And yet I think the subject might be mastered in four lessons with a good teacher, so that a man of ordinary capacity could make good way for himself. This is by no means a new theory; it is the foundation of many a comedy of errors, this of Love with a Tutor. But go not to school of a maid, for she will fool you to the top of your bent, nor to a married woman either, but to a man like my younger brother here, no Lothario, but one who can keep two steps ahead of any affair he enters.
If a man be agile and daring, with sufficient ardour to assume the offensive, having an audacious tongue and a wary eye with a fine sense of congruity and tact, withal, if he can make love with a laugh and a rhyme, as Cyrano fought, then 'tis a different matter, and he needs no pilot to take his sweetheart over the bar and into the port. He must be bold, but not too bold, carry a big spread of canvas, luff, reef and tack her with no shuffling, cast the lead on the run, keeping in soundings, and never lose headway when she comes about into a new mood. He must bear a sensitive hand at the tiller, keep her close up to the wind with no tremble in the leach of the sail, and gain advantage from every tide and cross-current. Better dash against the reef than run high and dry upon the shoal!
It is a pity, is it not, to dissect love in such a fashion? I should have my hero quite at the mercy of the gale of passion, and be swept forward, he knows not how and cares not where; he should lose his wits and take a mad delight in the fury of the storm, seeing no spot upon his horizon. And yet I dare not be warmer, for sometime I may decide to fall in love myself, and I would not have my chances wrecked by any genuine confession of faith, set in type, to which She might refer, with a beautiful taunt. No! it is better to phrase and verbalize; the subject is too dear, and near done to its death already. I would but suggest the cross-references, and, under a mien of the most atrocious conceit, throw my female readers off their guard, leaving my fellow men to read between the lines.
For I hear that men do fall in love with women, and women fall in love with loving. So be it. I have known girls, too, to take both vanilla and strawberry in their soda-water, which proves them to be not altogether simple in their tastes. The best of them will talk volubly upon love in the abstract, while the average man (to which category I hope I have the honour of not belonging) keeps his mouth closed on the matter, with his tongue in his cheek, and his ideas, if he have any, well hidden behind his words.
So, if I avail myself of the feminine franchise, it must be done cautiously, for many are the difficulties of the young man who would love a girl today, and only a precious few of the old school of beaux would understand the twentieth century's subtleties, even if all could be explained. Many are the misfortunes in the Lover's Litany, from which the modern maiden sighs, "Good Lord, deliver us!" A man must take her in earnest, but he must by no means take himself too seriously; it is proper to treat your passion cavalierly--indeed, he jests at scars who has felt the most amorous darts, nowadays--but he must never make himself or her ridiculous. He may take whimsical amusement in his own conquest, but must beware "the little broken laugh that spoils a kiss." And above all, mind you the mise-en-scène,--the stage must be set so and so; the sun must not see what the moon sees. Sometimes you must have your heart in your mouth, and sometimes on your sleeve, and oftener she must have it herself. 'Tis very perplexing!
The best a man can do, in this practical age, is to mean business, while he is about it, and hold over as much for the next day as will not interfere with his commerce elsewhere. The woman may take her romance to bed, or keep it warm in the oven against his return, but he must be out and down-town to earn his living as well as his loving, amongst dollars and pounds and cent per cent, while she enjoys the traffic in pure abstractions. And both must hide and manage as if it were a sin, lest Mrs. Grundy undo them; they must snatch their kisses, as it were, on horseback. Such are the victims of supercivilization!
There was a time, the poets tell, when it was not so difficult, and a man might wear a lady's scarf on his sleeve, and be proud of the badge. It takes much more complicated machinery than that simple love to make the world go round, nowadays--perhaps because it goes so much faster. There was a time when an elopement might be picturesque and not necessarily followed by divorce; but where now shall I find the hard-hearted parent who shall justify the adventure? The modern mother is too easy. She is like Mrs. Brown in the Bab Ballads--"a foolish, weak but amiable old thing." She reposes a trust in her daughter that does more credit to her affection than to her knowledge of human nature.
But whoa! I believe I have forgotten my manners! I have insulted my fellows, guyed the girls, and here I am on the high road to disqualifying myself with the more respectable generation. So I shall cease, but I will not apologize, for though I came to scoff, I shall not remain to prey. I believe I am not more than half wrong after all. There is love, and there is loving, and if you have followed me, you know which is which. It was Rosalind who said, "Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps!" How she would smile and sneer at this verbiage! She knew a lover from a philanderer, she had her opinion of the laggard and the butterfly rover, and she would no doubt say: "Cupid hath clapped him on the shoulder, but I'll warrant him heart-whole!"
Where is Bohemia?
The name "Bohemian" was first used to describe the gypsies of that nationality who appeared in France in the thirteenth century, but to us the term has come to carry with it a wider significance than any dependent upon that little kingdom in the north of Austria, and only a few characteristic traits of those wandering vagabonds survive in those who bear, whether in reproach or praise, the appellation "Bohemian."