If you call on the “loved one,” and observe that she blushes when you approach, give her hand a gentle squeeze, and if she returns it, consider it “all right”—­get the parents out of the room, sit down on the sofa beside the “must adorable of her sex”—­talk of the joys of wedded life.  If she appears pleased, rise, seem excited, and at once ask her to say the important, the life-or-death-deciding, the suicide-or-happiness-settling question.  If she pulls out her cambric, be assured you are accepted.  Call her “My darling Fanny!”—­“My own dear creature!”—­and a few such-like names, and this completes the scene.  Ask her to name the day, and fancy yourself already in Heaven.

A good plan is to call on the “object of your affections” in the forenoon—­propose a walk—­mamma consents, in the hope you will declare your intentions.  Wander through the green fields—­talk of “love in a cottage,”—­“requited attachment”—­and “rural felicity.”  If a child happens to pass, of course intimate your fondness for the dear little creatures—­this will be a splendid hit.  If the coast is clear, down you must fall on your knee, right or left (there is no rule as to this), and swear never to rise until she agrees to take you “for better and for worse.”  If, however, the grass is wet, and you have white ducks on, or if your unmentionables are tightly made—­of course you must pursue another plan—­say, vow you will blow your brains out, or swallow arsenic, or drown yourself, if she won’t say “yes.”

If you are at a ball, and your charmer is there, captivating all around her, get her into a corner, and “pop the question.”  Some delay until after supper, but “delays are dangerous”—­Round-hand copy.

A young lady’s “tears,” when accepting you, mean “I am too happy to speak.”  The dumb show of staring into each other’s faces, squeezing fingers, and sighing, originated, we have reason to believe, with the ancient Romans.  It is much practised now-a-days—­as saving breath, and being more lover-like than talking.

We could give many more valuable hints, but Punch has something better to do than to teach ninnies the art of amorifying.

* * * * *

THE ROMANCE OF A TEACUP.

SIP THE SECOND.

  Now harems being very lonely places,
    Hemm’d in with bolts and bars on every side,
  The fifty-two who shared Te-pott’s embraces
    Were glad to see a stranger, though a bride—­
  And so received her with their gentlest graces,
    And questions—­though the questions are implied,
  For ladies, from Great Britain to the Tropics,
  Are very orthodox in their choice of topics.

  They ask’d her, who was married? who was dead? 
    What were the newest things in silks and ivories? 
  And had Y—­Y—­, who had eloped with Z—­,
    Been yet forgiven? and had she seen his liveries? 
  And weren’t they something between grey and red? 
    And hadn’t Z’s papa refused to give her his? 
  So Hy-son told them everything she knew
  And all was very well a day or two.