Hints for Lovers Part 26

Friendship is largely a masculine sentiment;--except among schoolgirls.

The friendship that exists between a man and a woman should be called by another name. It cannot be wholly Platonic (3); it need not be wholly Dantesque. Yet women generally strive to make it the one; and men often try to make it the other. And yet again,

How many women there be, would, if they could, trans.m.u.te love into friendship! That is to say,

Women regard a man's friendship as a delicate flattery to themselves; yet they instinctively know, though they try hard to forget, that a man's friendship for a woman is extremely likely to transcend the bounds of friendship.

If only friendship would keep within bounds! How many women deceive themselves into thinking that were devoutly to be wished! Yet probably, as a matter of fact,

The very woman who avers she regrets that your friendship is not mere Platonic, would resent the Platonism did it exist. Possibly not every woman will understand this. a.s.suredly no woman will admit it. And yet,

It is impossible to conjecture in what an exchange of confidences may terminate: it may be a kiss, or it may be a quarrel. But

Confidences are evoked rather by friendship than by love:

A woman will tell a man friend what she will not tell a lover.

Few lovers will understand this, fewer still will believe it. Yet it is true, and the explication of its truth would be long and complex. This much may be said:

Love idealizes; friendship does not. At the same time,

Love probes the innermost recesses of the womanly nature; and, until the woman is wholly won,

The woman resents the inspection of love. She knows that,

To stimulate love, the woman must conceal, not reveal;

To stimulate love, the woman must conceal, not reveal. Furthermore,

Never was there a man who could be at once friend and lover.

Which is only one more proof that

Never will the s.e.xes understand each other.

(3) I use the word in its purely conventional sense.

The male was ever the more susceptible s.e.x. And for this reason,

Next to sympathy, flattery is perhaps woman's most effective weapon. And

No masculine shield there is which woman's flattery will not pierce. For

Man--man, alert in the hunt, keen in business, circ.u.mspect with his fellows, terrible in war, man is pristine and simple in matters emotional, and an easy prey to emotional wiles. In the long journey of evolution from Amoeba to Man,

The masculine s.e.x has developed muscle and mind;

The feminine s.e.x developed and perfected the emotions. Accordingly,

Man's emotions are the primitive weapons of a savage;

Woman's emotions are arms of precision. Yet

Sometimes woman deplores the unequal contest--perhaps deplores her too-easy victory. Since,

In domestic life, the weapons are laid aside, the pair are then --presumably--unarmed and defenseless. For, though,

A mat has to be won by weapons,

Marriage should be a treaty of peace: thenceforth the combatants are allies.

Many a man, when ensnared, has been amazed at the size of the meshes.

Only a woman knows by what open methods floundering men are captured.

He who by reasoning thinks to find out woman, must either be a philosopher or a fool--probably both.

Less of a philosopher and more of a fool is he who thinks to extract from woman her reasons for her actions. The woman who can give reasons for an action is yet to be born. The reason is plain:

Women act upon intuition, not upon reason. And

He who could make a logical sorites out of feminine intuitions could make a philosophical system out of nautical almanacs. And yet, probably,

Could we only determine her orbit, a woman's intuitions are as exact as the paths of the planets. Unfortunately,

Such are the perturbations to which a woman's...o...b..t is exposed that no masculine astronomy can construct its ephemeris. Alack, How many anxious star-gazers are there among men! The orbit of the ordinary male man it is not as difficult for a woman to compute, inasmuch as

The ordinary male man revolves unusually about two foci: his Appet.i.tes; and his Ambitions.--Which is the major and which the minor ... .

However,

You may trust women to know when he is in peri-and when in aphelion.

Many a spouse has no difficulty in explaining away to her lord actions about the character of which even his initiate friends have no shadow of doubt. For

A woman's perception is preternatural. But no; it is natural enough, since

From the days of the first woman to the days of the New one, love, its wiles and its whims, has been the serious business of woman.

Women know much better than men that stolen bread is sweetest. In consequence,

Men steal almost everything they get from women.--At least they think they do. Which is the same thing.