does with them. What is to happen if a girl sees a man she believes she
-could fondly love, and whom she is sure would fondly love her, if she
-is debarred from angling for him?
-
-A girl may not propose to a man. She may not put to him the anxious
-question, “Do you love me?” From her lips it would be unpardonable were
-the tender pleading, “Will you marry me?” to proceed. But she sees one
-whom she has good reason to think she could wed and be happy with, and
-the sole step she can rightly take to bring about a declaration of love
-from him is just this: She can make herself so pleasant and fascinating
-that he falls in love with her, and asks her that sweet question she
-has so deeply longed to hear from him.
-
-The feminine angler should be very cautious. Let her declare her
-purpose--should it be only by a startled word--and a hundred eyes will
-dart scorn at her, a hundred tongues condemn her. She who is wise,
-however, is careful--both for the sake of the man she loves and her own
-reputation--that the little wiles she practices shall appeal only to
-him, and shall not be observable by those onlookers who are popularly
-supposed to see most of the game. Women are undoubtedly endowed with
-a special measure of instinct, and are therefore able to accomplish
-wonders, apparently never planned or premeditated. Woe be it to the
-swain who does not want to fall in love, should some fair daughter of
-Eve will that he shall!
-
-There is this to console him, however: that the said daughter of Eve,
-should she be discreet and diplomatic, will so work matters that
-the happy man will never guess that he has been singled out for
-preference. He will take the bait and greedily swallow it, all the time
-under the impression that he was the angler, and that it was only after
-the greatest struggle that he managed to land his prize.
-
-He will be as proud of his achievement as he can be--that is to say, if
-the girl who has caught him has been very canny during her maneuvers.
-She need not be deceitful, nor forward, nor unwomanly, nor any of the
-other plain-spoken and objectionable epithets applied to the feminine
-angler.
-
-As has been pointed out, she need merely be a tactful, purposeful,
-clever girl, one who, knowing her own powers to charm, exercises them
-for the most valuable end and aim life offers--that of forming a home
-in which two persons may be happy, and from which they may radiate
-a sufficiency of joy to make the world about it more contented and
-felicitous than it was before.
-
-Do marriages arranged as an outcome of the angling principle turn out
-well? Does the fascinating little woman whose bright eyes, pretty ways
-and dainty dress won her a husband, having secured what she desired,
-make for the man whose helpmeet she has elected to be a good wife? If
-she does, a dozen to one he will never find out that he was caught; or
-if she in some sweet moment should divulge to him the secret, and tell
-him in whispers and with shy kisses, how she did her best to draw him
-to her, he will, with further kisses, solemnly declare unto her his
-delight and gratitude that she so thoughtfully and cleverly made things
-easy for a blundering idiot like himself.
-
-On the contrary, should she abandon every effort to please directly
-or soon after the golden circlet is firmly on her finger, how rapidly
-will his eyes be opened to all the crude and ugly scheming she employed
-to secure him! How bitterly will he rue the weak moment in which he
-succumbed to her blandishments. Then will the memory of her charming
-little speeches and sweet little ways be dust and ashes to him. He will
-cease to believe in women, taught by his captor to distrust the sex for
-her sake.
-
-There is all the difference in the world between the girl who angles
-honestly, so that a happy union may be had with the man she loves, and
-the girl who angles simply for the achievement of some tribute to her
-vanity--a wealthy husband, a husband with more money than her friend’s
-husband possesses, or a husband who will give her a title and position.
-
-There are few women so purely calculating that, once having achieved
-their object, they can deliberately show themselves in their true
-colors. Captious, irritable, ill-tempered, untidy--all these
-distressing characteristics they may reveal to their miserable husbands
-later, but for the first few weeks of marriage they rarely unmask. It
-is when the home is settled into, and the regular routine of existence
-begins, that the test is fairly made.
-
-The admirable angler now shows herself in her true colors. She means
-to be a good housekeeper, so she studies her husband’s likes and
-dislikes, and incontestably, though silently, demonstrates to him that
-since he hates bacon he shall not have it every morning. Above all, she
-reflects, and recollects, and realizes that what he loved her for in
-those very early days, when first she taught him to grow fond of her,
-were her pretty ways. And who shall say, with so glorious a result as
-this winning woman shall achieve, that she was wrong in her girlhood to
-be an angler?
