e emoluments of a promise to marry are as sweet to the donatress as
undoubtedly they are to the accepter.--And why not, pray? Nevertheless,

A certain practical sobriety supervenes upon subsequent affairs of the
heart. For

The recurrence of love is apt to spoil its romance. And yet--and yet--

It is a question which woman after woman has put herself, in vain,
whether 't would have been wiser to have accepted and retained the
romantic love of unthinking youth, or to have waited for the more sober
affection of the years of discretion.

Perhaps a girl hardly knows all that is meant by that thing called "love"
or what is entailed upon her by that thing called an "engagement". She
has played with love so much, that when a real and serious love is
offered her, she still thinks it the toy that amused her. But

Soon enough does the man, if he is earnest--and a man never proposes
unless he is in earnest--enlighten the girl of his choice: for

To a man, love never is a toy--though mere lust may be:

Men never play with love, as do girls: they play with lust,--as they
play with bats and balls and fire-arms;

When men fall in love, they fall in love with a vengeance; and

The seriousness with which the man falls in love startles the girl.

The man demands so much; is so exacting' so peremptory; so unyielding; so
frightfully selfish; so terribly jealous of the slightest look or smile
or gesture bestowed upon any other than he, that the girl . . . . . .
well, the girl probably begins to think, either that the man is an
unreasonable brute, or that her girlish notions of love were somewhat
astray. Then one or two things happens: either the man goes off in a
huff; or the girl mends her ways.

* * *

The recurrence of a love is a great shock to love. Love thinks itself a
think unique, unalterable, supreme; a thing not made out of the flux and
change of earthly affairs, but heaven-born and descended from the skies;
that it should go and come seems to destroy the fundamental conception of
love.

* * *

The affianced man thinks he has won him the sweetest, the most sacrosanct
thing that ever trode God's earth outside of Eden: a bundle of blisses, a
compact little mass of exquisite mysteries, whose every tint and curve
and motion are to him sources of wonderment and delight; he is at once
humbled and exalted; he thanks high Heaven for the gift; for that comport
himself worthy of such gift; for that this wondrous and my