It may be a charming sight to behold a girl stirring cheese in the chafing-dish, wearing an air of deep concern when it "bunnies" at the sides and requires still more skill. It may also be attractive to see white fingers weave wonders with fine linen and delicate silks, with pretty eagerness as to shade and stitch.
But in the after-years, when his divinity, redolent of the kitchen, meets him at the door, with hair dishevelled and fingers bandaged, it is subtly different from the chafing-dish days, and the crisp chops, generously black with charcoal, are not as good as her rarebits used to be. The memory of the silk and fine linen also fades somewhat, in the presence of darning which contains hard lumps and patches which immediately come off.
It has become the fashion to speak of woman as the eager hunter, and man as the timid, reluctant prey. The comic papers may have started it, but modern society certainly lends colour to the pretty theory. It is frequently attributed to Mr. Darwin, but he is at times unjustly blamed by those who do not read his pleasing works.
The complexities in man's personal equation are caused by variants of three emotions; a mutable fondness for women, according to temperament and opportunity, a more uniform feeling toward money, and the universal, devastating desire—the old, old passion for food.
The Key of Happiness
The first variant is but partially under the control of any particular woman, and the less she concerns herself with the second, the better it is for both, but she who stimulates and satisfies the third variant holds in her hands the golden key of happiness. No woman need envy the Sphinx her wisdom if she has learned the uses of silence and never asks a favour of a hungry man.
A woman makes her chief mistake when she judges a man by herself and attributes to him indirection and complexity of motive. When she wishes to attract a particular man, she goes at it indirectly. She makes friends of "his sisters, his cousins, and his aunts," and assumes an interest in his chum. She ignores him at first and thus arouses his curiosity. Later, she condescends to smile upon him and he is mildly pleased, because he thinks he has been working for that very smile and has finally won it. In this manner he is lured toward the net.
The Wise Virgin
When a girl systematically and effectively feeds a man, she is leading trumps. He insensibly associates her with his comfort and thus she becomes his necessity. When a man seeks a woman's society it is because he has need of her, not because he thinks she has need of him; and the parlour of the girl who realises it, is the envy of every unattached damsel on the street. If the wise one is an expert with the chafing-dish, she may frequently bag desirable game, while the foolish virgins who have no alcohol in their lamps are hunting eagerly for the trail.
Because she herself works indirectly, she thinks he intends a tender look at another girl for a carom shot, and frequently a far-sighted maiden can see the evidences of a consuming passion for herself in a man's devotion to someone else.
Men are not sufficiently diplomatic to bother with finesse of this kind. Other things being equal, a man goes to see the girl he wants to see. It does not often occur to her that he may not want to see her, may be interested in someone else, or that he may have forgotten all about her.
"Encouragement"
There is a common feminine delusion to the effect that men need "encouragement" and there is no term which is more misused. A fool may need "encouragement," but the man who wants a girl will go after her, regardless of obstacles. As for him, if he is fed at her house, even irregularly, he may know that she looks with favour upon his suit.
"Platonic Friendship"
The parents of both, the neighbours, and even the girl herself, usually know that a man is in love before he finds it out. Sometimes he has to be told. He has approached a stage of acute and immediate peril when he recognises what he calls "a platonic friendship."
Young men believe platonic friendship possible; old men know better—but when one man learns to profit by the experience of another, we may look for mosquitoes at Christmas and holly in June.
There is an exquisite danger attached to friendships of this kind, and is it not danger, rather than variety, which is "the spice of life?" Relieved of the presence of that social pace-maker, the chaperone, the disciples of Plato are wont to take long walks, and further on, they spend whole days in the country with book and wheel.
A book is a mysterious bond of union, and by their taste in books do a man and woman unerringly know each other. Two people who unite in admiration of Browning are apt to admire each other, and those who habitually seek Emerson for new courage may easily find the world more kindly if they face it hand in hand.
A latter-day philosopher has remarked upon the subtle sympathy produced by marked passages. "The method is so easy and so unsuspect. You have only to put faint pencil marks against the tenderest passages in your favourite new poet, and lend the volume to Her, and She has only to leave here and there the dropped violet of a timid, confirmatory initial, for you to know your fate."
The High-Priest
A man never has a platonic friendship with a woman it is impossible for him to love. Cupid is the high-priest at these rites of reading aloud and discussing everything under the sun. The two become so closely bound that one arrow strikes both, and often the happiest marriages are those whose love has so begun, for when the Great Passion dies, as it sometimes does, sympathy and mutual understanding may yield a generous measure of content.
The present happy era of fiction closes a story abruptly at the altar or else begins it immediately after the ceremony. Thence the enthralled reader is conducted through rapture, doubt, misunderstanding, indifference, complications, recrimination, and estrangement to the logical end in cynicism and the divorce court.
In the books which women write, the hero of the story shoulders the blame, and often has to bear his creator's vituperation in addition to his other troubles. When a man essays this theme in fiction, he shows clearly that it is the woman's fault. When the situation is presented outside of books, the happily married critics distribute condemnation in the same way, it being customary for each partner in a happy marriage to claim the entire credit for the mutual content.
Pursuit and Possession
Over the afternoon tea cups it has been decided with unusual and refreshing accord, that "it is pursuit and not possession with a man." True—but is it less true with women?
When Her Ladyship finally acquires the sealskin coat on which she has long set her heart, does she continue to scan the advertisements? Does she still coddle him who hath all power as to sealskin coats, with tempting dishes and unusual smiles? Not unless she wants something else.
Still, it is woman's tendency to make the best of what she has, and man's to reach out for what he has not. Man spends his life in the effort to realise the ideals which, like will-o'-the-wisps, hover just beyond him. Woman, on the contrary, brings into her life what grace she may, by idealising her reals.
In her secret heart, woman holds her unchanging ideal of her own possible perfection. Sometimes a man suspects this, and loves her all the more for the sweet guardian angel which is thus enthroned. Other men, less fine, consider an ideal a sort of disease—and they are usually a certain specific.
But, after all, men are as women make them. Cleopatra and Helen of Troy swayed empires and rocked thrones. There is no woman who does not hold within her little hands some man's achievement, some man's future, and his belief in woman and God.
She may fire him with high ambition, exalt him with noble striving, or make him a coward and a thief. She may show him the way to the gold of the world, or blind him with tinsel which he may not keep. It is she who leads him to the door of glory and so thrills him with majestic purpose, that nothing this side Heaven seems beyond his eager reach.
The Potter's Hand
Upon his heart she may write ecstasy or black despair. Through the long night she may ever beckon, whispering courage, and by her magic making