The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Spinster Book, by Myrtle Reed
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Title: The Spinster Book
Author: Myrtle Reed
Release Date: March 29, 2006 [EBook #18071]
Language: English
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The Spinster Book
By Myrtle Reed
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1907
* * * * *
COPYRIGHT, 1901
BY
MYRTLE REED
* * * * *
Set up and electrotyped, September, 1901
Reprinted, November, 1901; April, 1902; August, 1902; April, 1903;
July, 1903; September, 1903; June, 1904; October, 1904; June, 1905;
September, 1905; March, 1906; September, 1906; November, 1906;
July, 1907.
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
* * * * *
BY MYRTLE REED.
LOVE LETTERS OF A MUSICIAN.
LATER LOVE LETTERS OF A MUSICIAN.
THE SPINSTER BOOK.
LAVENDER AND OLD LACE.
PICKABACK SONGS.
THE SHADOW OF VICTORY.
THE MASTER'S VIOLIN.
THE BOOK OF CLEVER BEASTS.
AT THE SIGN OF THE JACK-O'-LANTERN.
A SPINNER IN THE SUN.
LOVE AFFAIRS OF LITERARY MEN.
* * * * *
Contents
PAGE
Notes on Men 3
Concerning Women 25
The Philosophy of Love 49
The Lost Art of Courtship 71
The Natural History of Proposals 93
Love Letters: Old and New 115
An Inquiry into Marriage 137
The Physiology of Vanity 161
Widowers and Widows 183
The Consolations of Spinsterhood 205
Notes on Men
[Illustration]
Notes on Men
[Sidenote: "The Proper Study"]
If "the proper study of mankind is man," it is also the chief delight of
woman. It is not surprising that men are conceited, since the thought of
the entire population is centred upon them.
Women are wont to consider man in general as a simple creation. It is
not until the individual comes into the field of the feminine telescope,
and his peculiarities are thrown into high relief, that he is seen and
judged at his true value.
When a girl once turns her attention from the species to the individual,
her parlour becomes a sort of psychological laboratory in which she
conducts various experiments; not, however, without the loss of friends.
For men are impatient of the spirit of inquiry in woman.
[Sidenote: The Phenomena of Affection]
How shall a girl acquire her knowledge of the phenomena of affection, if
men are not willing to be questioned upon the subject? What is more
natural than to seek wisdom from the man a girl has just refused to
marry? Why should she not ask if he has ever loved before, how long he
has loved her, if he were not surprised when he found it out, and how he
feels in her presence?
Yet a sensitive spinster is repeatedly astonished at finding her lover
transformed into a fiend, without other provocation than this. He
accuses her of being "a heartless coquette," of having "led him
on,"--whatever that may mean,--and he does not care to have her for his
sister, or even for his friend.
[Sidenote: Original Research]
Occasionally a charitable man will open his heart for the benefit of the
patient student. If he is of a scientific turn of mind, with a fondness
for original research, he may even take a melancholy pleasure in the
analysis.
Thus she learns that he thought he had loved, until he cared for her,
but in the light of the new passion he sees clearly that the others were
mere, idle flirtations. To her surprise, she also discovers that he has
loved her a long time but has never dared to speak of it before, and
that this feeling, compared with the others, is as wine unto water. In
her presence he is uplifted, exalted, and often afraid, for very love of
her.
Next to a proposal, the most interesting thing in the world to a woman
is this kind of analysis. If a man is clever at it, he may change a
decided refusal to a timid promise to "think about it." The man who
hesitates may be lost, but the woman who hesitates is surely won.
In the beginning, the student is often perplexed by the magnitude of the
task which lies before her. Later, she comes to know that men, like
cats, need only to be stroked in the right direction. The problem thus
becomes a question of direction, which is seldom as simple as it looks.
[Sidenote: The Personal Equation]
Yet men, as a class, are easier to understand than women, because they
are less emotional. It is emotion which complicates the personal
equation with radicals and quadratics, and life which proceeds upon
predestined lines soon becomes monotonous and loses its charm. The
involved _x_ in the equation continually postpones the definite result,
which may often be surmised, but never achieved.
Still, there is little doubt as to the proper method, for some of the
radicals must necessarily appear in the result. Man's conceit is his
social foundation and when the vulnerable spot is once found in the
armour of Achilles, the overthrow of the strenuous Greek is near at
hand.
There is nothing in the world as harmless and as utterly joyous as man's
conceit. The woman who will not pander to it is ungracious indeed.
Man's interest in himself is purely altruistic and springs from an
unselfish desire to please. He values physical symmetry because one's
first impression of him is apt to be favourable. Manly accomplishments
and evidences of good breeding are desirable for the same reason, and he
likes to think his way of doing things is the best, regardless of actual
effectiveness.
[Sidenote: Pencils]
For instance, there seems to be no good reason why a man's way of
sharpening a pencil is any better than a woman's. It is difficult to see
just why it is advisable to cover the thumb with powdered graphite, and
expose that useful member to possible amputation by a knife directed
uncompromisingly toward it, when the pencil might be pointed the other
way, the risk of amputation avoided, and the shavings and pulverised
graphite left safely to the action of gravitation and centrifugal force.
Yet the entire race of men refuse to see the true value of the feminine
method, and, indeed, any man would rather sharpen any woman's pencil
than see her do it herself.
[Sidenote: The "Supreme Conceit"]
It pleases a man very much to be told that he "knows the world," even
though his acquaintance be limited to the flesh and the devil--a
gentleman, by the way, who is much misunderstood and whose faults are
persistently exaggerated. But man's supreme conceit is in regard to his
personal appearance. Let a single entry in a laboratory note-book
suffice for proof.
_Time, evening. MAN is reading a story in a current magazine to the GIRL
he is calling upon._
MAN. "Are you interested in this?"
GIRL. "Certainly, but I can think of other things too, can't I?"
MAN. "That depends on the 'other things.' What are they?"
GIRL. (_Calmly._) "I was just thinking that you are an extremely
handsome man, but of course you know that."
MAN. (_Crimsoning to his temples._) "You flatter me!" (_Resumes
reading._)
Girl. (_Awaits developments._)
MAN. (_After a little._) "I didn't know you thought I was good-looking."
GIRL. (_Demurely._) "Didn't you?"
MAN. (_Clears his throat and continues the story._)
MAN. (_After a few minutes._) "Did you ever hear anybody else say that?"
GIRL. "Say what?"
MAN. "Why, that I was--that I was--well, good-looking, you know?"
GIRL. "Oh, yes! Lots of people!"
MAN. (_After reading half a page._) "I don't think this is so very
interesting, do you?"
GIRL. "No, it isn't. It doesn't carry out the promise of its beginning."
MAN. (_Closes magazine and wanders aimlessly toward the mirror in the
mantel._)
MAN. "Which way do you like my hair; this way, or parted in the middle?"
GIRL. "I don't know--this way, I guess. I've never seen it parted in the
middle."
MAN. (_Taking out pocket comb and rapidly parting his hair in the
middle._) "There! Which way do you like it?"
GIRL. (_Judicially._) "I don't know. It's really a very hard question to
decide."
MAN. (_Reminiscently._) "I've gone off my looks a good deal lately. I
used to be a lot better looking than I am now."
GIRL. (_Softly._) "I'm glad I didn't know you then."
MAN. (_In apparent astonishment._) "Why?"
GIRL. "Because I might not have been heart whole, as I am now."
(_Long silence._)
MAN. (_With sudden enthusiasm._) "I'll tell you, though, I really do
look well in evening dress."
GIRL. "I haven't a doubt of it, even though I've never seen you wear
it."
MAN. (_After brief meditation._) "Let's go and hear Melba next week,
will you? I meant to ask you when I first came in, but we got to
reading."
GIRL. "I shall be charmed."
_Next day, GIRL gets a box of chocolates and a dozen American
Beauties--in February at that._
[Sidenote: Dimples and Dress Clothes]
Tell a man he has a dimple and he will say "where?" in pleased surprise,
meanwhile putting his finger straight into it. He has studied that
dimple in the mirror too many times to be unmindful of its geography.
Let the woman dearest to a man say, tenderly: "You were so handsome
to-night, dear--I was proud of you." See his face light up with noble,
unselfish joy, because he has given such pleasure to others!
All the married men at evening receptions have gone because they "look
so well in evening dress," and because "so few men can wear dress
clothes really well." In truth, it does require distinction and grace of
bearing, if a man would not be mistaken for a waiter.
Man's conceit is not love of himself but of his fellow-men. The man who
is in love with himself need not fear that any woman will ever become a
serious rival. Not unfrequently, when a man asks a woman to marry him,
he means that he wants her to help him love himself, and if, blinded by
her own feeling, she takes him for her captain, her pleasure craft
becomes a pirate ship, the colours change to a black flag with a
sinister sign, and her inevitable destiny is the coral reef.
[Sidenote: Palmistry]
Palmistry does very well for a beginning if a man is inclined to be shy.
It leads by gentle and almost imperceptible degrees to that most
interesting of all subjects, himself, and to that tactful comment,
dearest of all to the masculine heart; "You are not like other men!"
A man will spend an entire evening, utterly oblivious of the lapse of
time, while a woman subjects him to careful analysis. But sympathy,
rather than sarcasm, must be her guide--if she wants him to come again.
A man will make a comrade of the woman who stimulates him to higher
achievement, but he will love the one who makes herself a mirror for his
conceit.
Men claim that women cannot keep a secret, but it is a common failing. A
man will always tell some one person the thing which is told him in
confidence. If he is married, he tells his wife. Then the exclusive bit
of news is rapidly syndicated, and by gentle degrees, the secret is
diffused through the community. This is the most pathetic thing in
matrimony--the regularity with which husbands relate the irregularities
of their friends. Very little of the world's woe is caused by silence,
however it may be in fiction and the drama.
[Sidenote: Exchange of Confidence]
In return for the generous confidence regarding other people's doings,
the married man is made conversant with those things which his wife
deems it right and proper for him to know. And he is not unhappy, for it
isn't what he doesn't know that troubles a man, but what he knows he
doesn't know.
The masculine nature is less capable of concealment than the feminine.
Where men are frankly selfish, women are secretly so. Man's vices are
few and comprehensive; woman's petty and innumerable. Any man who is not
in the penitentiary has at most but three or four, while a woman will
hide a dozen under her social mask and defy detection.
Women are said to be fickle, but are they more so than men? A man's
ideal is as variable as the wind. What he thinks is his ideal of woman
is usually a glorified image of the last girl he happened to admire. The
man who has had a decided preference for blondes all his life, finally
installs a brown-eyed deity at his hearthstone. If he has been fond of
petite and coquettish damsels, he marries some Diana moulded on large
lines and unconcerned as to mice.
A man will ride, row, and swim with one girl and marry another who is
afraid of horses, turns pale at the mention of a boat, and who would
look forward to an interview with His Satanic Majesty with more ease and
confidence than to a dip in the summer sea.
[Sidenote: Portia and Carmen]
Theoretically, men admire "reasonable women," with the uncommon quality
which is called "common sense," but it is the woman of caprice, the
sweet, illogical despot of a thousand moods, who is most often and most
tenderly loved. Man is by nature a discoverer. It is not beauty which
holds him, but rather mystery and charm. To see the one woman through
all the changing moods--to discern Portia through Carmen's witchery--is
the thing above all others which captivates a man.
[Sidenote: The Dorcas Ideal]
Deep in his heart, man cherishes the Dorcas ideal. The old, lingering
notions of womanliness are not quite dispelled, but in this, as in
other things, nothing sickens a man of his pet theory like seeing it in
operation.
It may be a charming sight to behold a girl stirring cheese in the
chafing-dish, wearing an air of deep concern when it "bunnies" at the
sides and requires still more skill. It may also be attractive to see
white fingers weave wonders with fine linen and delicate silks, with
pretty eagerness as to shade and stitch.
But in the after-years, when his divinity, redolent of the kitchen,
meets him at the door, with hair dishevelled and fingers bandaged, it is
subtly different from the chafing-dish days, and the crisp chops,
generously black with charcoal, are not as good as her rarebits used to
be. The memory of the silk and fine linen also fades somewhat, in the
presence of darning which contains hard lumps and patches which
immediately come off.
It has become the fashion to speak of woman as the eager hunter, and man
as the timid, reluctant prey. The comic papers may have started it, but
modern society certainly lends colour to the pretty theory. It is
frequently attributed to Mr. Darwin, but he is at times unjustly blamed
by those who do not read his pleasing works.
The complexities in man's personal equation are caused by variants of
three emotions; a mutable fondness for women, according to temperament
and opportunity, a more uniform feeling toward money, and the universal,
devastating desire--the old, old passion for food.
[Sidenote: The Key of Happiness]
The first variant is but partially under the control of any particular
woman, and the less she concerns herself with the second, the better it
is for both, but she who stimulates and satisfies the third variant
holds in her hands the golden key of happiness. No woman need envy the
Sphinx her wisdom if she has learned the uses of silence and never asks
a favour of a hungry man.
