Chapter XLII: Catching the Dear.--By Fanny Fern

"A Roman lady who takes a liking to a foreigner does not
cast her eyes down when he looks at her, but fixes them upon
him long and with evident pleasure. If the man of her choice
feels the like sentiment, and asks--'Are you fond of me?'
she replies with the utmost frankness, 'Yes, my dear.'"

You double-distilled little simpleton! don't you know better than that? Don't you know that courtship is like a vast hunting party?--_all the pleasure lies in the pursuit?_ That the sport is all over when the _deer_ is caught? Certainly; you don't catch an American girl 'doing as the Romans do.' _She_ understands the philosophy of the thing, and don't drop down like a shot pigeon at the first arrow from Cupid's quiver. If she is wounded ever so bad, she spreads her wings and flies off, alighting here, there, and everywhere; leading her pursuer through bog, ditch and furrow; sometimes flapping her bright wings close to his face, and then, out of sight--the mischief knows where--to return again the next minute. In this way she finds out how much trouble he is willing to take for her; and the way he knows how to prize her when she is caught would astonish your Roman comprehension, my dear.

"Now, I never saw a masculine Roman, but I will just tell you, in passing, that American gentlemen go by the rule of contraries. If there are any of them whom you desire _most particularly not to be bored with_, all you have to do is to make a pretence of the most _intense_ desire for their acquaintance; and vice-versa.

"Bless my soul! you haven't got so far as A, B, C; you are in an _awful_ benighted state for a female. I labored under the impression that the Foreign Mission Society had attended to the evangelization of Rome. I'll have some 'col-porteurs' sent over, without loss of time--you little verdant Abigail! saying 'yes, my dear,' the minute you are 'looked at!' If I hadn't so many irons in the fire I'd attend to your education myself, you poor, ignorant little heathen!"