e no doubt
that John Lyon went through the usual process which is called weighing a
thing in the mind. It is generally an amusing process, and it is
consoling to the conscience. The mind has little to do with it except to
furnish the platform on which the scales are set up. A humorist says that
he must have a great deal of mind, it takes him so long to make it up.
There is the same apparent deliberation where love is concerned.
Everything "contra" is carefully placed in one scale of the balance, and
it is always satisfactory and convincing to see how quickly it kicks the
beam when love is placed in the other scale. The lightest love in the
world, under a law as invariable as gravitation, is heavier than any
other known consideration. It is perhaps doing injustice to Mr. Lyon not
to dwell upon this struggle in his mind, and to say that in all honesty
he may not have known that the result of it was predetermined. But
interesting and commendable as are these processes of the mind, I confess
that I should have respected him less if the result had not been
predetermined. And this does not in any way take from him the merit of a
restless night and a tasteless breakfast.

Philosophizers on this topic say that a man ought always to be able to
tell by a woman's demeanor towards him whether she is favorably inclined,
and that he need run no risk. Little signs, the eyes alone, draw people
together, and make formal language superfluous. This theory is abundantly
sustained by examples, and we might rest on it if all women knew their
own minds, and if, on the other hand, they could always tell whether a
man was serious before he made a definite avowal. There is another
notion, fortunately not yet extinct, that the manliest thing a man can do
is to take his life in his hand, pay the woman he loves the highest
tribute in his power by offering her his heart and name, and giving her
the definite word that may be the touchstone to reveal to herself her own
feeling. In our conventional life women must move behind a mask in a
world of uncertainties. What wonder that many of them learn in their
defensive position to play a game, and sometimes experiment upon the
honest natures of their admirers! But even this does not absolve the
chivalrous man from the duty of frankness and explicitness. Life seems
ideal in that far country where the handsome youth stops his carriage at
the gate of the vineyard, and says to the laughing girl carrying a baske