Part 18 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration]
”Courts.h.i.+p,” according to Sterne, ”consists in a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood.”
In this little quotation lies the spirit and the letter of all etiquette regarding courts.h.i.+p. The pa.s.sion of love generally appearing to everyone save the man who feels it, so entirely disproportionate to the value of the object, so impossible to be entered into by any outside individual, that any strong expressions of it appear ridiculous to a third person. For this reason it is that all extravagance of feeling should be carefully repressed as an offense against good breeding.
Man was made for woman, and woman equally for man. How shall they treat each other? How shall they come to understand their mutual relations and duties? It is lofty work to write upon this subject what ought to be written. Mistakes, fatal blunders, hearts and lives wrecked, homes turned into bear-gardens, tears, miseries, blasted hopes, awful tragedies--can you name the one most prolific cause of all these?
If our young people were taught what they ought to know--if it were told them from infancy up--if it were drilled into them and they were made to understand what now is all a mystery to them--a dark, vague, unriddled mystery--hearts would be happier, homes would be brighter, lives would be worth living and the world would be better.
[Ill.u.s.tration:
”GOOD NIGHT! GOOD NIGHT! PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW, THAT I SHALL SAY GOOD NIGHT TILL IT BE MORROW.”]
[Ill.u.s.tration: A POLITE ESCORT.]
This is now the matter--matter grave and serious enough--which we have in hand. There are gems of wisdom founded on health, morality, happiness, which should be put within reach of every household in our whole broad land. It is a most important, yet neglected subject.
People are squeamish, cursed with mock modesty, ashamed to speak with their lips what their Creator spoke through their own minds and bodies when he formed them. It is time such nonsense--nonsense shall we say?--rather say it is time such fatal folly were withered and cursed by the sober common sense and moral duty of universal society.
Courts.h.i.+p! Its theme, how delightful! Its memories and a.s.sociations, how charming! Its luxuries the most luxurious proffered to mortals!
Its results how far reaching, and momentous! No mere lover's fleeting bauble, but life's very greatest work! None are equally portentous, for good and evil.
Errors of Love-Making.
G.o.d's provisions for man's happiness are boundless and endless. How great are the pleasures of sight, motion, breathing! How much greater those of mind! Yet a right love surpa.s.ses them all; and can render us all happier than our utmost imaginations can depict; and a wrong more miserable.
Right love-making is more important than right selection; because it affects conjugal life for the most. Men and women need knowledge concerning it more than touching anything else. Their fatal errors show their almost universal ignorance concerning it. That most married discords originate in wrong love-making instead of selection, is proved by love usually declining; while adaptation remains the same.
Right courts.h.i.+p will harmonize natural discordants, much more concordants, still more those already in love; which only some serious causes can rupture. The whole power of this love element is enlisted in its perpetuity, as are all the self-interests of both. As nature's health provisions are so perfect that only its great and long-continued outrage can break it; so her conjugal are so numerous and perfect that but for outrageous violation of her love laws all who once begin can and will grow more and more affectionate and happy every day.
Any man who can begin to elicit any woman's love, can perfectly infatuate her more and more, solely by courting her right; and all women who once start a man's love--no very difficult achievement--can get out of him, and do with him, anything possible she pleases. The charming and fascinating power of serpents over birds is as nothing compared with that a woman can wield over a man, and he over her.
Ladies, recall your love hey-day. You had your lover perfectly spell-bound. He literally knew not what he did or would do. With what alacrity he sprang to indulge your every wish, at whatever cost, and do exactly as you desired! If you had only courted him just right, he would have continued to grow still more so till now. This is equally true of a man's power over every woman who once begins to love him.
What would you give to again wield that same bewitching wand?
How to Carry on Courts.h.i.+p.
Intuition, our own selfhood, is nature's highest teacher, and infallible; and tells all, by her ”still, small voice within,” whether and just wherein they are making love right or wrong. Every false step forewarns all against itself; and great is their fall who stumble.
Courts.h.i.+p has its own inherent consciousness, which must be kept inviolate.
Then throw yourself, O courting youth, upon your own interior sense of propriety and right, as to both the beginning and conducting of courts.h.i.+p, after learning all you can from these pages, and have no fears as to results, but quietly bide them, in the most perfect a.s.surance of their happy eventuality!
”What can I do or omit to advance my suit? prevent dismissal? make my very best impression? guarantee acceptance? touch my idol's heart?
court just right?” This is what all true courters say.
Cultivate and manifest whatever qualities you would awaken. You inspire in the one you court the precise feeling and traits you yourself experience. This law effects this result. Every faculty in either awakens itself in the other. This is just as sure as gravity itself. Hence your success must come from _within_, depends upon yourself, not the one courted.