ill more rarely than
men, "make fools of themselves" on this score; and in spite of all
poets assert to the contrary, they are eminently reasonable, and their
affections bear transplanting.

In other respects we quite ignore the inflation of old love terms.
"Our fate," "our destiny," etc., resolve themselves into the simplest
and most natural of events; a chat on a rainy afternoon, a walk home
in the moonlight, mere contiguity for a season, are the agents which
often decide our love affairs. And yet, below all this, lies that
inexplicable something which seems to place this bit of our lives
beyond our wisest thoughts. We can't fall in love to order, and all
our reasoning on the subject resolves itself into a conviction that
under certain inexplicable conditions, "it is possible for anybody to
fall in love with anybody else."

Perhaps this is a part of what Artemus Ward calls the "cussedness" of
things in general; but at any rate we must admit that if "like
attracts like," it attracts unlike too. The scholar marries the
foolish beauty; the beauty marries an ugly man, and admires him.
Poverty intensifies itself by marrying poverty; plenty grows plethoric
by marrying wealth. But how far love is to blame for these strange
attractions, who can tell? Probably a great deal that passes for love
is only reflected self-love, the passion to acquire what is generally
admired or desired. Thus beautiful women are often married as the most
decorous way of gratifying male vanity. A pleasant anecdote, as the
Scotch say, _anent_ this view, is told of the Duc de Guise, who after
a long courtship prevailed on a celebrated beauty to grant him her
hand. The lady observing him very restless, asked what ailed him.
"Ah, madame," answered the lover, "I ought to have been off long ago
to communicate my good fortune to all my friends."

But the motives and influences that go to make up so highly complex an
emotion as love are beyond even indication, though the subject has
been a tempting one to most philosophical writers. Even Comte descends
from the positive and unconditional to deify the charmingly erratic
feminine principle; Michelet, after forty volumes of history, rests
and restores himself by penning a book on love; the pale, religious
Pascal, terrified at the vastness of his own questions, comforts
himself by an analysis of the same passion; and Herbert Spencer has
gone _con amore_ into the same subject. But love laughs at philosophy,
a