any girl will do when the proposal mood is
on.

She discovers that they often do it simply to make a pleasing impression
upon a girl, with no thought of acceptance. Many an engagement is more
of a surprise to the man than to anybody else.

Because fiction comes very near to the heart of woman, she invariably
follows its dictates and shows great astonishment at every proposal. The
women who have been thus surprised are even more rare than days in
June.

[Sidenote: The False and the True]

When a man begins to compare a girl to a flower, a baby, or a kitten,
she knows what is coming next. She spends her mental energy in
distinguishing the false from the true--which is sufficient employment
for anyone. There is not enough cerebral tissue to waste much of it upon
unnecessary processes.

It is very hard to tell whether a man really means a proposal. It may
have been made under romantic circumstances, or because he was lonesome
for the other girl, or, in the case of an heiress, because he was tired
of work. Longing for the absent sweetheart will frequently cause a man
to become engaged to someone near by, because, though absence may make a
woman's heart grow fonder, it is presence that plays the mischief with a
man. No wise girl would accept a man who proposed by moonlight or just
after a meal. The dear things aren't themselves then.

Food, properly served, will attract a proposal at almost any time,
especially if it is known that the pleasing viands were of the girl's
own making. Cooking and love may seem at first glance to be widely
separated, but no woman can have one without the other. The brotherly
love for all creation, which emanates from the well-fed man, overflows,
concentrates, and naturally becomes a proposal.

[Sidenote: Written Proposals]

Other things being equal, a written proposal is apt to be genuine,
especially if it is signed with the full name and address of the writer,
and the date is not omitted. Long and painful experience in the courts
of his country has made man wary of direct evidence.

But a written proposal is extremely bad form. A girl never can be sure
that her lover did not attempt to fish it out of the letter-box after it
had slipped from his fingers. The author of _How to Be Happy, Though
Married_, once saw a miserable young man attempting to get his
convicting letter back by means of a forked stick. The sight must be
quite common everywhere. Proposing in haste and repenting at lei