withered, and of a vine that yearned to stretch its tendrils round the
world there is left but a sapless stump.

My fair friends will deem all this rank heresy, I know. So far from a
man's not loving after he has passed boyhood, it is not till there is
a good deal of gray in his hair that they think his protestations at
all worthy of attention. Young ladies take their notions of our sex
from the novels written by their own, and compared with the
monstrosities that masquerade for men in the pages of that nightmare
literature, Pythagoras' plucked bird and Frankenstein's demon were
fair average specimens of humanity.

In these so-called books, the chief lover, or Greek god, as he is
admiringly referred to--by the way, they do not say which "Greek god"
it is that the gentleman bears such a striking likeness to; it might
be hump-backed Vulcan, or double-faced Janus, or even driveling
Silenus, the god of abstruse mysteries. He resembles the whole family
of them, however, in being a blackguard, and perhaps this is what is
meant. To even the little manliness his classical prototypes
possessed, though, he can lay no claim whatever, being a listless
effeminate noodle, on the shady side of forty. But oh! the depth and
strength of this elderly party's emotion for some bread-and-butter
school-girl! Hide your heads, ye young Romeos and Leanders! this
_blase_ old beau loves with an hysterical fervor that requires four
adjectives to every noun to properly describe.

It is well, dear ladies, for us old sinners that you study only books.
Did you read mankind, you would know that the lad's shy stammering
tells a truer tale than our bold eloquence. A boy's love comes from a
full heart; a man's is more often the result of a full stomach.