A woman makes her chief mistake when she judges a man by herself and
attributes to him indirection and complexity of motive. When she wishes
to attract a particular man, she goes at it indirectly. She makes
friends of "his sisters, his cousins, and his aunts," and assumes an
interest in his chum. She ignores him at first and thus arouses his
curiosity. Later, she condescends to smile upon him and he is mildly
pleased, because he thinks he has been working for that very smile and
has finally won it. In this manner he is lured toward the net.
[Sidenote: The Wise Virgin]
When a girl systematically and effectively feeds a man, she is leading
trumps. He insensibly associates her with his comfort and thus she
becomes his necessity. When a man seeks a woman's society it is because
he has need of her, not because he thinks she has need of him; and the
parlour of the girl who realises it, is the envy of every unattached
damsel on the street. If the wise one is an expert with the
chafing-dish, she may frequently bag desirable game, while the foolish
virgins who have no alcohol in their lamps are hunting eagerly for the
trail.
Because she herself works indirectly, she thinks he intends a tender
look at another girl for a carom shot, and frequently a far-sighted
maiden can see the evidences of a consuming passion for herself in a
man's devotion to someone else.
Men are not sufficiently diplomatic to bother with finesse of this kind.
Other things being equal, a man goes to see the girl he wants to see.
It does not often occur to her that he may not want to see her, may be
interested in someone else, or that he may have forgotten all about her.
[Sidenote: "Encouragement"]
There is a common feminine delusion to the effect that men need
"encouragement" and there is no term which is more misused. A fool may
need "encouragement," but the man who wants a girl will go after her,
regardless of obstacles. As for him, if he is fed at her house, even
irregularly, he may know that she looks with favour upon his suit.
[Sidenote: "Platonic Friendship"]
The parents of both, the neighbours, and even the girl herself, usually
know that a man is in love before he finds it out. Sometimes he has to
be told. He has approached a stage of acute and immediate peril when he
recognises what he calls "a platonic friendship."
Young men believe platonic friendship possible; old men know better--but
when one man learns to profit by the experience of another, we may look
for mosquitoes at Christmas and holly in June.
There is an exquisite danger attached to friendships of this kind, and
is it not danger, rather than variety, which is "the spice of life?"
Relieved of the presence of that social pace-maker, the chaperone, the
disciples of Plato are wont to take long walks, and further on, they
spend whole days in the country with book and wheel.
A book is a mysterious bond of union, and by their taste in books do a
man and woman unerringly know each other. Two people who unite in
admiration of Browning are apt to admire each other, and those who
habitually seek Emerson for new courage may easily find the world more
kindly if they face it hand in hand.
A latter-day philosopher has remarked upon the subtle sympathy produced
by marked passages. "The method is so easy and so unsuspect. You have
only to put faint pencil marks against the tenderest passages in your
favourite new poet, and lend the volume to Her, and She has only to
leave here and there the dropped violet of a timid, confirmatory
initial, for you to know your fate."
[Sidenote: The High-Priest]
A man never has a platonic friendship with a woman it is impossible for
him to love. Cupid is the high-priest at these rites of reading aloud
and discussing everything under the sun. The two become so closely bound
that one arrow strikes both, and often the happiest marriages are those
whose love has so begun, for when the Great Passion dies, as it
sometimes does, sympathy and mutual understanding may yield a generous
measure of content.
The present happy era of fiction closes a story abruptly at the altar or
else begins it immediately after the ceremony. Thence the enthralled
reader is conducted through rapture, doubt, misunderstanding,
indifference, complications, recrimination, and estrangement to the
logical end in cynicism and the divorce court.
In the books which women write, the hero of the story shoulders the
blame, and often has to bear his creator's vituperation in addition to
his other troubles. When a man essays this theme in fiction, he shows
clearly that it is the woman's fault. When the situation is presented
outside of books, the happily married critics distribute condemnation in
the same way, it being customary for each partner in a happy marriage to
claim the entire credit for the mutual content.
[Sidenote: Pursuit and Possession]
Over the afternoon tea cups it has been decided with unusual and
refreshing accord, that "it is pursuit and not possession with a man."
True--but is it less true with women?
When Her Ladyship finally acquires the sealskin coat on which she has
long set her heart, does she continue to scan the advertisements? Does
she still coddle him who hath all power as to sealskin coats, with
tempting dishes and unusual smiles? Not unless she wants something else.
Still, it is woman's tendency to make the best of what she has, and
man's to reach out for what he has not. Man spends his life in the
effort to realise the ideals which, like will-o'-the-wisps, hover just
beyond him. Woman, on the contrary, brings into her life what grace she
may, by idealising her reals.
In her secret heart, woman holds her unchanging ideal of her own
possible perfection. Sometimes a man suspects this, and loves her all
the more for the sweet guardian angel which is thus enthroned. Other
men, less fine, consider an ideal a sort of disease--and they are
usually a certain specific.
But, after all, men are as women make them. Cleopatra and Helen of Troy
swayed empires and rocked thrones. There is no woman who does not hold
within her little hands some man's achievement, some man's future, and
his belief in woman and God.
She may fire him with high ambition, exalt him with noble striving, or
make him a coward and a thief. She may show him the way to the gold of
the world, or blind him with tinsel which he may not keep. It is she who
leads him to the door of glory and so thrills him with majestic purpose,
that nothing this side Heaven seems beyond his eager reach.
[Sidenote: The Potter's Hand]
Upon his heart she may write ecstasy or black despair. Through the long
night she may ever beckon, whispering courage, and by her magic making
victory of defeat. It is for her to say whether his face shall be
world-scarred and weary, hiding tragedy behind its piteous lines;
whether there shall be light or darkness in his soul. He cannot escape
those soft, compelling fingers; she is the arbiter of his destiny--for
like clay in the potter's hands, she moulds him as she will.
Concerning Women
[Illustration]
Concerning Women
In order to be happy, a woman needs only a good digestion, a
satisfactory complexion, and a lover. The first requirement being met,
the second is not difficult to obtain, and the third follows as a matter
of course.
[Sidenote: Nagging]
He was a wise philosopher who first considered crime as disease, for
women are naturally sweet-tempered and charming. The shrew and the scold
are to be reformed only by a physician, and as for nagging, is it not
allopathic scolding in homeopathic doses?
A well woman is usually a happy one, and incidentally, those around her
share her content. The irritation produced by fifteen minutes of nagging
speaks volumes for the personal influence which might be directed the
other way, and the desired result more easily obtained.
[Sidenote: Diversions]
The sun around which woman revolves is Love. Her whole life is spent in
search of it, consciously or unconsciously. Incidental diversions in
the way of "career" and "independence" are usually caused by domestic
unhappiness, or, in the case of spinsters, the fear of it.
