MAXIMS FOR THE MAN IN LOVE
How to deal with your girl--Avoid catching colds in your head--How
women with humour can be saved.
Never go down on your knees to declare your love; you will spoil
your trousers and feel very uncomfortable. Rather give the lady an
opportunity of denying that you were on your knees before her, for the
simple reason that she was sitting on them.
Never put your hand near your lady's waistband or round her neck. Place
it about the middle of her back; there are no pins there.
If she asks you to fasten her bracelet, never forget to apply a kiss on
her arm. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, that is what she wants and
why she does not secure her bracelet with a little chain.
Never call on your lady-love while you have a cold in your head. If you
begin your declaration, you will never be able to resume it after a fit
of sneezing. A cold in the head inspires pity neither in the heart of
man nor in that of woman, and sneezing is fatal if the lady possesses
the slightest particle of humour. Remember that, with a cold in your
head, you will have to say to her: 'I lob you, be darling. Oh! I hab
such a cold id be dose.' No romantic love, my dear fellow, could
survive that.
I knew a man who once eloped with a married woman. They were deeply in
love with each other. When they arrived at their destination, they went
to the hotel where they had engaged rooms. It was a bitterly cold day,
and they had forgotten to give orders for fires. The rooms were dull
and chilly. They fell in each other's arms. 'At last, my darling!' he
exclaimed. 'At last, my own beloved one!' He could say no more. He was
seized with a violent fit of sneezing. The misled lady came at once to
her senses. In no time the trunks were sent back to the station, and
that same evening she had returned safe and sound to the conjugal roof.
The 'saving grace' of humour has done still more for women than for men
who owe so much to it.
The woman who has a keen sense of humour is a terrible one to make love
to. The romantic one will find charms in all your shortcomings, but the
other is inexorable. She is constantly on the look-out for something to
laugh at; nothing will escape her. And you know that, if you laugh,
love-making is out of the question.
I know a woman who was radically cured of her ardent love for a man
because he had, near the tip of his nose, a tiny little wart which
turned alternately white and red while he got passionately engaged
telling her the sincerity and intensity of his love.
If you are bald, never make love to a woman taller than you. Looked at
from below, you are all right.
Never let your lady-love see you without a collar, no, not even the
very wife of your bosom. A man's head without a collar is like a
bouquet without a holder.
Never let her see you asleep. Maybe you sleep with your mouth open. If
you are married, let your wife sleep first. When you are quite sure she
is off, let yourself go--and be careful to wake up first in the
morning.
Never tell your lady-love that you are very steady in your affections,
and that every time that you love a woman it is for ever. If you think
she will enjoy the joke, you overrate her sense of humour.
If your wife or sweetheart be in love with you to such a degree that
she tells you she could never survive you if you happened to die,
reassure her and tell her that there is a way out of the
difficulty--her setting out first.
Don't let your wife see you shave. Your idiotic, cowed look, your
gaping mouth and grimaces are as many infallible remedies for love.
Never indulge in any little objectionable trick before the woman you
love. Great affections should never be trifled with. Madame Bovary, in
Gustave Flaubert's famous novel, took a dislike to her husband and went
helplessly wrong, because the latter, after eating, used to clean his
teeth by promenading his tongue inside his mouth. I sympathize with the
poor woman and feel rather inclined to forgive her.