" … aphorism are seldom couched in such terms, that they should be taken as they sound precisely, or according to the widest extent of signification; but do commonly need exposition, and admit exception: otherwise frequently they would not only clash with reason and experience, but interfere, thwart, and supplant one another."—Issac Barrow
"The very essence of an aphorism is that slight exaggeration which makes it more biting whilst less rigidly accurate."—Leslie Stephen
I. On Girls
"A Pearl, A Girl."
-Browning
There are of course, girls and girls; yet at heart they are pretty much alike. In age, naturally, they differ wildly. But this is a thorny subject. Suffice it to say that all men love all girls-the maid of sweet sixteen equally with the maid of untold age.
* * *
There is something exasperatingly something-or-otherish about girls. And they know it—which makes them more something-or-otherish still:—there is no other word for it.
* * *
A girl is a complicated thing. It is made up of clothes, smiles, a pompadour, things of which space and prudence forbid the enumeration here. These things by themselves do not constitute a girl which is obvious; nor is any one girl without these things which is not too obvious. Where the things end and the girl begins many men have tried to find out.
Many girls would like to be men—except on occasions. At least so they say, but perhaps this is just a part of their something-or-otherishness. Why they should want to be men, men cannot conceive. Men pale before them, grow hot and cold before them, run before them (and after them), swear by them (and at them), and a bit of a chit of a thing in short skirts and lisle-thread stockings will twist able-bodied males round her little finger.
It is an open secret that girls are fonder of men than they are of one another—which is very lucky for the men.
Girls differ; and the same girl is different at different times. When she is by herself, she is one thing. When she is with other girls she is another thing. When she is with a lot of men, she is a third sort of thing. When she is with a man … But this baffled even Agur the son of Jakeh.
As a rule, a man prefers a girl by herself. This is natural. And yet is said that you cannot have too much of a good thing. If this were true, a bevy of girls would be the height of happiness. Yet some men would sooner face the bulls of Bashan.
Some foolish men—probably poets—have sought for and asserted the existence of the ideal girl. This is sheer nonsense: there is no such thing. And if there were, she could not compare with the real girl, the girl of flesh and blood—which (as some one ought to have said) are excellent things in woman.
Other men, equally foolish, have regarded girls as playthings. I wish these men had tried to play with them. They would have found that they were playing with fire and brimstone. Yet the veriest spit-fire can be wondrous sweet.
Sweet? Yes. On the whole a girl is the sweetest thing known or knowable. On the 6 whole of this terrestrial sphere Nature has produced nothing more adorable than the high-spirited high-bred girl.—Of this she is quite aware—to our cost (I speak as a man). The consequence is, her price has gone up, and man has to pay high and pay all sorts of things—ices, sweets, champagne, drives, church-goings, and sometimes spot-cash.
Men are always wishing they knew all about girls. It is a precious good thing that they don't.—Not that this is in any way disparaging to the girls. The fact is
A girl is an infinite puzzle, and it is this puzzle, that, among other things, tickles the men, and rouses their curiosity.
What a man doesn't know about a girl would fill a Saratoga trunk; what her does know about her would go into her work-box.
* * *
The littlest girl is a little women. No boy knows this—and precious few grown up men. Thus
Many a grown up man plays with a girl, then finds himself in love with her. As to the girl—
Always the girl knows whether the play is leading: she probably chooses the game.
