HOW WOMEN PROPOSE

Sufficient reasons, these, why coyness should have gradually become a general attribute of femininity.  Nevertheless, it is an artificial product of imperfect social conditions, and in an ideal world women would not be called upon to romance about their feelings.  As a mark of modesty, coyness will always have a charm for men, and a woman devoid of it will never inspire genuine love.  But what I have elsewhere called “spring-chicken coyness”—­the disposition of European girls to hide shyly behind their mammas—­as chickens do under a hen at the sight of a hawk—­is losing its charm in face of the frank confidingness of American girls in the presence of gentlemen; and as for that phase of coyness which consists in concealing affection for a man, girls usually manage to circumvent it in a more or less refined manner.  Some girls who are coarse, or have little control of their feelings, propose bluntly to the men they want.  I myself have known several such cases, but the man always refused.  Others have a thousand subtle ways of betraying themselves without actually “giving themselves away.”  A very amusing story of how an ingenious maiden tries to bring a young man to bay has been told by Anthony Hope.  Dowden calls attention to the fact that it is Juliet “who proposes and urges on the sudden marriage.”  Romeo has only spoken of love; it is she who asks him, if his purpose be marriage, to send her word next day.  In Troilus and Cressida (III., 2), the heroine exclaims: 

     But, though I loved you well, I woo’d you not;
     And yet, good faith, I wished myself a man,
     Or that we women had men’s privilege
     Of speaking first.

In his Old Virginia (II., 127) John Fiske tells a funny story of how Parson Camm was wooed.  A young friend of his, who had been courting Miss Betsy Hansford of his parish, asked him to assist him with his eloquence.  The parson did so by citing to the girl texts from the Bible enjoining matrimony as a duty.  But she beat him at his own game, telling him to take his Bible when he got home and look at 2 Sam. xii. 7, which would explain her obduracy.  He did so, and found this:  “And Nathan said to David, thou art the man.” The parson took the hint—­and the girl.

V. HOPE AND DESPAIR—­MIXED MOODS

                    She never told her love;
     But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,
     Feed on her damask cheek:  she pined in thought;
     And, with a green and yellow melancholy,
     She sat, like Patience on a monument,
     Smiling at grief.  Was not this love indeed?

asks Viola in As You Like It.  It was love indeed; but only two phases of it are indicated in the lines quoted—­coyness ("She never told her love”) and the mixture of emotions ("smiling at grief"), which is another characteristic of love.  Romantic love is a pendulum swinging perpetually between hope and despair.  A single unkind word or sign of indifference may make a lover feel the agony of death, while a smile may raise him from the abyss of despair to heavenly heights of bliss.  As Goethe puts it: