As to women, men are apt to think, and fall into innumerable blunders by so thinking, that because they know one woman they know all; when, in fact, each woman is as much of a study as if he had never seen one of the sex. Bulwer doubts whether man ever thoroughly understood woman. Truly, how should he? when woman does not understand herself; nor can tell why she lives on patiently, hopefully, year after year, with a brute, whose favorite pastime consists in attempts to break her neck every time things go wrong with him, indoors or out. That the better educated husband murders with sharp words instead of sharp blows, makes it none the less murder. The only difference is in the duration of the misery, one being as deadly as the other. Who cares to understand how a woman with bruised heart and flesh can throw over both the charitable mantle that, "he wasn't himself;" and beg off the offender from merited punishment, public or private. Let us rather seek to understand how man, who should be so strong, should fall so immeasurably below his "weaker" self, in the difficult lesson of self-control and forgiveness of injuries.
Some men profess to dislike coquetry; if so, why do they encourage it? Why do they often leave a sensible, well-informed woman to play "wall-flower," while they talk nonsense to some brainless doll, who can only ogle, sigh and simper? It appears to us that men are to blame for most of the faults of women. We always regret to hear a man who has matrimonial views say of a girl, she don't know much, but she is amiable, has a pretty face, and after all, if I need society, it is easy enough to find it elsewhere. A man has no right to marry a woman with intentions so widely diverse from those he professes to entertain, when he vows to be a husband; he is responsibly blameworthy for the consequences that result from such an act; besides, it is a very mistaken notion some men seem to have, that a fool is easily managed; there is no description of animal so difficult to govern; what they lack in brains they are sure to make up in obstinacy, or a low kind of cunning. Then a pretty face cannot last forever, and the old age of a brainless beauty, we shudder to contemplate, even at a distance. Women aim to be what men oftenest like to see them; you may, therefore, easily gauge the masculine standard by the majority of women one daily meets. Heaven pity the exceptions! they must find their mates in another world than this.
One of the meanest things a young man can do, and it is not at all of uncommon occurrence, is to monopolize the time, and attention, of a young girl for a year, or more, without any definite object, and to the exclusion of other gentlemen, who, supposing him to have matrimonial intentions, absent themselves from her society. This selfish "dog-in-the-manger" way of proceeding should be discountenanced and forbidden, by all parents and guardians.
It prevents the reception of eligible offers of marriage, and fastens upon the young lady, when the acquaintance is finally dissolved, the unenviable and unmerited appellation of "flirt." Young man, let all your dealings with women, be frank, honest and noble. That many whose education and position in life are culpably criminal on these points, is no excuse for your short-comings. It adds a blacker dye to your meanness, that woman is often wronged through her holiest feelings. One rule is always safe: Treat every woman you meet, as you would wish another man to treat your innocent, confiding sister.
After all, how any young fellow can have the face to walk into your family, and deliberately ask for one of your daughters, astonishes me. That it is done every day, does not lessen my amazement at the sublime impudence of the thing. There you have been, sixteen, or seventeen, or eighteen years of her life, combing her hair, and washing her face for——him. It is lucky the thought never strikes you while you are doing it, that this is to be the end of it all. What if you were married yourself? that is no reason why she should be bewitched away into a separate establishment, just as you begin to lean upon her, and be proud of her; or, at least, it stands to reason, that after you have worried her through the measles, and chicken-pox, and scarlet-fever, and whooping-cough, and had her properly baptized and vaccinated, this young man might give you a short breathing-spell before she goes.
He seems to be of a different opinion; he not only insists upon taking her, but upon taking her immediately. He talks well about it—very well; you have no objection to him, not the least in the world except that. When the world is full of girls, why couldn't he have fixed his eye on the daughter of somebody else? There are some parents who are glad to be rid of their daughters. Blue eyes are as plenty as blueberries; why need it be this particular pair? Isn't she happy enough as she is? Don't she have meat and bread and clothes enough, to say nothing of love? What is the use of leaving a certainty for an uncertainty, when that certainty is a mother, and you can never have but one? You put all these questions to her, and she has the sauciness to ask, if that is the way you reasoned, when her father came for you. You disdain to answer, of course; it is a mean dodging of the question. But she gets round you for all that, and so does he too, though you try your best not to like him; and with a—"well, if I must, I must," you just order her wedding-clothes, muttering to yourself the while,—"dear—dear—what sort of a fist will that child make at the head of a house? how will she ever know what to do in this, that, or the other emergency"—she who is calling on "mother" fifty times a day to settle every trifling question? What folly for her to set up house for herself! How many mothers have had these foreboding thoughts over a daughter's wedding-clothes; and yet that daughter has met life, and its unexpected reverses, with a heroism and courage as undaunted as if every girlish tear had not been kissed away by lips, that alas! may be dust, when this baptism of womanhood comes upon her.