* * *
Very late in life does a man learn the truth (and significance) of that ancient proverb that Kissing goes by Favour. For
The masculine mind is the slave of Law and Justice:
Aphrodite never heard of Law or Justice: she was born at sea. That is to say,
Few are the men who at some time in their lives have not wondered at the vagaries of girlish complaisance: the foolish, the ne'er-do-well, the bully, the careless, the cruel—it is to these often that a girls' caress is given. And,
Curiously enough, that is, curiously enough as it seems to purblind law-loving man—should the favored one be openly convicted, that alters not one whit his statue with the girl; for,
A girl, having given her heart, never recalls it not wholly: she may regret; she never recoils. In other words,
To the man of her own free lawless choice a girl is always loyal; to subsequent and subordinate attachments she is dutiful. So,
Even the renegade, if loved by a girl, will be upheld by that girl through thick and thin—secretly, it may be, for often the girl, nevertheless devotedly, and only under compulsion will he listen to the detractor: he may desert her, or, if he sticks to her, he may beat her; no matter: he holds her heart in the hollow of his hand. But, But,
Few things mystify poor law-abiding man than this, that the central, the profoundest, the most portentous puzzle of the universe—the weal of woe of two high-aspiring, much-enduring, youthful human souls, should be the sport of what seems to him the veriest and merest chance.
* * *
The unconscious search of sweet sixteen is for (in mathematical language which will not sophisticate her) the integral of love.—Yet
In the short years between sixteen and twenty a girl's love will undergo rapid and startling developments.
* * *
A girl with lots of brothers has more chances of matrimony than a girl with none: she knows more of men; especially of their weaknesses and idiosyncrasies. And
To know the weaknesses and idiosyncrasies of men is perhaps a wife's chief task; unless it be to put up with them.
* * *
Often enough the freckled and fringrant girl wins over the professional beauty.
* * *
Sometimes grown-up girls are just as shy as little ones—and for the same reasons because there is no one who knows how to play with them.
Girls often play with love as if it were one of the amusements of life; but a day comes when love proves itself the most sensuous thing on earth. And
A girl is quick to discover the kind of love that is required of her. As a rule
Many a girl who has been sore put to it to prove herself whole-hearted.
For of course,
Always every suitor expects whole heartedness. And this every girl instinctively knows. Indeed,
Is not a half-hearted love, or a half-hearted acceptress of love, a contradiction in terms?
* * *
A certain measure of the sophisticated or unsophistication of a youthful damsel may be found in her manner o f receiving the attentions of a stranger in a station different from her own.
Young women, themselves but rarely unsophisticated, view with a certain pitying sort of curiosity unsophisticatedness in men. And
A young man's unsophisticatedeness it is a great delight to a woman to eradicate. Yet
A girl regards with complex emotions the man who has blossomed under the genial warmth of her rays; the flattery to own powers is counterbalanced by the evidence of lack of power in him.
* * *
A girl thinks she detects flippancy in seriousness. A woman thinks she detects seriousness in flippancy.
* * *
What would be conduct decidedly risqué in a city miss, is often innocent playfulness in a country maid.
* * *
Between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, girls play with love as if it were a doll; very soon after twenty they discover it is a dynamo. This is why
An early and clandestine engagement often works more havoc than happiness. For
Either, one of the parties to the concealed compact receives or pays attention which perturb the other; or, a subsequent and acknowledged lover looks askance at the previous entanglement. Since even if
A clandestine engagement (as is usually the case) is merely a flirtation with the emoluments which accompany a promise to marry, those emoluments are not nice things for a subsequent and avowed lover, whether masculine or feminine, to think upon. Lastly,
A laxity with regard to the claims of courtship is apt to breed a laxity with regard to the claims of wedlock. In short,
Flirtations, like clandestine engagements, are an affront to love.
Accordingly
To the engagement-ring should be as attached as much importance as to the wedding-ring. Indeed,
A difficult and a delicate path it is that a girl has to tread through life—and often enough a dangerous. Yet with extraordinary deftness she treads it. She must win her a mate, yet has to pretend that the mate wins her. She makes believe to be captured, yet has herself to be intent on the chase. To be wooed and wedded is the law of her being, yet not for one moment dares she to exhibit too great an alacrity to obey that law; for she knows instinctively that an easy victory prognosticates a fickle victor. Is she abundantly endowed with the very attributes that make for wife-and mother-hood, a strong and swaying passion and an affection unbounded, she must hold them in leash with exemplary patience; for, alas! Are they given the rein for a single passing moment, instead of being accounted unto her for righteousness, they work her ruin. She must win her one man, and she must win him for life; but she cannot pick or choose, for she must wait to be asked.
