The Spinster Book

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The Spinster Book

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Spinster Book, by Myrtle Reed This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Spinster Book
Author: Myrtle Reed
Release Date: March 29, 2006 [EBook #18071]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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The Spinster Book
By Myrtle Reed
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS New York and London The Knickerbocker Press
1907
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COPYRIGHT, 1901 BY MYRTLE REED
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Set up and electrotyped, September, 1901
Reprinted, November, 1901; April, 1902; August, 1902; April, 1903; July, 1903; September, 1903; June, 1904; October, 1904; June, 1905; September, 1905; March, 1906; September, 1906; November, 1906; July, 1907.
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
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BY MYRTLE REED.
LOVE LETTERS OF A MUSICIAN. LATER LOVE LETTERS OF A MUSICIAN. THE SPINSTER BOOK. LAVENDER AND OLD LACE. PICKABACK SONGS. THE SHADOW OF VICTORY. THE MASTER'S VIOLIN. THE BOOK OF CLEVER BEASTS. AT THE SIGN OF THE JACK-O'-LANTERN. A SPINNER IN THE SUN. LOVE AFFAIRS OF LITERARY MEN.
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Contents
PAGE
Notes on Men 3 Concerning Women 25 The Philosophy of Love 49 The Lost Art of Courtship 71 The Natural History of Proposals 93 Love Letters: Old and New 115 An Inquiry into Marriage 137 The Physiology of Vanity 161 Widowers and Widows 183 The Consolations of Spinsterhood 205

Notes on Men
[Illustration]

Notes on Men
[Sidenote: "The Proper Study"]
If "the proper study of mankind is man," it is also the chief delight of woman. It is not surprising that men are conceited, since the thought of the entire population is centred upon them.
Women are wont to consider man in general as a simple creation. It is not until the individual comes into the field of the feminine telescope, and his peculiarities are thrown into high relief, that he is seen and judged at his true value.
When a girl once turns her attention from the species to the individual, her parlour becomes a sort of psychological laboratory in which she conducts various experiments; not, however, without the loss of friends. For men are impatient of the spirit of inquiry in woman.
[Sidenote: The Phenomena of Affection]
How shall a girl acquire her knowledge of the phenomena of affection, if men are not willing to be questioned upon the subject? What is more natural than to seek wisdom from the man a girl has just refused to marry? Why should she not ask if he has ever loved before, how long he has loved her, if he were not surprised when he found it out, and how he feels in her presence?
Yet a sensitive spinster is repeatedly astonished at finding her lover transformed into a fiend, without other provocation than this. He accuses her of being "a heartless coquette," of having "led him on,"--whatever that may mean,--and he does not care to have her for his sister, or even for his friend.
[Sidenote: Original Research]
Occasionally a charitable man will open his heart for the benefit of the patient student. If he is of a scientific turn of mind, with a fondness for original research, he may even take a melancholy pleasure in the analysis.
Thus she learns that he thought he had loved, until he cared for her, but in the light of the new passion he sees clearly that the others were mere, idle flirtations. To her surprise, she also discovers that he has loved her a long time but has never dared to speak of it before, and that this feeling, compared with the others, is as wine unto water. In her presence he is uplifted, exalted, and often afraid, for very love of her.
Next to a proposal, the most interesting thing in the world to a woman is this kind of analysis. If a man is clever at it, he may change a decided refusal to a timid promise to "think about it." The man who hesitates may be lost, but the woman who hesitates is surely won.
In the beginning, the student is often perplexed by the magnitude of the task which lies before her. Later, she comes to know that men, like cats, need only to be stroked in the right direction. The problem thus becomes a question of direction, which is seldom as simple as it looks.
[Sidenote: The Personal Equation]
Yet men, as a class, are easier to understand than women, because they are less emotional. It is emotion which complicates the personal equation with radicals and quadratics, and life which proceeds upon predestined lines soon becomes monotonous and loses its charm. The involved x in the equation continually postpones the definite result,