eneral masculine attitude indicates widespread belief in the
promise, "Ask, and ye shall receive." A man will tell his best friend
that he doesn't know whether to marry a certain girl. If she hears of
his indecision there is trouble ahead, if he finally decides in the
affirmative, and it is quite possible that he may not marry her.

After the door of a woman's heart has once swung on its silent hinges, a
man thinks he can prop it open with a brick and go away and leave it. A
storm is apt to displace the brick, however--and there is a heavy spring
on the door. Woe to the masculine finger that is in the way!

A man often hesitates between two young women and asks his friends which
he shall marry. Custom has permitted the courtship of both and neither
has the right to feel aggrieved, because it is exceedingly bad form for
a girl to love a man before he has asked her to.

Now and then a third girl is a man's confidante at this trying period.
Nothing so bores a person as to be a man's "guide, philosopher and
friend" in his perplexities with other girls. To one distinct class of
women men tell their troubles and the other class sees that they have
plenty to tell. It is better to be in the second category than in the
first.

Sooner or later, the confidante explains the whole affair to the
subjects of the confidence and strange, new kinds of trouble immediately
come to the rash man. It is a common failing to expect another person to
keep a secret which we have just proved is beyond our own capability.

[Sidenote: The Adamantine Fortress]

When a man has once deeply wounded a woman's pride, he may just as well
give up his hope of winning her. At that barrier, the little blind god
may plead in vain. Love's face may be sad, his big, sightless eyes soft
with tears, and his helpless hands outstretched in pleading and prayer,
but that stern sentinel will never yield. Wounded love is easily
forgiven, wounded belief sometimes forgotten, but wounded pride--never.
It is the adamantine fortress. There is only one path which leads to the
house of forgiveness--that of understanding, and it is impassable if
woman's pride has come between.

A girl never knows whether a courtship is in progress or not, unless a
man tells her. He may be interested and amused, but not in love. It is
only in the comic papers that a stern parent waits upon the continuous
caller and demands to know his "intentions," so a girl must, perforce,
be her own guide