If she make test of many admirers, she is described as a flirt; if, conscientious and demure, she await her fate, a desirable fate is by no means assured.
In truth it seems that too often a girl must dissemble—hateful as dissemblance in men. T'is a hard road indeed that a girl has to travel. To win her a fellow-farer for life, she must go out of her way to accommodate so many travelers: and this one is lured by this, and that one by that, and another by something unnoticed by the throng. But, an she dissembles one iota too much, her fellow-farers look askance, and he who eventually joins her for good upbraids her for that by which she won.
Dissemblance is indeed at once the boon and the bane of a girl: without it, she thinks to be overlooked (often enough a preposterous assumption); with it, she is looked upon too much. And always,
Always a girl has to pretend that never did she descend to dissemblance.
—Which, nevertheless, is sometimes absolutely true, for
Just now and then there happens that miracle of miracles, where their flames up in the man, and their flames up in the maid, in both at once, unaided and unlooked-for, that divine and supra-mundane spark which smolders lambent in every youthful breast: when maid and man take mutual fire at touch of hands and look of eyes—fire lit at that vestal altar which knows no source and burns for aye.
II. On Men
"Duskolon esti to thremma anthropus."
—Plato
For man, the over-grown boy, life has commonly two, and only two, sides: work, and play. Happy he who has for a helpmate one who possesses the faculty of increasing a zeal for the first and of adding a zest to the second. Wherein, O woman, thou mayest happily find the two-fold secret of thy life-work. For
Man is a greedy animal: he wants all or nothing. And fortunately for him,
Women tacitly extol man's greed: they will not be shared any more than they will share.
There is something canine in the masculine nature: like a dog over a bone, it snarls at the very approach of a rival.
* * *
It is curious, but it is true, that proud man becomes prouder (and—more curious still—at the same time humbler) when weak woman gives him something—a look a smile, a locket, her hair, a kiss, herself.
* * *
The greater a man's faith in himself, the greater his mistress hers in him. And perhaps, the greater his mistress her faith in a man, the greater his in himself. For
A woman's faith in a man works wonders.
* * *
A man to whom a woman cannot look up, she cannot love. Yet,
It is marvelous how a woman contrives to find something to look up to in a man.
* * *
Many men forget the artistic tendency of the feminine temperament, a tendency which shows itself in many ways—their love of pretty things, of pretty ways, and of pretty words. From which three alone we may deduce the rule that
When with the woman he admires and whose admiration he seeks, a man cannot be too careful of his dress, his speech, and his manners.
* * *
A believer in Woman is a believer in Good. And vice versa, and mutatis mutandis.
* * *
Man's standard of value of a woman is usually determined by the scale of his own emotions. That is to say,
The pedestal upon which a man places a woman (a man always puts a woman upon a pedestal) is a pedestal erected solely by the effect upon himself of her charms.
* * *
A man may boast himself invincible by men; never by woman.
* * * The lady-killer is always an object of attraction to ladies, even to those whom he makes no attempt to slay.
* * *
It may perhaps be a thing as unreasonable as certainly it is indisputable, that however much wild oats a man may himself sow, he invariably entertains a very peculiar objection to any woman near or dear to him entering upon this particular branch of agriculture.
* * *
He is a fool who does not bear himself before his lady-love as a prince among men.
* * *
Some men are so gallant that they will never be outdone by the woman who encourages them. But it often leads to strange embarrassments and entanglements.
* * *
Few things terrify a man more than the knowledge of a woman's ability to make her emotions—when, if ever, he arrives at it.
* * *
That is a very silly man who thing she can play one woman off against another. For
In matters of emotional finesse the masculine instance is nowhere: it is blinded, befogged, befooled at every turn.
Heaven help the man who is dragged into a quarrel between two wrathful ladies!
* * *
Three things there be—nay, four—which man can never be sure, how a greatsoever his acumen, his astuteness, or his zeal: a woman; a race horse; a patent; and the money-market. They defy both faith and fate; they should be the recreations not the resources of life; and he is a fool who stakes more than a portion of his substance on any one of them.
