You may perhaps know something about these Southern men. I had never dreamed of such, and I would listen spellbound for hours to Sylvia’s tales of them. Men who, as Lady Dee had phrased it, had nothing to do but make love to their women! There were times when the realization of this brought me a shudder. I would see, in a sudden vision, the torment of a race of creatures who were doomed to spend their whole existence in the chase of their females; and the females devoting their energies to stinging them to fresh frenzies! The men liked it; they liked nothing else in the world so much. “You may make me as unhappy as you please,” they would tell Sylvia—“if only you will let me love you!” And Sylvia, in the course of time, became reconciled to letting them love her. She learned to play the game—to play it with constantly increasing excitement, with a love of mischief and a thirst for triumph. She would show her latest victim twenty moods in one evening, alluring him, repelling him, stimulating him, scorning him, pitying him, bewildering him. When they met again, she would be completely absorbed in the conversation of another man. He would be reduced at last to begging for a chance to talk seriously with her; and she, pretending to be touched, might let him call, and show him her loveliest and most sympathetic self. So, before he realized it, he would be caught fast. If he happened to be especially conspicuous, or especially rich, or especially otherwise worth while, she might take the trouble to goad him to desperation. Then he would be ready to give proofs of his devotion—to go through West Point, or to be made a judge, if only she would promise to marry him. Each of these tasks she set to an unfortunate wretch, who went off and performed it—and came back and found her married! § 9 Such were the customs of young ladies in Sylvia’s world; but I must not fail to mention that she had sometimes the courage to set her face against this “world.” For instance, she had a prejudice against drunkenness. She stood fast by the bold precedent that she would never permit an intoxicated person to dance with her; and terrible humiliations she put upon two or three who outraged her dignity. They hid in their rooms in an agony of remorse, and sent deputations of their friends to plead for pardon, and went away from home and stayed for months, until Sylvia consented to take them into her favor again. She took her place upon the icy heights of her maidenhood, and was not to be drawn therefrom. There were only two men in the world, outside of fathers and uncles and cousins, who could boast that they had ever kissed her. About both of these I shall tell you in the course of time. She was famous among other men for her reserve—they would make wagers and lay siege to her for months, but no one ever dared to claim that he had secured his kiss.