If all men were lovers, there would be no "new woman" movement, no
sociological studies of "Woman in Business," no ponderous analyses of
"The Industrial Condition of Women" in weighty journals. Still more than
a man, a woman needs a home, though it be but the tiniest room.
Even the self-reliant woman of affairs who battles bravely by day in the
commercial arena has her little nook, made dainty by feminine touches,
to which she gladly creeps at night. Would it not be sweeter if it were
shared by one who would always love her? As truly as she needs her bread
and meat, woman needs love, and, did he but know it, man needs it too,
though in lesser degree.
[Sidenote: The Verity and the Vision]
Lacking the daily expression of it which is the sweet unction of her
hungry soul, she seeks solace in an ideal world of her own making. It is
because the verity jars upon her vision that she takes a melancholy view
of life.
One of woman's keenest pleasures is sorrow. Her tears are not all pain.
She goes to the theatre, not to laugh, but to weep. The clever
playwright who closes his last scene with a bitter parting is sure of a
large clientage, composed almost wholly of women. Sad books are written
by men, with an eye to women readers, and women dearly love to wear the
willow in print.
Women are unconscious queens of tragedy. Each one, in thought, plays to
a sympathetic but invisible audience. She lifts her daily living to a
plane of art, finding in fiction, music, pictures, and the stage
continual reminders of her own experience.
Does her husband, distraught with business cares, leave her hurriedly
and without the customary morning kiss? Woman, on her way to market,
rapidly reviews similar instances in fiction, in which this first
forgetting proved to be "the little rift within the lute."
The pictures of distracted ladies, wild as to hair and vision, are sold
in photogravure by countless thousands--to women. An attraction on the
boards which is rumoured to be "so sad," leads woman to economise in
the matter of roasts and desserts that she may go and enjoy an
afternoon of misery. Girls suffer all their lives long from being taken
to mirthful plays, or to vaudeville, which is unmixed delight to a man
and intolerably cheerful to a woman.
[Sidenote: Woman and Death]
Woman and Death are close friends in art. Opera is her greatest joy,
because a great many people are slaughtered in the course of a single
performance, and somebody usually goes raving mad for love. When Melba
sings the mad scene from _Lucia_, and that beautiful voice descends by
lingering half-notes from madness and nameless longing to love and
prayer, the women in the house sob in sheer delight and clutch the hands
of their companions in an ecstasy of pain.
In proportion as women enjoy sorrow, men shrink from it. A man cannot
bear to be continually reminded of the woman he has loved and lost,
while woman's dearest keepsakes are old love letters and the shoes of a
little child. If the lover or the child is dead, the treasures are never
to be duplicated or replaced, but if the pristine owner of the shoes has
grown to stalwart manhood and the writer of the love letters is a
tender and devoted husband, the sorrowful interest is merely mitigated.
It is not by any means lost.
[Sidenote: "The Eternal Womanly"]
Just why it should be considered sad to marry one's lover and for a
child to grow up, can never be understood by men. There are many things
in the "eternal womanly" which men understand about as well as a kitten
does the binomial theorem, but some mysteries become simple enough when
the leading fact is grasped--that woman's song of life is written in a
minor key and that she actually enjoys the semblance of sorrow. Still,
the average woman wishes to be idealised and strongly objects to being
understood.
[Sidenote: "Tears, Idle Tears"]
Woman's tears mean no more than the sparks from an overcharged dynamo;
they are simply emotional relief. Married men gradually come to realise
it, and this is why a suspicion of tears in his sweetheart's eyes means
infinitely more to a lover than a fit of hysterics does to a husband.
We are wont to speak of woman's tenderness, but there is no tenderness
like that of a man for the woman he loves when she is tired or
troubled, and the man who has learned simply to love a woman at crucial
moments, and to postpone the inevitable idiotic questioning till a more
auspicious time, has in his hands the talisman of domestic felicity.
If by any chance the lachrymal glands were to be dried up, woman's life
would lose a goodly share of its charm. There is nothing to cry on which
compares with a man's shoulder; almost any man will do at a critical
moment; but the clavicle of a lover is by far the most desirable. If the
flood is copious and a collar or an immaculate shirt-front can be
spoiled, the scene acquires new and distinct value. A pillow does very
well, lacking the shoulder, for many of the most attractive women in
fiction habitually cry into pillows--because they have no lover, or
because the brute dislikes tears.
When grief strikes deep, a woman's eyes are dry. Her soul shudders and
there is a hand upon her heart whose icy fingers clutch at the inward
fibre in a very real physical pain. There are no tears for times like
these; the inner depths, bare and quivering, are healed by no such balm
as this.
A sudden blow leaves a woman as cold as a marble statue and absolutely
dumb as to the thing which lies upon her heart. When the tears begin to
flow, it means that resignation and content will surely come. On the
contrary, when once or twice in a lifetime a man is moved to tears,
there is nothing so terrible and so hopeless as his sobbing grief.
Married and unmarried women waste a great deal of time in feeling sorry
for each other. It never occurs to a married woman that a spinster may
not care to take the troublous step. An ideal lover in one's heart is
less strain upon the imagination than the transfiguration of a man who
goes around in his shirt-sleeves and dispenses with his collar at ninety
degrees Fahrenheit.
[Sidenote: The Unknown Country]
If fiction dealt pleasantly with men who are unmindful of small
courtesies, the unknown country beyond the altar would lose some of its
fear. If the way of an engaged girl lies past a barber shop,--which very
seldom has a curtain, by the way,--and she happens to think that she may
some day behold her beloved in the dangerous act of shaving himself, it
immediately hardens her heart. One glimpse of one face covered with
lather will postpone one wedding-day five weeks. Many a lover has
attributed to caprice or coquetry the fault which lies at the door of
the "tonsorial parlour."
[Sidenote: Other Feminine Eyes]
A woman may be a mystery to a man and to herself, but never to another
woman. There is no concealment which is effectual when other feminine
eyes are fixed upon one's small and harmless schemes. A glance at a
girl's dressing-table is sufficient for the intimate friend--she does
not need to ask questions; and indeed, there are few situations in life
in which the necessity for direct questions is not a confession of
individual weakness.
If fourteen different kinds of creams and emollients are within easy
reach, the girl has an admirer who is fond of out-door sports and has
not yet declared himself. If the curling iron is kept hot, it is because
he has looked approval when her hair was waved. If there is a box of
rouge but half concealed, the girl thinks the man is a fatuous idiot and
hourly expects a proposal.
If the various drugs are in the dental line, the man is a cheerful soul
with a tendency to be humorous. If she is particular as to small
details of scolding locks and eyebrows, he probably wears glasses. If
she devotes unusual attention to her nails, the affair has progressed to
that interesting stage where he may hold her hand for a few minutes at a
time.
