Stop before disclaiming all love for music, or suggesting the banjo or bagpipe as your favorite instrument, should she dote on the opera, sing divinely and be a piano-pounder of no mean ability in her own person.
Stop before depreciating anything the dear creature does, or tries to do. Eagerly demand another song, even if the screech of her first has ruined your tympanum, call her verses divine, if they are no better than Tennyson’s latest senility, swear that her favorite scent is yours, even if ’tis musk or garlic, and build, build as with a wand, the shining edifice of love!
Stop right off at the idea that there may be anything hypocritical or insincere advised in the foregoing paragraph. If really in love, you will religiously believe everything you tell her, and more too.
Stop, first, however, and study the character of your enchantress. All women are no more to be wooed alike than are all fish to be tempted with the same kind of bait.
Stop before addressing a brainy, well-read penetrative divinity as you would a laughing elf, a careless, careless fay, a butterfly of mirth and joy. An Hypatia is not a Hebe, and reflect! Would you tempt an eagle with a moth-light, or a striped-bass with an eel-bob?
Stop, if she be intellectual, and study up to an equality with her tastes, should you be her inferior. Then scientific discussions, with poetry as a side-dish, may gradually lead up to the delicious desideratum of two hearts that beat as one.
Stop, however, at the error of preferring her intellectual to her physical charms. She is a lovely liar if she pretends to a desire for such preference, and your sin will be unpardonable, should you take her at her word.
Stop, in any case, before praising another woman’s good-looks in the adored one’s presence. In fact, you can afford her no pleasanter flattery than by a systematic depreciation of a prettier woman’s charms.
Stop, if she be a Hebe, we will say, and plunge recklessly amid her paucity of ideas. Flounder in folly, palpitate with persiflage, at her giggling beck; and here is ample opportunity for the silent eloquence of the nosegay, the oyster, or the iced refreshment, not less than for the princely prodigality of the opera, the midnight coupe and the church fair lottery.
Stop short of any display of fear in her presence, even if you are timorous to the core. Let her do the shrieking at the onset of a mouse, but stand you as the rugged rock, the beaten anvil, or the rooted oak! You might even trample out a croton-bug occasionally, with a cold, feelingless laugh. Imperturbability in peril was never yet a masculine fault in gentle woman’s eyes.