as to make your wife happy. You may not be considered a perfect lover
even if you have compassed that very laudable end. In fact, the very
ones I mean are the apparently successful lovers with happy or
contented wives.
No shadow of a doubt as to your success as lovers has ever crossed
your dear old satisfied minds. To you I am alluding--to the very ones
who never gave the subject a thought before. Wake up, now, and listen.
Your wives have thought about it enough, even if you have not.
Remember then that I am only trying to tell you, not _why_ men fail as
lovers, but _how_ they fail--in how much you fail.
Leave out all flirting, all precarious engagements, all unhappy
Carriages, and presuppose a sweet, lovable woman, contentedly married
to a real man--a man who truly loves, even if he has not completely
mastered the gentle art of love-making. No skeleton in the closet; no
wishing the marriage undone; with no eternal fitnesses of things to
make the gods envious; no great joys of having met each other's
star-soul; with plenty of little every-day rubs, either in the shape
of hateful little economies in the choice of opera-seats and cab-hire,
or petty illnesses and nerves. Just a nice, ordinary, pleasant
marriage, with only love to keep the machinery from squeaking, and no
moral obligation on the man's part to see that the supply of love does
not run short. A great many men can stand a squeak constantly. But
women have nerves, and will go to any trouble to remove one which
their husbands never hear.
You have worked early and late to buy your wife even more luxuries
than you really could afford. But you love her so much that it was
your greatest pleasure to heap good things upon her. And very nice of
you it is. You are a dear, good man to do it, and I honor you for it.
Her physical needs are abundantly supplied. Indeed, you are so good a
lover that you remember your courting-days enough to send her flowers
on her birthdays and Easter. So her sentimental needs, represented by
flowers, are supplied.
There remain but two needs more. Those of her mind and heart.
It is too delicate a subject to discuss whether you are clever enough
for her. Very likely you are. If not, she ought to have attended to
that before she married you, because that is one of the few things
that you really can know something about during an engagement--if you
are not too much in love to have any sense left at all. Therefore
again I take for granted that you and she are congenial. If she is
devotedly fond of music, you do not hate it so that you cannot
occasionally go with her in the evening to the opera, with abundant
props in the shape of tickets for the matinée, to which you generously
bid her to "take one of the girls." If she loves books, you like to
hear her talk about them, because she does it so well, and because she
knows the ins and outs of your mind so thoroughly that in ten minutes
she can give you the plot, and half an hour's reading aloud of
striking passages will give you so excellent an idea of the style that
you can talk about it to-morrow more intelligently than some bachelors
who have really read it by themselves most conscientiously. That is
because you are clever; because your wife is more clever. You have a
brain, and your wife photographs her personality and her subject upon
it, because she understands you and has studied you, and has a pride
that you shall appear to advantage among her friends and not
degenerate into a mere business machine, as too many men do. I suppose
it never occurred to you to try to do a similar thing for her. You
could, if you wanted to. But it is a good deal of trouble, and you are
generally tired. But what do you suppose would happen if you should
exhibit the same eagerness that she does to keep the flame of love
alive, so that your marriage should not sink to the dead commonplace
level of all the other marriages you know? Suppose, even after you
have caught the car, that you occasionally got off and ran beside it a
while, just for healthful exercise, and to keep yourself from growing
ordinary?
Suppose _you_ occasionally hunted out a new book, and marked it, and
brought it home to read to her, not because you think she wouldn't
have got it without you, but just to show her that you are trying to
pull evenly, and that you wanted to do something extra charming for
her _in her line_, and to prove that you have a conscience about
keeping this precious, evanescent, but carelessly treated love at a
point where it is still a joy. It is a sad thing to get so used to a
beautiful exception like love that you never think of it as
marvellous.
A man never seems to be able to understand that, in order to obtain
the supremest pleasure from an act of thoughtfulness to his wife, he
must be wholly unselfish and give it to her, in her line, and the way
she wants it--and the way he knows she wants it, if he would only stop
to think. I know a man who hates to go out in the evening, but who
occasionally, in order to do something particularly sweet and
unselfish to please his wife, takes her to the theatre. She loves fine
plays, tragedy, high-grade comedy. But he takes her to the minstrels,
because that is the only thing he can stand, and for two weeks
afterwards he keeps saying to her, "Didn't I take you to the theatre
the other night, honey? Don't I sometimes sacrifice myself for your
pleasure?" And she goes and kisses him and says yes, and tries not to
think that his selfishness more than outweighs his unselfishness.
Women have more conscience about deceiving themselves into staying in
love than men have.
