In manner the gushing man is familiar and caressing. He may be patronizing or playful according to the bent of his own nature. If the first, he will call his superior, My dear boy, and pat him on the back encouragingly; if the second, he will put his arm schoolboy fashion round the neck of any man of note who has the misfortune of his intimacy, and call him Old fellow, or Governor, or _rex meus_, as he is inclined. With women his familiarity is excessively offensive. He gives them pet names, or calls to them by their Christian names from one end of the room to the other, and pats and paws them in all fraternal affectionateness, after about the same length of acquaintanceship as would bring other men from the bowing stage to that of shaking hands. His manners throughout are enough to compromise the toughest reputation; and one of the worst misfortunes that can befall a woman whose circumstances lay her specially open to slander and misrepresentation is to include among her friends a gushing man of energetic tendencies, on the look-out to do her a good turn if he can, and anxious to let people see on what familiar terms he stands with her. He means nothing in the least degree improper when he puts his arm round her waist, calls her My dear and even Darling in a loud voice for all the world to hear; or when he seats himself at her table before folk to write her private messages, which he makes believe to be of so much importance that they must not be spoken aloud, and which are of no importance at all. He is only familiar and gushing; and he would be the first to cry out against the evil imagination of the world which saw harm in what he does with such innocent intent. The gushing man has one grave defect--he is not safe nor secret. From no bad motive, but just from the blind propulsion of gushingness, he cannot keep a secret, and he is sure to let out sooner or later all he knows. He holds back nothing of his friends nor of his own--not even when his honour is engaged in the trust; being essentially loose-lipped, and with his emotional life always bubbling up through the thin crust of conventional reserve. Not that he means to be dishonourable; he is only gushing and unrestrained. Hence every friend he has knows all about him. His latest lover learns the roll-call of all his previous loves; and there is not a man in his club, with whom he is on speaking terms, who does not know as much. Women who trust themselves to gushing men simply trust themselves to broken reeds; and they might as well look for a sieve that will hold water as expect a man of the sieve nature to keep their secret, whatever it may cost them and him to divulge it.