How to Behave: A Pocket Manual of Republican Etiquette, and Guide to Correct Personal Habits / Embracing an Exposition of the Principles of Good Manners; Useful Hints on the Care of the Person, Eating, Drinking, Exercise, Habits, Dress, Self-culture, and Behavior at Home; the Etiquette of Salutations, Introductions, Receptions, Visits, Dinners, Evening Parties, Conversation, Letters, Presents, Weddings, Funerals, the Street, the Church, Places of Amusement, Traveling, Etc., with Illustrative Anecdotes, a Chapter on Love and Courtship, and Rules of Order for Debating Societies

by Samuel R. Wells

I.—A HINT OR TWO.

o treat the subject of love and courtship in all its bearings would require a volume. It is with the etiquette of the tender passion that we have to do here. A few preliminary hints, however, will not be deemed out of place.

Boys often fall in love (and girls too, we believe) at a very tender age. Some charming cousin, or a classmate of his sister, in the village school, weaves silken meshes around the throbbing heart of the young man in his teens. This is well. He is made better and happier by his boyish loves—for he generally has a succession of them, but they are seldom permanent. They are only beautiful foreshadowings of the deeper and more earnest love of manhood, which is to bind him to his other self with ties which only death can sever. Read Ik Marvel's "Dream Life."

Before a young man has reached the proper age to marry—say twenty-five, as an average—he ought to have acquired such a knowledge of himself, physically and mentally considered, and of the principles which ought to decide the choice of matrimonial partners and govern the relations of the sexes, as will enable him to set up a proper standard of female excellence, and to determine what qualities, physical and mental, should characterize the woman who is to be the angel of his home and the mother of his children. With this knowledge he is prepared to go into society and choose his mate, following trustingly the attractions of his soul. Love is an affair of the heart, but the head should be its privy counselor.

Do not make up your mind to wait till you have acquired a fortune before you marry. You should not, however, assume the responsibilities of a family without a reasonable prospect of being able to maintain one. If you are established in business, or have an adequate income for the immediate requirements of the new relation, you may safely trust your own energy and self-reliance for the rest.

Women reach maturity earlier than men, and may marry earlier—say (as an average age), at twenty. The injunction, "Know thyself," applies with as much emphasis to a woman as to a man. Her perceptions are keener than ours, and her sensibilities finer, and she may trust more to instinct, but she should add to these natural qualifications a thorough knowledge of her own physical and mental constitution, and of whatever relates to the requirements of her destiny as wife and mother. The importance of sound health and a perfect development, can not be overrated. Without these you are NEVER fit to marry.[P]

Having satisfied yourself that you really love a woman—be careful, as you value your future happiness and hers, not to make a mistake in this matter—you will find occasion to manifest, in a thousand ways, your preference, by means of those tender but delicate and deferential attentions which love always prompts. "Let the heart speak." The heart you address will understand its language. Be earnest, sincere, self-loyal, and manly in this matter above all others. Let there be no nauseous flattery and no sickly sentimentality Leave the former to fops and the latter to beardless school-boys.

Though women do not "propose"—that is, as a general rule—they "make love" to the men none the less; and it is right. The divine attraction is mutual, and should have its proper expression on both sides. If you are attracted toward a man who seems to you an embodiment of all that is noble and manly, you do injustice both to him and yourself if you do not, in some way entirely consistent with maiden modesty, allow him to see and feel that he pleases you. But you do not need our instructions, and we will only hint, in conclusion, that forwardness, flirting, and a too obtrusive manifestation of preference are not agreeable to men of sense. As a man should be manly, so should a woman be womanly in her love.