But even yet, suppose you are not that kind of a man, we have not got
to the point of the subject yet. Our way lies through the head to the
heart. And the man who is scrupulously careful about acts has yet to.
watch at once the greatest joy, the greatest grief, the supremest
healing of even deliberate wounds--words. It is a question with me
whether a woman ever knows all the joys of love-making who has one of
those dumb, silent husbands, who doubtless adores her, but is unable
to express it only in deeds. It requires an act of the will to
remember that his getting down-town at seven o'clock every morning is
all done for you, when he has not been able to tell you in words that
he loves you. It is hard to keep thinking that he looked at you last
night as if he thought you were pretty, when he did not say so. It is
hard to receive a telegram, when you are looking for a letter, saying,
"Have not had time to write. Shall be home Sunday. Will bring you
something nice." It is harder still to get a letter telling about the
weather 'and how busy he is, when the same amount of space, saying
that he got to thinking about you yesterday when he saw a girl on the
street who looked like you, only she didn't carry herself so well as
you do, and that he was a lucky man to have got you when so many other
men wanted you, and he loved you, good-bye--would have fairly made
your heart turn over with joy and made you kiss the hurried lines and
thrust the letter in your belt, where you could crackle it now and
then just to make sure it was there.
Nearly all nice men make good lovers in deeds. Many fail in the
handling of words. Few, indeed, combine the two and make perfect
lovers.
But the last test of all, and, to my mind, the greatest, is in the use
of words as a balm. Few people, be they men or women, be they lovers,
married, or only friends, can help occasionally hurting each other's
feelings. Accidents are continually happening even when people are
good-tempered. And for quick or evil-tempered ones there is but one
remedy--the handsome, honest apology. The most perfect lover is the
one who best understands how and when to apologize.
I have heard men say, to prove their independence, their proud spirit,
their unbending self-respect, "I never apologize." They say it in such
conscious pride, and so honestly expect me to admire them, and I am so
amiable, that I never dare remonstrate. I simply keep out of their
way. But I feel like saying: "Poor, pitiful soul! Poor, meagre nature!
Not to know the gladness of restoring a smile to a face from which you
have driven it. Only to know the coldness of a misnamed pride; never
to know the close, warm joy of humility."
Many people know nothing about a real apology. A lukewarm apology is
more insulting than the insult. A handsome apology is the handsomest
thing in the world--and the manliest and the womanliest. An apology,
like chivalry, is sexless. Perhaps because it is a natural virtue of
women, it sits manlier upon men than upon women.
... "It becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown."
Even as chivalry, being a natural attribute of men, becomes beautiful
beyond words to express when found in women.
I have often heard men say they never apologize. Sometimes I have
heard women. Pitiful, indeed, it becomes then. A woman without
religion is no more repulsive to me than one who "never apologizes."
How I pity the people who love those men and women who "never
apologize." A delicate apology brings into play all the virtues
necessary to a perfect humanity. The proudest are generally those who
can bend the lowest. It is not pride; it is a stupid vanity and an
abnormal self-love which prevent a man or woman from apologizing. An
apology requires a native humility of which only great souls are
capable. It requires generosity to be willing to humble yourself. It
takes faith in humanity to think that your apology will be accepted.
You must have a sense of justice to believe that you owe it. It
requires sincerity to make it sound honest, and tact to do it at the
right time. It requires patience to stick to it until the wound has
ceased to bleed, and the best, highest, truest type of love to make
you want to do it.
There is only one thing meaner than a person who never apologizes, and
that is a person who will not accept one.
It requires a finer type of generosity to receive generously than to
give generously. And a nature is more divine which can forgive
honestly and quickly than one which can only apologize and is not
capable of a swift forgiveness. But it is a wise dispensation of
Providence that the two are twin virtues, and are generally to be met
with in the same broad and beautiful nature.
Used against a high soul, there is no surer method of humiliation than
an apology. In one skilled at reading human nature, an apology becomes
a weapon. When you are not the one who should apologize first, when
you are less to blame than he, be you the one to apologize first, and
see how quickly his noble nature will abase itself, and rush to meet
you, and how sure and glorious and complete the reconciliation will
be!
I never can blame people who refuse to accept an apology in the shape
of flowers when the wound has been given in words. The whole of Europe
would not compensate some women for a hurt, when the hurt had been
distinctly worded and the apology came in the shape of a dumb,
voiceless present.
From the standpoint of observation and inexperience, I would say that
the supremest lack of men as lovers is the inability to say, "I am
sorry, dear; forgive me." And to keep on saying it until the hurt is
entirely gone. You gave her the deep wound. Be manly enough to stay by
it until it has healed. Men will go to any trouble, any expense, any
personal inconvenience, to heal it without the simple use of those
simple words. A man thinks if a woman begins to smile at him again
after a hurt, for which he has not yet apologized, has commenced to
grow dull, that the worst is over, and that, if he keeps away from the
dangerous subject, he has done his duty. Besides, hasn't he given her
a piano to pay for it? But that same man would call another man a
brute who insisted upon healing up a finger with the splinter still in
it, so that an accidental pressure would always cause pain.