If she selects her handkerchief with extreme care,--one with an initial
and a faint odour of violet--she expects to give it to him to carry and
to forget to ask for it. If he makes an extra call in order to return
it, it indicates a lesser degree of interest than if he says nothing
about it. The forgotten handkerchief is an important straw with a girl
when love's capricious wind blows her way.
It is not entirely without reason that womankind in general blames "the
other woman" for defection of any kind. Short-sighted woman thinks it a
mighty tribute to her own charm to secure the passing interest of
another's rightful property. It does not seem to occur to her that
someone else will lure him away from her with even more ease. Each
successive luring makes defection simpler for a man. Practice tends
towards perfection in most things; perhaps it is the single exception,
love, which proves the rule.
Three delusions among women are widespread and painful. Marriage is
currently supposed to reform a man, a rejected lover is heartbroken for
life, and, if "the other woman" were only out of the way, he would come
back. Love sometimes reforms a man, but marriage does not. The rejected
lover suffers for a brief period,--feminine philosophers variously
estimate it, but a week is a generous average,--and he who will not come
in spite of "the other woman" is not worth having at all.
[Sidenote: "Not Things, but Men"]
Emerson says: "The things which are really for thee gravitate to thee."
One is tempted to add the World's Congress motto--"Not things, but men."
There is no virtue in women which men cultivate so assiduously as
forgiveness. They make one think that it is very pretty and charming to
forgive. It is not hygienic, however, for the woman who forgives easily
has a great deal of it to do. When pardon is to be had for the asking,
there are frequent causes for its giving. This, of course, applies to
the interesting period before marriage.
[Sidenote: Post-Nuptial Sins]
Post-nuptial sins are atoned for with gifts; not more than once in a
whole marriage with the simple, manly words, "Forgive me, dear, I was
wrong." It injures a man's conceit vitally to admit he has made a
mistake. This is gracious and knightly in the lover, but a married man,
the head of a family, must be careful to maintain his position.
Cases of reformation by marriage are few and far between, and men more
often die of wounded conceit than broken hearts. "Men have died and
worms have eaten them, but not for love," save on the stage and in the
stories women cry over.
[Sidenote: "The Other Woman"]
"The other woman" is the chief bugbear of life. On desert islands and in
a very few delightful books, her baneful presence is not. The girl a man
loves with all his heart can see a long line of ghostly ancestors, and
requires no opera-glass to discern through the mists of the future a
procession of possible posterity. It is for this reason that men's ears
are tried with the eternal, unchanging: "Am I the only woman you ever
loved?" and "Will you always love me?"
The woman who finally acquires legal possession of a man is haunted by
the shadowy predecessors. If he is unwary enough to let her know another
girl has refused him, she develops a violent hatred for this inoffensive
maiden. Is it because the cruel creature has given pain to her lord? His
gods are not her gods--if he has adored another woman.
These two are mutually "other women," and the second one has the best of
it, for there is no thorn in feminine flesh like the rejected lover who
finds consolation elsewhere. It may be exceedingly pleasant to be a
man's first love, but she is wise beyond books who chooses to be his
last, and it is foolish to spend mental effort upon old flames, rather
than in watching for new ones, for Cæsar himself is not more utterly
dead than a man's dead love.
Women are commonly supposed to worry about their age, but Father Time is
a trouble to men also. The girl of twenty thinks it absurd for women to
be concerned about the matter, but the hour eventually comes when she
regards the subject with reverence akin to awe. There is only one terror
in it--the dreadful nines.
[Sidenote: Scylla and Charybdis]
"Twenty-nine!" Might she not as well be thirty? There is little choice
between Scylla and Charybdis. Twenty-nine is the hour of reckoning for
every woman, married, engaged, or unattached.
The married woman felicitates herself greatly, unless a tall daughter of
nine or ten walks abroad at her side. The engaged girl is safe--she
rejoices in the last hours of her lingering girlhood and hems table
linen with more resignation. The unattached girl has a strange interest
in creams and hair tonics, and usually betakes herself to the cloister
of the university for special courses, since azure hosiery does not
detract from woman's charm in the eyes of the faculty.
Men do not often know their ages accurately till after thirty. The
gladsome heyday of youth takes no note of the annual milestones. But
after thirty, ah me! "Yes," a man will say sometimes, "I am thirty-one,
but the fellows tell me I don't look a day over twenty-nine." Scylla and
Charybdis again!
[Sidenote: Perennial Youth]
Still, age is not a matter of birthdays, but of the heart. Some women
are mature cynics at twenty, while a grey-haired matron of fifty seems
to have found the secret of perennial youth. There is little to choose,
as regards beauty and charm, between the young, unformed girl, whose
soft eyes look with longing into the unyielding future which gives her
no hint of its purposes, and the mature woman, well-groomed,
self-reliant to her finger-tips, who has drunk deeply of life's cup and
found it sweet. A woman is never old until the little finger of her
glove is allowed to project beyond the finger itself and she orders her
new photographs from an old plate in preference to sitting again.
In all the seven ages of man, there is someone whom she may attract. If
she is twenty-five, the boy who has just attained long trousers will not
buy her striped sticks of peppermint and ask shyly if he may carry her
books. She is not apt to wear fraternity pins and decorate her rooms in
college colours, unless her lover still holds his alma mater in fond
remembrance. But there are others, always the others--and is it less
sweet to inspire the love which lasts than the tender verses of a
Sophomore? Her field of action is not sensibly limited, for at twenty
men love woman, at thirty a woman, and at forty, women.
[Sidenote: Three Weapons]
Woman has three weapons--flattery, food, and flirtation, and only the
last of these is ever denied her by Time. With the first she appeals to
man's conceit, with the second to his heart, which is suspected to lie
at the end of the oesophagus, rather than over among lungs and ribs, and
with the third to his natural rivalry of his fellows. But the pleasures
of the chase grow beautifully less when age brings rheumatism and
kindred ills.
Besides, may she not always be a chaperone? When a political orator
refers effectively to "the cancer which is eating at the heart of the
body politic," someway, it always makes a girl think of a chaperone. She
goes, ostensibly, to lend a decorous air to whatever proceedings may be
in view. She is to keep the man from making love to the girl. Whispers
and tender hand clasps are occasionally possible, however, for, tell it
not in Gath! the chaperone was once young herself and at times looks the
other way.
That is, unless she is the girl's mother. Trust a parent for keeping two
eyes and a pair of glasses on a girl! Trust the non-matchmaking mother
for four new eyes under her back hair and a double row of ears arranged
laterally along her anxious spine! And yet, if the estimable lady had
not been married herself, it is altogether likely that the girl would
never have thought of it.
