om stop to consider whether we are ready to
hear you or not, nor whether the coast is clear, nor what the chances
are in your favour. You simply relieve your mind, and trust in your
own wonderful charms to accomplish the rest.

And we wish that when the proper time comes for you to speak your mind
you'd try to do it artistically. Of course you can't write it, unless
you are far away from her, for if you can manage an opportunity to
speak, a resort to the pen is cowardly. And don't mind our evading the
subject--we always do that on principle, but please don't be scared,
or at least don't show it, whatever you may feel. If there is one
thing a woman dislikes more than another it is a man who shows
cowardice at the crucial point in life.

Every man, except yourself, dear reader, is conceited. And one
particular sort of it makes us very, very weary. You are so blinded by
your own perfections, so sure that we are desperately in love with
you, that you sometimes give us little unspoken suggestions to that
effect, and then our disgust is beyond words.

Another cowardly thing you sometimes do, and that is to say that we
have spoiled your life--that we could have made you anything we
pleased--and that you are going straight to perdition. If one woman
is all that keeps you from going to ruin, you have secured a through
ticket anyway, and it's too late to save you. You don't want a woman
who might marry you only out of pity, and you are not going to die of
a broken heart. Men die of broken vanity, sometimes, but their hearts
are pretty tough, being made of healthy muscle.

You get married very much as you go down town in the morning. You run,
like all possessed, until you catch your car, and then you sit down
and read your newspaper. When you think your wife looks unusually
well, it would not hurt you in the least to tell her so, and the way
you leave her in the morning is going to settle her happiness for the
day, though she may be too proud to let you know that it makes any
difference. Women are quick to detect a sham, and they don't want you
to say anything that you don't feel, but you are pretty sure to feel
tenderly toward her sometimes, careless though you may be, and then is
the time to tell her so. You don't want to wait until she is dead, and
then buy a lily to put on her coffin. You'd better bring her the lily
some time when you've been cross and grumpy.

But don't imagine that a present of any kind ever atones for