ng else;

Beauty--Wealth--Culture--Grace--Wit--Intellect--Sprightliness--
Vivacity--Humor--these are much but they are simply naught, and less
than naught, when just this simple, single, yet insatiable thing called
Man wants to live amicably, affectionately, martially, with that simple,
single, but incomprehensible thing called Woman.

Character--Conduct--rule the world, the Matrimonial equally with the
Municipal.

* * *

XIV. On this Human Heart

"The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can
know it?"
--Holy Writ

It does not take much to make two hearts beat faster than one.

* * *

The heart can deceive itself when it cannot deceive another.--Which
will be cold comfort to some lovers, though it may console others.

* * *

To admit a sacred visitant into the inner recesses of the human heart,
those recesses must be neat indeed. Remember, too, that you can

Never expect an angel to act as a charwoman; the sweeping must be done by
the owner. Lastly,

Unless each heart is permitted access to the other, their union is
fictitious, perhaps perilous.--Explain these tropes who can.

* * *

No man can tell to whom a woman's heart belongs; not even the man who
calls the woman "his". And

Let no man imagine that when he has won him a woman, he has won him a
woman's heart. Since,

Sometimes a woman will give her heart to one man and her troth to
another. Besides,

Many a heart is hard to read--especially if it is a palimpsest. Indeed,
many are illegible to their owners. Nevertheless,
That the woman should not know her own heart (as so often happens)
terrifies the woman as much as it exasperates the man. Yet,

That must be a curious love that causes the heart to hesitate. And yet,

Many a man has debated for months whether to propose or not; and
sometimes a woman will accept on a Friday the man that she refused
point-blank of a Tuesday. But perhaps,

Where the heart hesitates, it is not so much a case of love as a case of
convenience. For,

An overwhelming love leaves the heart of either doubt or debate. But
alas,

The human heart seems to be an anatomical engine of such intricate and
delicate mechanism that its workings are uncontrollable even by its
owner.

Is a constant heart as hard a thing to manufacture in the world of life
as is an immobile thing in the world of matter? And matter, so they say,
is immobile only at absolute zero--when bereft of