[Sidenote: The Chaperone]
The reason usually given for chaperonage is that it gives the girl a
chance to become acquainted with the man. Of course, in the presence of
a chaperone, a man says and does exactly the same things he would if he
were alone with the maiden of his choice. He does not mind making love
to a girl in her mother's presence. He does not even care to be alone
with her when he proposes to her. He would like to have some chaperone
read his letters--he always writes with this intention. At any time
during the latter part of the month it fills him with delight to see the
chaperone order a lobster after they have all had oysters.
Nonsense! Why do not the leaders of society say, frankly: "This
chaperone business is just a little game. Our husbands are either at
the club or soundly asleep at home. It is not nice to go around alone,
and it is pathetic to go in pairs, with no man. We will go with our
daughters and their young friends, for they have cavaliers enough and to
spare. Let us get out and see the world, lest we die of ennui and
neglect!" It is the chaperone who really goes with the young man. She
takes the girl along to escape gossip.
[Sidenote: Behold his House!]
It is strange, when it is woman's avowed object to make man happy, that
she insists upon doing it in her own way, rather than in his. He likes
the rich, warm colours; the deep reds and dark greens. Behold his house!
Renaissance curtains obscure the landscape with delicate tracery, and he
realises what it might mean to wear a veil. Soft tones of rose and Nile
green appear in his drawing-room. Chippendale chairs, upon which he
fears to sit, invite the jaded soul to whatever repose it can get. See
the sofa cushions, which he has learned by bitter experience never to
touch! Does he rouse a quiescent Nemesis by laying his weary head upon
that elaborate embroidery? Not unless his memory is poor.
[Sidenote: Home Comforts]
Take careful note of the bric-à-brac upon his library table. See the few
square inches of blotting paper on a cylinder which he can roll over his
letter--the three stamps stuck together more closely than brothers,
generously set aside for his use. Does he find comfort here? Not very
much of it.
See the dainty dinner which is set before the hungry man. A cup of
rarest china holds four ounces of clear broth. A stick of bread or two
crackers are allotted to him. Then he may have two croquettes, or one
small chop, when his soul is athirst for rare roast beef and steak an
inch thick. Then a nice salad, made of three lettuce leaves and a
suspicion of oil, another cracker and a cubic inch of cheese, an ounce
of coffee in a miniature cup, and behold, the man is fed!
Why should he go to his club, call loudly for flesh-pots, sink into a
chair he is not afraid of breaking, and forget his trouble in the
evening paper, while his wife is at home, alone, or having a Roman
holiday as a chaperone?
It is a simple thing to acquire a lover, but it is a fine art to keep
him. Clubs were originally intended for the homeless, as distinguished
from the unmarried. The rare woman who rests and soothes a man when he
is tired has no rival in the club. Misunderstanding, sorrowful, yearning
for what she has lost, woman contemplates the wreck of her girlish
dream.
[Sidenote: The Heart of a Woman]
There are three things man is destined never to solve--perpetual motion,
the square of the circle, and the heart of a woman. Yet he may go a
little way into the labyrinth with the thread of love, which his Ariadne
will gladly give him at the door.
The dim chambers are fragrant with precious things, for through the
winding passages Memory has strewn rue and lavender, love and longing;
sweet spikenard and instinctive belief. Some day, when the heart aches,
she will brew content from these.
There are barriers which he may not pass, secret treasures that he may
not see, dreams that he may not guess. There are dark corners where
there has been torture, of which he will never know. There are shadows
and ghostly shapes which Penelope has hidden with the fairest fabrics of
her loom. There are doors, tightly locked, which he has no key to open;
rooms which have contained costly vessels, empty and deep with dust.
There is no other step than his, for he walks there alone; sometimes to
the music of dead days and sometimes to the laughter of a little child.
The petals of crushed roses rustle at his feet--his roses--in the inmost
places of her heart. And beyond, of spotless marble, with the infinite
calm of mountains and perpetual snow, is something which he seldom
comprehends--her love of her own whiteness.
It is a wondrous thing. For it is so small he could hold it in the
hollow of his hand, yet it is great enough to shelter him forever. All
the world may not break it if his love is steadfast and unchanging, and
loving him, it becomes deep enough to love and pity all the world.
It is a tender thing. So often is it wounded that it cannot see another
suffer, and its own pain is easier far to bear. It makes a shield of its
very tenderness, gladly receiving the stabs that were meant for him,
forgiving always, and forgetting when it may.
[Sidenote: The Solace]
Yet, after all, it is a simple thing. For in times of deepest doubt and
trouble, it requires for its solace only the tender look, the whispered
word which brings new courage, and the old-time grace of the lover's
way.
The Philosophy of Love
[Illustration]
The Philosophy of Love
[Sidenote: The Prevailing Theme]
A modern novelist has greatly lamented because the prevailing theme of
fiction is love. Every story is a love story, every romance finds its
inspiration in the heart, and even the musty tomes of history are beset
by the little blind god.
One or two men have dared to write books from which women have been
excluded as rigorously as from the Chinese stage, but the world of
readers has not loudly clamoured for more of the same sort. A story of
adventure loses none of its interest if there is some fair damsel to be
rescued from various thrilling situations.
The realists contend that a single isolated fact should not be dwelt
upon to the exclusion of all other interests, that love plays but a
small part in the life of the average man or woman, and that it is
unreasonable to expand it to the uttermost limits of art.
Strangely enough, the realists are all men. If a woman ventures to write
a book which may fitly be classed under the head of realism, the critics
charitably unite upon insanity as the cause of it and lament the lost
womanliness of a decadent generation.
If realism were actually real, we should have no time for books and
pictures. Our days and nights would be spent in reclaiming the people in
the slums. There would be a visible increase in the church fair--where
we spend more than we can afford for things we do not want, in order to
please people whom we do not like, and to help heathen who are happier
than we are.
[Sidenote: The Root of all Good]
The love of money is said to be the root of all evil, but love itself is
the root of all good, for it is the very foundation of the social
structure. The universal race for the elusive shilling, which is
commonly considered selfish, is based upon love.
Money will buy fine houses, but who would wish to live in a mansion
alone! Fast horses, yachts, private cars, and the feasts of Lucullus,
are not to be enjoyed in solitude; they must be shared. Buying jewels
and costly raiment is the purest philanthropy, for it gives pleasure to
others. Sapphires and real lace depreciate rapidly in the cloister or
the desert.
The envy which luxury sometimes creates is also altruistic in character,
for in its last analysis, it is the wish to give pleasure to others, in
the same degree, as the envied fortunately may. Nothing is happiness
which is not shared by at least one other, and nothing is truly sorrow
unless it is borne absolutely alone.
