But it is too late, or too early, in other words wholly unfashionable, to write about love, and I certainly should not have committed the offence of the foregoing paragraph had it not been for an entirely orderly and even timely thought as to the possibility that love, like any other malady or manifestation, might have a purely national flavor, not merely in its outward symptoms, but in its inherent quality. That is to say, I had wondered in what way, if in any way, the American girl’s definition of love would be distinctive. If I had asked the Professor, she would, had she consented to take me seriously, have described love as “the sum and sublimation of all possible inter-human attachments,” or something of that sort. She would have been abstract, for woman, however personal she may incline to be by virtue of her sex and method, loves the abstract in definition for so much of reservation as it may leave to her. There is safety and breathing room in a large definition. Doubtless we never shall be able to get at Miss America’s sentiments except in a purely empirical way, and if I were writing a treatise instead of setting down a few notes, I should have felt an obligation to study out the question by observing critically the conduct of the American girl in the processes of courtship. The difficulty of such observation always must lie in the fact that the most interested man in any specific instance himself is wholly incapable of making report if he would. A man who could be analytical in any circumstances which included a settlement of his own fate, would be fit for every treason. He might go through a variety of mental motions which to him, at the time, passed for the convolutions of pure reason. He might, and doubtless often has, fancied himself as studying her, as penetrating the mask of her femininity, as dispassionately dissecting her sentiments. Indeed, every prudent man must at some stage weigh, with whatever sobriety may be possible to him, the chances of what she will say; and this must always include some estimate of what she is thinking.