-
-If there were more of them! But there are more than is imagined. Only
-it is the happy country that has no history, and the successful angler
-that has no historian.
-
-
-DUTIES OF AN ENGAGED GIRL.
-
-An engaged girl should endeavor to be both a comfort and a help to her
-lover; not merely a pet and plaything. It is a very bad augury for the
-future when a man instinctively feels that a wax doll would be of as
-much use to his worries as she whom he intends making his helpmeet for
-life. And yet, only the other day, a gentleman was heard to exclaim:
-“No, no; I would not trouble Lily for the world; why, she is only made
-for the sunshine and the flowers.”
-
-Again, it is the engaged girl’s duty to be open and candid in all
-her relations with her lover. The seeds of much future distrust and
-unhappiness are sown if once he suspects she is keeping a secret from
-him. It is also her duty to be considerate of his wishes, and if he
-have a harmless antipathy to any little thing or other, let her humor
-him in this. No doubt she also has some little “fads” which require
-consideration.
-
-For instance, that girl was wise who ceased adopting “mannish” ways
-because her sweetheart disapproved. By doing so she only rendered
-herself more charming than ever in his eyes. To be punctual is another
-of the engaged girl’s duties. She has no more business to keep her
-lover waiting than he has to keep her waiting. Tardiness is not a sign
-of maidenly indifference, as some damsels seem to think. It is merely
-an indication of bad manners. Of course, it is her bounden duty to be
-engaged openly. Her lover should be known to her parents, and, where
-practicable, should visit her at her own house. In conclusion, I will
-mention the last and most important duty of all, and that is that she
-should love her lover with her whole heart, mind and strength. If she
-does not perform this office thoroughly and well, the others might just
-as easily be left alone.
-
-
-PREMATURE MATRIMONY.
-
-Marriage is a divine and beautiful arrangement, as designed in
-God’s providence. It is the blending of two spirits in one. Man is
-incomplete without his wife: he has strength, she has beauty. “It is
-not good that man should be alone.” “Whoso findeth a wife findeth a
-good thing.”
-
-  “Of all the joys that man can feel,
-     The purest sure are there.
-   While o’er his heart affections steal,
-     Like balmy summer air;
-   His wife’s caress, his children’s smile,
-   Unlike the world are free from guile.”
-
-Premature marriages are among the greatest evils of the times--the
-result of fancy. The ballroom or evening party never develops real
-character. Matches made at such places, or made under similar
-circumstances, are not of the class that originate in heaven. They more
-generally are conceived in the opposite place, and bring forth only
-iniquity.
-
-The true way to study and learn one another is to do it at home, in
-the parlor, in the kitchen, and on occasions that test the temper.
-We see the result of premature unions in the almost daily divorces
-that are taking place; in the running away of husbands--leaving their
-wives and children to starve--and in the elopement of wives. Not only
-this, but we witness it in broken-spirited men, made old in the prime
-of life, struggling on for mere food, clothing, and mere shelter; and
-in woman, cross, sluttish and wrinkled. And the result does not stop
-with the husband and wife. There are the children; they partake of the
-feebleness and vices of the parents, both physical and moral, and go
-out into the world stunted and gnarled. Young friends, _beware_!
-
-  “O lasses take care where fancy lights,
-     This world’s full of snares:
-   The end of frolicsome fancy’s flights
-     Is oft a nest of cares.”
-
-A judicious writer, alluding to the matrimonial state, says: “There
-is not a city, scarcely a township, which does not number among its
-inhabitants women who have married on very short acquaintance, only
-to be abused, deserted, and left a burden and a lifelong sorrow to
-the families in which they were born and reared, and which they most
-imprudently and improperly deserted to share the fortunes of relative
-strangers.”
