How Women Propose.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1057, 2 June 1892, Page 4

How Women Propose.

(Spectator.) How do women propose ? That is thensecret, for in nine cases out of ten the man is still left honestly believing that he himself is the proposer, and not the seconder, of the motion that is carried. And yet the process is hardly a secret one, and it would require very little consideration and reflection on his part to convince him that he was, after all, only the consenting party to the transaction, and not its prime mover. The fact is, that oui modern manners, or want of manners, as some people contend, has put many facilities in woman’s wajq and has made the path of proposition much more easy to her. When the world was somewhat more formal and courtly than it is now, she had but little chance of forcing the reluctant or the hesitating speech from her lover’s mouth. A proposal was hardly a proposal unless it was made in a set form and upon the proposer’s knees. Now, though it may not be difficult to surprise or betray one’s companion into the compromising words or actions that to-day would be held sufficient to bind Mm, it is very difficult indeed to bring him to his knees and extort from him a formal speech. Thackeray amused himself onee by putting one of Madame d’Arblay’s perfumed and powdered love-scenes into the appropriate slanD- and movement of his day. It is clear that had Madame d’Arblay’s Lord Orville been at all uncertain of his feelings her heroine would have lost her suitor. Thackeray’s heroine would not have lost him, nor have suffered him to leave her presence save as an engaged man. Where speech is free and easy, and manners informal, the task of bringing a possible suitor to a clear explanation is not a very difficult one. So expert do some young wom£-l become at this art, that we are given tQ understand —they sometimes collect as many as a dozen proposals for the { r hand in the course of one London season—an amusement which is extremely unfair to their more serious sisters, in that it serves to throw discredit on their sex, and to make the men more wary m the case of those who are really in earnest. And here we may remark that this friyo- . lous young person is generally more sue- j cessful than the one whose intentions are honest and honourable. Still, the woman who is in earnest should, without the exercise of much diplomacy* be geneially able to bring the uncertain admirer to the brink of a certain proposal. Th 6 methods, of course, must vary with the manner of his uncertainty, for all fish are not taken by the same bait. For instance, there is the diffident lover, the lazy lover, the selfish lover, and the flighty lover, all these require a different treatment in order to bring them to pronounce the fatal words. The diffident lover is often the most troublesome, fer the words have almost to be put into his mouth before he ■will pronounce them; still, even in his case judicious prompting may bring out the avowal without any loss of pride to either party. The other three kinds do not suffer from lack of words, but from lack of steady purpose. To strengthen that purpose at the critical moment is a task to which few women are unequal. There are two emotions that are most akin to love, pity and anger ; and by playing upon the one which is most possessed by her suitor, a woman can often fan his smouldering love into the flame of speech. The selfish man, who fears to commit himself and studiously avoids an avowal which will cause him to lose irrevocably the comforts of his single life, as also a small

section of that flighty youth whose fickle fancy has a habit of wandering elsewhere at the very moment that it seems most fixed, can be best brought to book by the means of jealousy. When the opportunity for proposal occurs, ana such a man still hesitates or seems disposed to retreat, let him have sudden and unexpected cause for jealous anger, and his own selfishness wili prove an ally to the woman and a traitor to himself. The unselfish man, whom idleness or wavering purpose prevents from declaring his feelings, is best spurred to action by an access of pity, is terrible to a woman to be the first to declare herself, and for that reason she would probably prefer to deal with the selfish man, where her intention can be best concealed ; but even in the case of the other, though the intention of her appeal to his pity may be clear enough to herself, it need not necessarily be so clear to him. Nor is there any necessity tor words. A pair of swimming eyes, or a break in the voice, may be quite sufficient to stir the latent and silent love of the other into active expression. And why not { Why should a girl be condemned to watch her lover drift away while she remains silent and inactive ? There is something rather humorous in the conventional idea of courtship which would always have the man the pursuer and the woman the pursued. Possibly there are not many married women who in the face of that convention, would have the candour to say that they proposed to their husbands upon such-and-such occasion, or in such-and-such a way. And yet how many marriages are brought about by the woman, and not by the man I And it must be remembered that it on the one hand a woman is under the disadvantage of being forced to conceal her pursuit, on the other hand she is infinitely better equipped for the chase than the man is, and much more ready and resourceful. She thoroughly knows what she is about; whereas the man, even when he is persuaded that there is only one woman m the world for him, generally wavers as to the advisability of telling her so. She speedily convinces herself as to whether the game is worth winning or not; while he is never quite sure if it were not better to lose it. It is perhaps fortunate that the recognised idea of courtship is what n is ; were it otherwise, and the woman more free to pursue, there would be few bachelors left in the land.