If you do not believe this, what do you suppose the result would be if
you should apologize to your wife for something you said last year. If
you think she has forgotten, because she never speaks of it, just try
it once.
I honestly believe that the simple phrase, "I am sorry, dear; forgive
me," has done more to hold brothers in the home, to endear sisters to
each other, to comfort mothers and fathers, to tie friends together,
to placate lovers; that more marriages have taken place because of
them, and more have held together on account of them; that more love
of all kinds has been engendered by them than by any other words in
the English language.
GIRLS AND OTHER GIRLS
"Thou art so very sweet and fair,
With such a heaven in thine eyes,
It almost seems an over-care
To ask thee to be good or wise.
"As if a little bird were blamed
Because its song unthinking flows;
As if a rose should be ashamed
Of being nothing but a rose."
* * * * *
* * * * *
"It is so hard for Shrewdness to admit
Folly means no harm when she calls black white."
People who criticise the grammar of those young girls who say "I don't
think," should have a care. For it is more true than incorrect. Most
girls don't think.
But there are two kinds of girls--girls under twenty-five and others.
Of course, although you may not know it, age has no more to do with
that statement than it had to do with the one when I hinted that man
reached the ripe state of perfection at the mystic age of thirty-five.
These are but approximate figures, and are only for use in general
practice. They have no bearing on specific cases, when it is always
best to call in a specialist.
I know many girls who are still seeing and hearing unintelligently,
and have not begun to assimilate knowledge, even at twenty-five. I
know others of twenty, who have assimilated so well that they will
never be under twenty-five. But it is a literal fact, and this
statement I am willing to live up to, that the majority of girls must
have lived through their first youth before a thinking person can take
any comfort with them.
I am sure Samuel Johnson had this in mind when he said: "'Tis a
terrible thing that we cannot wish young ladies well without wishing
them to become old women." Or possibly the exclamation was wrung from
him after an attempt to talk to one of them. Many brave men, who would
stop a runaway horse, or who would dare to look for burglars under the
bed, quail utterly before the prospect of talking to a young girl who
frankly says, "I don't think."
How can those girls, who give evidence of no more thought than is
evinced by their namby-pamby chatter, call their existence living?
They mistake pertness for wit; audacity for cleverness; disrespect to
old age for independence; and general bad manners for individuality.
Has nobody ever trained these girls to think? What kind of schools do
they attend? Who has spoiled them by flattery, until they are little
peacocks to whom a mirror is an irresistible temptation?
Why do unthinking parents supply them with money, and never ask how
they spend it? How does it come that if you want to find great numbers
of them together you go to Huyler's instead of to Brentano's? What
kind of women will these girls make, to whom a wrinkle in their waist
is of more moment than their soul's salvation?
I often wonder what kind of mothers these girls have. Surely there can
be no family conversation where they live. Surely they never hear the
great questions of the day discussed at the dinner-table. From the
number of hours they spend upon the street, I often am tempted to say,
what the poor, tired woman, who stood for miles in the street-car,
said to her fellow-passengers, "Have none of yez _homes_?"
Poor, empty-pated little creatures! Poor lovely little clothes-racks,
who occasionally organize a concert for newsboys whose lives are
busier and more useful than their own! A Street Waifs' Benefit for
Street Waifs!
If the crude young person who stands with such eager feet where the
brook and river meet that she has wetted her pretty shoon in her haste
to be in the society of men could only have the wit to sing:
"O wad some power the giftie gie us,
To see oursels as others see us,"
she might discover strange points of resemblance between herself and a
very young baby.
In the earliest days of earthly existence a baby is in a jelly-fish
state, from which no one can say what he will emerge. His brain is a
sponge. He receives everything and gives nothing. He is pretty to look
at, and seems made for nothing but love. He coos and gurgles, he
seldom does anything more intelligent than to smile, and he prefers
men to women.
The greatest fault that thinking men find with this sort of girl is,
that she becomes sillier every day that she lives. I have heard women
complain of the degeneracy of the boys who seek their daughters in
marriage; but when I look at the many girls of this type I am tempted
to say, "Well, madam, who but a degenerate would care to marry your
daughter?"
Men claim that it is difficult to maintain their ideals in regard to
women, in the face of such selfishness, crudeness, bad manners, and
jealousies as exist between young girls of this sort. Of course, they
who have become belles by reason of their lovely faces never know that
the thinking class of young men criticise them adversely, and they
would not care if they did. There are still many men who do admire and
who will fall in love with them, and the others are not missed.
We must not blame them too severely for rejoicing in their loveliness.
It might be a hard struggle for the rest of us not to do the same if
we had their beauty.