-
-If young ladies would realize how grossly indelicate, as well as
-culpably reckless, such marriages appear in the eyes of the observing,
-they surely would forbear. A year’s thorough acquaintance, with
-the most circumstantial accounts, from disinterested and reliable
-witnesses, of the antecedents from childhood, are the very least
-guarantee which any woman who realizes what marriage is, will require
-of a stranger.
-
-Even then, if her parents are not fully satisfied, as well as herself,
-she should still hesitate. Marriage is an undertaking in which no delay
-can be so hazardous as undue precipitation.
-
-“A prudent man foreseeth the evil and hideth himself; but the simple
-pass on and are punished.”--_Solomon._
-
-In how many instances, of the present day, is marriage merely a
-union of hands--the affection not being taken into consideration.
-The question on the one side, “Is she handsome? has she money?” on
-the other, “Can he support me in style? shall I be able to make an
-appearance?” How much better would it be to ask, “Has the woman a
-heart capable of pure affection?” “Will she be willing to share with
-me adversity as well as prosperity?” “Will she forsake all others and
-cleave only to me through weal and woe?”
-
-And woman, yes, woman, she whose very nature ought to stimulate her
-to higher and holier motives for taking upon herself the marriage
-relation, is too often anxious only as to the length of her husband’s
-purse, and the amount of his bank stock; the heart, the mind, the
-intellect, in fact everything really worth marrying for, being
-non-essentials.
-
-But, oh, the misery which too often follows such marriages! The
-husband, when it is too late, laments his blindness and his folly.
-The wife is made to realize that riches take to themselves wings and
-fly away; and then comes the consciousness of a want of sympathy and
-congeniality of feelings. Both are thrown back upon themselves, for not
-a chord in the breast of one vibrates in unison with the other.
-
-Let the young beware how they enter the marriage state from such
-motives, lest they wake too late from the delusion. Consult the
-judgment, and hesitate when that says “Beware.” Let the property be
-_in_ rather than _with_ the companion.
-
-Oh, the loneliness of an unwedded heart! The hands may be united, but
-to feel that in heart you are separated must be misery indeed. To think
-of being obliged to associate for life with one who has not a feeling
-of sympathy with you, and who is, moreover, in sentiment, taste and
-feeling directly opposed to you--how revolting the thought! Then, let
-love, not ambition, lead you to form those ties that naught but death
-can honorably sever.
-
-Weigh well the consequences of one wrong or hasty step in the choice
-of a companion for life. Walk softly here, lest you fall, to rise no
-more. Seek wisdom from above. “In all thy ways acknowledge the Lord,
-and He shall direct thy paths.” “Seek first the kingdom of God and His
-righteousness” at all times, and you are safe.
-
-  “Oh, happy state! when souls each other draw;
-   When love is liberty and nature’s law;
-   All then is full, possessing and possessed,
-   No craving void left aching in the breast;
-   E’en thought meets thought, ere from the lips it part,
-   And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart.”
-
-
-THE GIFT OF GIFTS--A WORD TO HUSBANDS.
-
-Husband, have you this gift of gifts? Has God in superabounding
-mercy given you a dear wife, lovely, virtuous, prudent, sensible,
-intelligent, and above all a God-fearing wife, meek, modest, humble,
-Christlike?--“an helpmeet” in very deed? Well, what do you think of it?
-Do you appreciate the blessing duly?--make suitable returns? _Can_ you
-do it? Such a gift is unspeakable. How few, comparatively, appreciate
-the gift of a good wife?
-
-A very godly man said to us recently, “I thank the Lord daily,
-hourly, for the jewel of a wife God hath given me.” A distinguished
-writer--speaking of the value of a good wife--remarks thus: “In the
-true wife the husband finds not affection only, but companionship--a
-companionship with which no other can compare. The family relation
-gives retirement without solitude, and society without the rough
-intrusion of the world. It plants in the husband’s dwelling a friend
-who can listen to the details of his interests with sympathy, who
-can appreciate his repetition of events, only important as they are
-embalmed in the heart. Common friends are linked to us by a slender
-thread. We must retain them by ministering, in some way, to their
-interest or their enjoyment. What a luxury it is for a man to feel
-that in his house there is a true and affectionate being, in whose
-presence he may throw off restraint without danger to his dignity; he
-may confide without the fear of treachery, and be sick or unfortunate
-without being abandoned. If in the outward world he grow weary of human
-selfishness, his heart can safely trust in one whose soul yearns for
-his happiness, and whose indulgence overlooks his defects.”
-
-Give your wives to understand that you esteem them above all others;
-make them your confidants; confide in them and they will confide in
-you; confidence begets confidence, love begets love, sweetness begets
-sweetness.
-
-Above all, sympathize with the wives of your bosoms in the hour of
-affliction. Rejoice with them when they rejoice, and weep with them
-when they weep. Who, if not a bosom companion, will wipe from the cheek
-the falling tear of sorrow? Finally, husbands, remember that death
-will soon sever the connubial cord! When you behold her, with whom you
-lived, and toiled, and wept, and rejoiced, cold and lifeless, laid in
-the coffin--
-
-  “Think of the happiness so deep and tender
-     That filled thy heart when wandering by her side,
-   Think how her faintest smile had power to render
-     The darkest moment one of love and pride.
-
-  “And now that this frail form in death grows colder,
-     A sweet, calm rapture fills the parting hour,
-   That thou art with her, though a sad beholder,
-     A witness of the dear Redeemer’s power!”
-
-Will you _then_ regret that you studied _always_ to promote her
-happiness? that the law of kindness and love dwelt on your lips
-_evermore_? O think, and be _now_ her ministering angel!
-
-“A prudent wife is from the Lord,” _directly_; to God be all the praise.
-
-
-THE GOOD WIFE.
-
-Jeremy Taylor says, “If you are for pleasure, marry; if you prize
-rosy health, marry; and if money is your object, marry. A good wife
-is heaven’s best gift to man--his angel and minister of graces
-innumerable--his gem of many virtues--his casket of jewels--her
-voice, his sweetest music--her smiles, his brightest day--her kiss,
-the guardian of his innocence--her arms, the pale of his safety, the
-balm of his health, the balsam of his life--her industry, his surest
-wealth--her economy, his safest steward--her lips his faithful
-counselors--her bosom, the safest pillow of his cares--and her prayers
-the ablest advocates of heaven’s blessings on his head.”
-
-
-WOMAN.
-
-  “She ne’er with treacherous kiss her Saviour stung,
-   Nor e’er denied Him with unholy tongue;
-   She, when apostles shrank, could danger brave;
-   Last at His cross and earliest at His grave.”
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-  “To think of summers yet to come,
-     That I am not to see;
-   To think a weed is yet to bloom
-     From dust that I shall be!
-
-  “To think when heaven and earth are fled,
-     And times and seasons o’er,
-   When all that can die shall be dead,
-     That I must die no more!
-
-  “Ah! where will then my portion be?
-   How shall I spend eternity!”
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The Literary Sensation of the Hour
-
-IS
-
-The Confessions of A Young Girl
-
-_By VERA_
-
-[Illustration]
-
-WOULD YOU care to see love revealed in a new and entrancing light,
-revealed by one whose very soul is burning with a divine and absorbing
-passion?
-
-WOULD YOU care to have revealed to you the pre-nuptial desires of a
-young and beautiful woman, madly longing for her lover’s embrace?
-
-WOULD YOU care to see passion revealed with a fire and intensity
-inconceivable to the average human?
-
-WOULD YOU care to gaze into a heart throbbing deliriously with the joy
-of a transcendent happiness, then staggering under the weight of a
-nameless horror?
-
-WOULD YOU care to study the quivering soul of a woman and watch her as
-she revels in wild and ecstatic emotions, the joy of bliss realized,
-and later gaze upon her as she sinks into the agonizing and abysmal
-depths of ruin and despair?
-
-WOULD YOU like to be lifted out of your dull, commonplace self and
-thrilled with new thoughts, new impulses, new blood red emotions, by a
-gloriously beautiful woman who opens the secret chambers of her heart
-so that you may observe at close range the roaring volcano of love that
-is consuming her very soul?