[Sidenote: Love]
Love! The delight and the torment of the world! The despair of
philosophers and sages, the rapture of poets, the confusion of cynics,
and the warrior's defeat!
Love! The bread and the wine of life, the hunger and the thirst, the
hurt and the healing, the only wound which is cured by another! The
guest who comes like a thief in the night! The eternal question which is
its own answer, the thing which has no beginning and no end!
The very blindness of it is divine, for it sees no imperfections, takes
no reck of faults, and concerns itself only with the hidden beauty of
the soul.
It is unselfishness--yet it tolerates no rival and demands all for
itself. It is belief--and yet it doubts. It is hope and it is also
misgiving. It is trust and distrust, the strongest temptation and the
power to withstand it; woman's need and man's dream. It is his enemy and
his best friend, her weakness and her strength; the roses and the
thorns.
Woman's love affairs begin in her infancy, with some childish play at
sweethearts, and a cavalier in dresses for her hero. It may be a matter
of affinity in later years, or, as the more prosaic Buckle suggests,
dependent upon the price of corn, but at first it is certainly a
question of propinquity.
Through the kindergarten and the multiplication table, the pretty game
goes on. Before she is thirteen, she decides to marry, and selects an
awkward boy a little older for the happy man. She cherishes him in her
secret heart, and it does not matter in the least if she does not know
him well enough to speak to him, for the good fairies who preside over
earthly destinies will undoubtedly lead The Prince to become formally
acquainted at the proper time.
[Sidenote: The Self-Conscious Period]
Later, the self-conscious period approaches and Mademoiselle becomes
solicitous as to ribbons and personal adornment. She pleads earnestly
for long gowns, and the first one is never satisfying unless it drags.
If she can do her hair in a twist "just like mamma's," and see the
adored one pass the house, while she sits at the window with sewing or
book, she feels actually "grown up."
When she begins to read novels, her schoolmates, for the time being, are
cast aside, because none of them are in the least like the lovers who
stalk through the highly-coloured pages of the books she likes best. The
hero is usually "tall and dark, with a melancholy cast of countenance,"
and there are fascinating hints of some secret sorrow. The watchful
maternal parent is apt to confiscate these interesting volumes, but
there are always school desks and safe places in the neighbourhood of
pillows, and a candle does not throw its beams too far.
The books in which the love scenes are most violent possess unfading
charm. A hero who says "darling" every time he opens his
finely-chiselled mouth is very near perfection. That fondness lasts
well into the after-years, for "darling" is, above all others, the
favourite term of endearment with a woman.
Were it not for the stern parents and wholesome laws as to age, girls
might more often marry their first loves. It is difficult to conjecture
what the state of civilisation might be, if it were common for people to
marry their first loves, regardless of "age, colour, or previous
condition of servitude."
[Sidenote: Age and Colour]
Age and colour are all-important factors with Mademoiselle. She could
not possibly love a boy three weeks younger than herself, and if her
eyes are blue and her hair light, no blondes need apply.
There is a curious delusion, fostered by phrenologists and other amiable
students of "temperament," to the effect that a brunette must infallibly
fall in love with a blonde and vice versa. What dire misfortune may
result if this rule is not followed can be only surmised, for the
phrenologists do not know. Still, the majority of men are dark and it is
said they do not marry as readily as of yore--is this the secret of the
widespread havoc made by peroxide of hydrogen?
The lurid fiction fever soon runs its course with Mademoiselle, if she
is let alone, and she turns her attention once more to her schoolmates.
She has at least a dozen serious attacks before she is twenty, and at
that ripe age, is often a little _blasé_.
[Sidenote: The Pastime and the Dream]
But the day soon comes when the pretty play is over and the soft eyes
widen with fear. She passes the dividing line between childhood and
womanhood when she first realises that her pastime and her dream have
forged chains around her inmost soul. This, then, is what life holds for
her; it is ecstasy or torture, and for this very thing she was made.
Some man exists whom she will follow to the end of the world, right
royally if she may, but on her knees if she must. The burning sands of
the desert will be as soft grass if he walks beside her, his voice will
make her forget her thirst, and his touch upon her arm will change her
weariness into peace.
When he beckons she must answer. When he says "come," she must not stay.
She must be all things to him--friend, comrade, sweetheart, wife. When
the infinite meaning of her dream slowly dawns upon her, is it strange
that she trembles and grows pale?
Soon or late it comes to all. Sometimes there is terror at the sudden
meeting and Love often comes in the guise of a friend. But always, it
brings joy which is sorrow, and pain which is happiness--gladness which
is never content.
A woman wants a man to love her in the way she loves him; a man wants a
woman to love him in the way he loves her, and because the thing is
impossible, neither is satisfied.
[Sidenote: The Strongest Passion]
Man's emotion is far stronger than woman's. His feeling, when it is
deep, is a force which a woman may but dimly understand. The strongest
passion of a man's life is his love for his sweetheart; woman's greatest
love is lavished upon her child.
"One is the lover and one is the loved." Sometimes the positions are
reversed, to the misery of all concerned, but normally, man is the
lover. He wins love by pleading for it, and there is no way by which a
woman may more surely lose it, for while woman's pity is closely akin to
Love, man's pity is a poor relation who wears Love's cast-off clothes.
There are two other ways in which a woman loses her lover. One is by
marrying him and the other by retaining him as her friend. If she can
keep him as her friend, she never believes in his love, and husbands and
lovers are often two very different possessions.
A man's heart is an office desk, wherein tender episodes are
pigeon-holed for future reference. If he is too busy to look them over,
they are carried off later in Father Time's junk-wagon, like other and
more profane history.
All the isolated loves of a woman's life are woven into a single
continuous fabric. Love itself is the thing she needs and the man who
offers it seldom matters much. Man loves and worships woman, but woman
loves love. Were it not so, there would be no actor's photograph upon
the matinée girl's dressing-table, and no bit of tender verse would be
fastened to her cushion with a hat pin, while she herself was fancy
free.
[Sidenote: Gift and Giver]
All her life long she confuses the gift with the giver, and loving with
the pride of being loved, because her love is responsive rather than
original.
[Sidenote: The Forgotten Harp]
She demands that the lover's devotion shall continue after marriage;
that every look shall be tender and every word adoring. Failing this,
she knows that love is dead. She is inevitably disappointed in marriage,
because she is no longer his fear, intoxication, and pain, but rather
his comrade and friend. The vibrant strings, struck from silence and
dreams to a sounding chord, are trembling still--whispering lingering
music to him who has forgotten the harp.
When a woman once tells a man she loves him, he regards it as some
chemical process which has taken place in her heart and he never
considers the possibility of change. He is little concerned as to its
expression, for he knows it is there. On the contrary, it is only by
expression that a woman ever feels certain of a man's love.
