Girl.  “Oh, yes!  Lots of people!”

Man. (After reading half a page.) “I don’t think this is so very interesting, do you?”

GIRL.  “No, it isn’t.  It doesn’t carry out the promise of its beginning.”

MAN. (Closes magazine and wanders aimlessly toward the mirror in the mantel.)

MAN.  “Which way do you like my hair; this way, or parted in the middle?”

GIRL.  “I don’t know—­this way, I guess.  I’ve never seen it parted in the middle.”

MAN. (Taking out pocket comb and rapidly parting his hair in the middle.) “There!  Which way do you like it?”

GIRL. (Judicially.) “I don’t know.  It’s really a very hard question to decide.”

MAN. (Reminiscently.) “I’ve gone off my looks a good deal lately.  I used to be a lot better looking than I am now.”

GIRL. (Softly.) “I’m glad I didn’t know you then.”

MAN. (In apparent astonishment.) “Why?”

GIRL.  “Because I might not have been heart whole, as I am now.”

(Long silence.)

MAN. (With sudden enthusiasm.) “I’ll tell you, though, I really do look well in evening dress.”

GIRL.  “I haven’t a doubt of it, even though I’ve never seen you wear it.”

MAN. (After brief meditation.) “Let’s go and hear Melba next week, will you?  I meant to ask you when I first came in, but we got to reading.”

GIRL.  “I shall be charmed.”

Next day, GIRL gets a box of chocolates and a dozen American Beauties—­in February at that.

[Sidenote:  Dimples and Dress Clothes]

Tell a man he has a dimple and he will say “where?” in pleased surprise, meanwhile putting his finger straight into it.  He has studied that dimple in the mirror too many times to be unmindful of its geography.

Let the woman dearest to a man say, tenderly:  “You were so handsome to-night, dear—­I was proud of you.”  See his face light up with noble, unselfish joy, because he has given such pleasure to others!

All the married men at evening receptions have gone because they “look so well in evening dress,” and because “so few men can wear dress clothes really well.”  In truth, it does require distinction and grace of bearing, if a man would not be mistaken for a waiter.

Man’s conceit is not love of himself but of his fellow-men.  The man who is in love with himself need not fear that any woman will ever become a serious rival.  Not unfrequently, when a man asks a woman to marry him, he means that he wants her to help him love himself, and if, blinded by her own feeling, she takes him for her captain, her pleasure craft becomes a pirate ship, the colours change to a black flag with a sinister sign, and her inevitable destiny is the coral reef.

[Sidenote:  Palmistry]

Palmistry does very well for a beginning if a man is inclined to be shy.  It leads by gentle and almost imperceptible degrees to that most interesting of all subjects, himself, and to that tactful comment, dearest of all to the masculine heart; “You are not like other men!”