-
-Then seize this momentous opportunity and reap an experience which no
-other volume can afford, by reading
-
-THE CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG GIRL
-
-The book that has caused a sensation in the old world and is now
-sweeping the Western Hemisphere like a prairie fire.
-
-THE LITERARY SENSATION OF TWO CONTINENTS
-
-Printed from large type, and bound in paper cover with illustration in
-colors. Sent to any address by mail postpaid on receipt of Price, 30
-cents.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-TWO HUNDRED OLD-TIME SONGS.
-
-This volume contains the _words and music_ of choicest gems of the old
-and familiar songs we used to sing when we were young. It has been
-arranged with great care and we have no hesitation in saying that it is
-the best book of the kind published. Read the following =partial table
-of Contents=. The book contains 130 songs besides the ones mentioned
-here and would cost $50 in sheet music form.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-  Willie, We Have Missed You.
-  Wait for the Wagon.
-  Oh Dear! What Can the Matter be.
-  Oh Why do you Tease Me.
-  Oh, Would I Were a Bird.
-  Oh, Would I Were a Boy Again.
-  Over the Garden Wall.
-  Pilgrim Fathers, The.
-  Pat Malloy.
-  Pauper’s Drive, The.
-  Paddle Your Own Canoe.
-  Robin Adair.
-  Robinson Crusoe.
-  Don’t You Go, Tommy.
-  Free as a Bird.
-  In the Gloaming.
-  John Anderson, My Joe.
-  Katie’s Letter.
-  Little Annie Rooney.
-  Larboard Watch.
-  Life on the Ocean Wave, A.
-  Low Backed Car, The.
-  Mollie, Put the Kettle On.
-  Meet Me by Moonlight.
-  Nancy Lee.
-  O, Boys Carry Me ’Long.
-  Oh! Susannah.
-  Our Flag is There.
-  O Had I Wings Like a Dove.
-  Old Oaken Bucket, The.
-  O Come, Come Away.
-  Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep.
-  Rock Me to Sleep, Mother.
-  Sparkling and Bright.
-  There was an Old Woman.
-  ’Tis the Last Rose of Summer.
-  Rose of Allandale.
-  Star Spangled Banner, The.
-  Saint Patrick Was a Gentleman.
-  See Saw, Margery Daw.
-  Sing a Song of Sixpence.
-  See, the Conquering Hero Comes.
-  Stop Dat Knockin’.
-  Sally in Our Alley.
-  Scots, What Ha’e Wi’ Wallace Bled.
-  Sword of Bunker Hill, The.
-  Spider and the Fly, The.
-  Shells of Ocean.
-  Steal Away.
-  Take Back the Heart.
-  Three Fishers Went Sailing.
-  Ten Little Niggers.
-  ’Tis the Last Rose of Summer.
-  Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay.
-  Thou Art Gone From My Gaze.
-  There is a Green Hill far Away.
-  There was a Jolly Miller.
-
-This book of 176 pages containing the above entire list of songs and
-many others, _words and music_, will be sent by mail postpaid upon
-receipt of price. Paper Cover, 35 cents.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-THE HOUSEWIFE’S TREASURE!
-
-THE HOME-KEEPER’S DELIGHT!
-
-PEERLESS! UNEQUALLED!
-
-THE EVERYDAY COOK BOOK
-
-[Illustration]
-
-saves money, saves labor. Makes cooking pleasurable, easy and
-delightful. Without previous experience or instruction, by the aid
-of this magic volume, the busy housewife can quickly learn to make
-hundreds of savory, appetizing, nourishing dishes, plain or fancy,
-dainty or substantial.
-
-Easy! Practical! Economical! Concise!
-
-THE EVERYDAY COOK BOOK
-
-is the Aladdin’s lamp that converts the kitchen into fairy land, and
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-
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-
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-
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-Transcriber’s Notes:
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-“A Young Widow” is a pen name of Irene W. Hartt.
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-Punctuation has been made consistent.
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-Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
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-The following change was made:
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-p. 7: illegible first letter assumed to be y (with yearning only,)
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