Men often wonder why girls' friendships are so hollow. They wonder why
we are so ungenerous to each other. "So hateful," _we_ call it.
Hateful is not a man's word. It is a woman's; and trust a woman to
know exactly what it means.
Well, the truth of it is that men are at the bottom of a great deal of
it. Girls seldom quarrel with each other except over some man, and,
while they intend to be loyal to each other, they cannot seem to
manage it if there is a man in the case.
Most girls have two natures. One she shows to men; the other to other
girls. What we know of one is the way she droops and is so openly
bored by other girls that it is quite a blow to our vanity to be
obliged to be with her. We recognize the other at the approach of a
man, even if we cannot see him, by the changes in the girl's face. She
straightens herself, puts a hand on each side of her waist, and pushes
her belt down lower, moistens her lips, a sparkle comes into her eyes,
she touches her back hair, and runs a finger under the edge of her
veil. Then she smiles--such a smile as the other girls have not been
able to win from her in three hours.
These girls are very clever sometimes--even these little, soft,
kitteny girls, who do not know anything about books, who never read,
who never study, and are popularly called empty-headed even by the
very men who make love to them. These girls are keen beyond words to
express in their intuitive knowledge of human nature and the
differentiation between man nature and woman nature. They are capable
of using the outward and apparent motives of humanity for an effect,
and secretly of plying the subtlest and most occult.
It is difficult to designate their exact methods, and dangerous to
exploit them, for you immediately lay yourself open to the suspicion
of being capable of the same double-dealing yourself, or of its being
beneath your dignity to accuse any one of such duplicity; and yet
there are the causes and there are the results. You can shut your eyes
to them if you wish.
It is just here where a girl of this kind is so uncanny. Of course,
for those of us who wish to take a lofty view of love and lovers, who
wish to think each woman sought out by a man for her beauty and
virtues and married for love, it is very repugnant to have to face the
fact that there are hundreds of sweet, nice girls, of good family and
good training, who regard the securing for themselves of another
girl's lover a perfectly legitimate operation.
Not infrequently one hears it said that So-and-So is one of the most
attractive girls in town, because she can cut any girl out that she
tries to. You may say that a man so easily won is no great loss, or
that such things may occur in other circles of society but not in
yours. Possibly they do not. One does not deny the honor of honorable
men and women in any walk in life. But in polite society, fashionable
society, these things occur. Oftener in New York than in Boston, and
oftener in London and Paris than in New York. Indeed, we may sneer, as
we often do, at the primitive customs of the lowly, and at their
absurd phrase of "keeping company." It makes a delightful jest. But
beneath it is a greater regard for the rights of a man or woman in
love than one is apt to find higher in the social scale.
With them, to select one another "to keep company," is like an offer
of marriage. To "keep steady company" is the formal announcement of an
engagement, which is a potential marriage. It is the first step
towards matrimony, and is almost as sacred and final.
With their more fortunate and envied sisters in the smart set, an
engagement is the loosest kind of a bond, and neither man nor woman is
safe from the wooing of other men and women until the marriage vows
have been pronounced, and, if your society is very fashionable, not
even then.
So that this society of which I speak would undeniably be called
"good."
Now, of course, all women desire to be loved. She is a very queer
woman who would deny that proposition if asked by the right person,
and I hope he would have sense enough not to believe her if she did. I
do not object to a girl making herself attractive to men in a modest
and maidenly way. On the contrary, I heartily approve of it. But I
would have her select a man who belonged to no other girl, and to know
that nothing but misery can result from the taking of a lover away
from her friend.
It is the fashion for women to deny that this is done. I never could
see why. But possibly they deny it because they are afraid, if they
discuss it, that people will think some girl has lured a lover or two
away from _them_.
People who have witnessed the outward results of this phenomenon also
deny the true cause, on the ground that the robber girl was not clever
enough to have done it. That she simply was more to the man's taste
than the first girl, and so it was all the fault of the man.
Of course, I cannot deny the fickleness of man. But I do say that the
girl hardly lives, no matter how pretty she is, who has not the wit to
get another girl's lover if she wants him. It makes no difference how
young she is, she never makes the mistake of disparaging the first
girl. No woman of the world is less liable to such an error than a
girl who deliberately intends to get another girl's lover.
She begins by gaining her confidence. Very likely she manages to stay
all night with her. (That is the time when you tell everything you
know, just because it is dark, and then spend the rest of your life
wishing you hadn't.)
Then, when she has the points of the compass, so to speak, she says
she will help her dear friend, and the dear friend, not being clever
(or she wouldn't have confided), thinks she is the loveliest girl in
the world, and, after promising to send her lover to call in order to
be "helped," she calmly goes to sleep, just as if she has not seen the
beginning of the end.