Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/164

 does not consider that fact, and give it its due weight, is, to say the least, unwise, for there is something of passion in every male love, and a man grants her a favor before, that he would sternly deny after! Now the woman who fully comprehends this point, who understands the man, any man, and herself too, is armed with a power of almost infinite might. All men are easily governed, ruled, led, conquered, through the passions, and the master one of all in this more than half-barbaric age, unquestionably, is the amative. It is, so to speak, kaleidoscopic or protean, and the artful woman can keep its fires burning, and bring it into active play in a thousand directions and ways, even after it has been apparently worn out and extinguished in a thousand others. Now do not misunderstand me. I am not alluding alone to gross passion-fire and its solace, but to the instinctive and distinctive that underlies  — the unseen force upon which sex itself is based, and whence springs the natural homage of man to woman. For instance, a man grows cool, careless, coarse, rough, even brutal, and the woman thinks her rule is over and gaunt chaos come; but let her try the power of a smile, a caress, a tender look, a peculiar wave of the dress; the power of a lock of hair, a little perfume, an extra curl or two, a white dress, a touch, a display of the foot, — "accidentally on purpose," of course, — in a word, any of a million trifles whereof every true woman is mistress, and she will instantly change his magnetic polarity, and bring him to her feet and his senses! Magnetism is dual — attacks and repulses. We cry from sympathy. Laughing is catching. Everybody knows that. Well, apply the same principle to a different field and similar results will follow. Now the grand woman's secret is this: A man is always approachable through the amative door, true, pure, God-given, not gross, brutal, and coarse. Amativeness begins in tenderness, and ends in rapture — in woman, always; and by placing herself soul, body, mind, purpose, thought, desire, intent, in that tender state, she instantly becomes a positive (attracting) power to everything male within the pale of God's universe, and of course conquers by apparently stooping to do so. I care not who the straying lover, or recreant husband may be, he must yield to this superior force, for it is the great magnetic law of love, and worth more to unhappy wives and unloved girls than all the "love