ify 'em with wonderful relations of events that he had either come
across personally or in large print. I think he must have got his
idea of subjugation from one of Shakespeare's shows I see once called
'Othello.' There is a coloured man in it who acquires a duke's
daughter by disbursing to her a mixture of the talk turned out by
Rider Haggard, Lew Dockstader, and Dr. Parkhurst [11]. But that style
of courting don't work well off the stage.

[FOOTNOTE 11: Henry Rider Haggard (1856-1925) wrote novels set
in exotic locations. His best known work is _King
Solomon's Mines_ (1885).
Lew Dockstader had one of the last major travelling
minstrel companies and was its principal comedian.
Dr. Charles Henry Parkhurst (1842-1933), pastor of
New York's Madison Square Presbyterian Church from
1880 to 1919, was noted for his denunciations of
vice and governmental corruption. He was instrumental
in the campaign against Tammany Hall.]

"Now, I give you my own recipe for inveigling a woman into that state
of affairs when she can be referred to as '_nee_ Jones.' Learn how to
pick up her hand and hold it, and she's yours. It ain't so easy. Some
men grab at it so much like they was going to set a dislocation of
the shoulder that you can smell the arnica and hear 'em tearing off
bandages. Some take it up like a hot horseshoe, and hold it off at
arm's length like a druggist pouring tincture of asafoetida in a
bottle. And most of 'em catch hold of it and drag it right out before
the lady's eyes like a boy finding a baseball in the grass, without
giving her a chance to forget that the hand is growing on the end of
her arm. Them ways are all wrong.

"I'll tell you the right way. Did you ever see a man sneak out in the
back yard and pick up a rock to throw at a tomcat that was sitting on
a fence looking at him? He pretends he hasn't got a thing in his hand,
and that the cat don't see him, and that he don't see the cat. That's
the idea. Never drag her hand out where she'll have to take notice of
it. Don't let her know that you think she knows you have the least
idea she is aware you are holding her hand. That was my rule of
tactics; and as far as Paisley's serenade about hostilities and
misadventure went, he might as well have been reading to her a
time-table of the Sunday