* * *
What a paltry thing, after all, is man, man uncomplemented by woman! Left to himself, he stagnates; linked with a woman, he rises—or sinks. A gentle touch stimulates him, a confiding heart makes of him a new creature. Under the rays of feminine sympathy, he expands who else would remain inert. Fame may allure him, friends encourage him, fortune cause him a momentary smile, but only woman makes him; and fame, friends, fortune, all are naught if there be not at his side a sharer of his weal. A man will strive for fortune, strip himself for friends, scour the earth for fame; but were there no woman in the world to be won, not one of these things would he do.
* * *
III. On Women
"Ehret die Fanen!"
-Schiller
From woman, who e're she be, there seems to emanate a potency ineffable to man—impalpable, invisible, divine. It lies not in beauty or grace, not even in manner or mein; and it requires neither wiles nor artifice. It is not the growth of long and intimate acquaintance, for often it acts spontaneously and at once; and neither the woman who possesses it nor the man who succumbs to it can give it a name. For to say that it consists in the effluence or influence of personality or temperament, of affinity or passion, of sympathy or charm, is to say nothing save that we know not what it is. All unknown to herself, it wraps its owner round with airs the which to breathe uplifts the spirit, and yet, may be, perturbs the heart, of man. Even its effects are recondite and obscure. It allures; but how it allures now man shall tell. It impels; but to what, does not appear. It rouses all manner of hopes, stirs sleeping ambition, and desires and aspirations unappeasable; but for what purport or to what end, none stays to inquire . It incites; sometimes it enthralls. It innervates; it exhaults. Under its spell, reason is flung to the winds, and matters of great mundane moment are trivial and of no account: for it bewilders the wit and snatches the judgment of sane and rational men. It is most powerful in youth; it is most powerful upon youth; yet some retain it till far on in years, and no age but feels its sway:—a veiled and mysterious force; sometimes daemonical, often divine: at once the delight and the despair of man. After all,
The man who declares he understands women, declares his folly. For,
If woman were not such a mystery, she would not be such an attraction.
For again,
What is known is ignored. (But woman need have no cause for apprehension.) Besides,
Men may be classified; women never. This is why
Generalizing in the case of women is useless; since
Woman is a species of which every woman is a variety. And every man must make up his mind to this, that
Every woman is a study in herself. However,
If women were comprehensible to men, men and women would be friends, not lovers (But the race is safe). The simple fact is that
Womanliness is the supreme attraction, in however fair or however frail a personality it is embodied. And
The sacred function of all womanhood is to kindle in man the divine spark by means 30 of the mystic flame that burns ever in the vestal breast.
* * *
Every true woman's orbit is determined by two forces: Love and Duty.
Which is another way of saying that
Women, like the lark, are true to the kindred points of heaven and home.
But,
It is only when the two foci are coincident and identical that her orbit becomes the perfect circle and her home becomes her heaven.
* * *
A woman's heart is an unfathomable ocean: nothing ever filled it; no one ever plumbed it. At the surface are glancing waves, or flying spume, or, it may be, raging billows; beneath are silent depths invisible to man. A thousand streams flow into it in vain. Towards varying coast-lines it bears itself variously; here, placid and content; there, dashing furious. But none ever stamped his marked upon its brim, and always it remains the refluent, reluctant sea. Of it man knows only the waves that break or ripple at his feet. It betrays no 31 secrets; it asks not to be understood. Storm and calm but stir or still its surface, and what things it hides forever engulfed no one may learn. Subtle, yet mighty; an eternal, and entrancing, mystery to man.
A man's heart is the enclosing shore; measurable, impressionable, definite, and overt; thinking to house that sea, shaping it, over looking it, and staying and governing its tides. Yet changed by it, crumbling before it, yielding to it: at once its guardian and its slave. Yet perhaps
The placidest of seas is that which is wholly land-locked.
* * *