Doubt is the essential and constant quality of her nature, when once she
loves. She continually demands new proof and new devotion, consoling
herself sometimes with the thought that three days ago he said he loved
her and there has been no discord since.
As for him, if his comfort is assured, he never thinks to question her,
for men are as blind as Love. If she seems glad to see him and is not
distinctly unpleasant, she may even be a little preoccupied without
arousing suspicion. A man likes to feel that he is loved and a woman
likes to be told.
The use of any faculty exhausts it. The ear, deafened by a cannon, is
incapable for the moment of hearing the human voice. The eyes,
momentarily blinded by the full glare of the sun, miss the delicate
shades of violet and sapphire in the smoke from a wood fire. We soon
become accustomed to condiments and perfume, and the same law applies to
sentiment and emotion.
[Sidenote: The Lover's Devotion]
Thus it seems to women that men love spasmodically--that the lover's
devotion is a series of unrelated acts based upon momentary impulse,
rather than a steady purpose. They forget that the heart may need more
rest than the interval between beats.
[Sidenote: Attraction and Repulsion]
If a man and woman who truly loved each other were cast away upon a
desert island, he would tire of her long before she wearied of him. The
sequence of attraction and repulsion, the ultimate balance of positive
and negative, are familiar electrical phenomena. Is it unreasonable to
suppose that the supreme form of attraction is governed by the same law?
Strong attractions frequently begin with strong repulsions, sometimes
mutual, but more often on the part of the attracting force. A man seldom
develops a violent and inexplicable hatred for a woman and later finds
that it has unaccountably changed to love.
Yet a woman often marries a man she has sincerely hated, and the
explanation is simple enough, perhaps, for a woman never hates a man
unless he is in some sense her master. Love and hate are kindred
passions with a woman and the depth of the one is the possible measure
of the other.
She is wise who fully understands her weapon of coquetry. She will send
her lover from her at the moment his love is strongest, and he will
often seek her in vain. She will be parsimonious with her letters and
caresses and thus keep her attraction at its height. If he is forever
unsatisfied, he will always be her lover, for satiety must precede
repulsion.
No woman need fear the effect of absence upon the man who honestly
loves her. The needle of the compass, regardless of intervening seas,
points forever toward the north. Pitiful indeed is she who fails to be a
magnet and blindly becomes a chain.
The age has brought with it woman's desire for equality, at least in the
matter of love. She wishes to be as free to seek a man as he is to seek
her--to love him as freely and frankly as he does her. Why should she
withhold her lips after her heart has surrendered? Why should she keep
the pretence of coyness long after she has been won?
[Sidenote: The Old, Old Law]
Far beneath the tinsel of our restless age lies the old, old law, and
she who scorns it does so at the peril of all she holds most dear.
Legislation may at times be disobeyed, but never law, for the breaking
brings swift punishment of its own.
Too often a generous-hearted woman makes the mistake of full revelation.
She wishes him to understand her every deed, her every thought. Nothing
is left to his imagination--the innermost corners of her heart are laid
bare. Given the woman and the circumstances, he would infallibly know
her action. This is why the husbands of the "practical," the
"methodical," and the "reasonable" women may be tender and devoted, but
are never lovers after marriage.
If Alexander had been a woman, he would not have sighed for more worlds
to conquer--woman asks but one. If his world had been a clever woman he
would have had no time for alien planets, because a man will never lose
his interest in a woman while his conquest is incomplete.
The woman who is most tenderly loved and whose husband is still her
lover, carefully conceals from him the fact that she is fully won. There
is always something he has yet to gain.
[Sidenote: A Carmen at Heart]
After ten years of marriage, if the old relation remains the same, it is
because she is a Carmen at heart. She is alluring, tempting, cajoling
and scorning in the same breath; at once tender and commanding,
inspiring both love and fear, baffling and eluding even while she is
leading him on.
She gives him veiled hints of her real personality, but he never
penetrates her mask. Could he see for an instant into the secret depths
of her soul, he would understand that her concealment and her coquetry,
her mystery and her charm, are nothing but her love, playing a desperate
game against Time and man's nature, for the dear stake of his own.
Dumas draws a fine distinction when he says: "A man may have two
passions but never two loves: whoever has loved twice has never loved at
all." If this is true, the dividing line is so exceedingly fine that it
is beyond woman's understanding, and it may be surmised that even man
does not fully realise it until he is old and grey.
[Sidenote: The Cords of Memory]
Yet somewhere, in every man's heart, is hidden a woman's face. To that
inner chamber no other image ever finds its way. The cords of memory
which hold it are strong as steel and as tender as the heart-fibre of
which they are made.
There is no time in his life when those eyes would not thrill him and
those lips make him tremble--no hour when the sound of that voice would
not summon him like a trumpet-call.
No loyalty or allegiance is powerful enough to smother it within his own
heart, in spite of the conditions to which he may outwardly conform.
Other passions may temporarily hide it even from his own sight, yet in
reality it is supreme, from the day of its birth to the door of his
grave.
He may be happily married, as the world counts happiness, and She may be
dead--but never forgotten. No real love or hate is wrought upon by
Lethe. The thousand dreams of her will send his blood in passionate flow
and the thousand memories of her whiten his face with pain. Friendship
is intermittent and passion forgets, but man's single love is eternal.
Because woman's love is responsive, it never dies. Her love of love is
everlasting. Some threads in the fabric she has woven are like shining
silver; others are sombre, broken, and stained with tears. When a man
has once taught a woman to believe his love is true, she is already,
though unconsciously, won.
All the beauty in woman's life is forever associated with her love.
Violets bring the memory of dead days, when the boy-lover brought them
to her in fragrant heaps. Some women say man's love is selfish, but
there is no one among them who has ever been loved by a boy.
[Sidenote: Some Lost Song]
Broken, hesitant chords set some lost song to singing in her heart. The
break in her lover's voice is like another, long ago. Summer days and
summer fields, silver streams, and clouds of apple blossoms set against
the turquoise sky, bring back the Mays of childhood and all the childish
dreams.
This is another thing a man cannot understand--that every little
tenderness of his wakes the memory of all past tenderness, and for that
very reason is often doubly sweet. This is the explanation of sudden
sadness, of the swift succession of moods, and of lips, shut on sobs,
that sometimes quiver beneath his own.
Woman keeps alive the old ideals. Were it not for her eager efforts,
chivalry would have died long ago. King Arthur's Court is said to be a
myth, and Lancelot and Guenevere were only dreams, but the knightly
spirit still lives in man's love for woman.
[Sidenote: The Lady of the Court]
The Lady of the Court was wont to send her knight into danger at her
sweet, capricious will. Her glove upon his helmet, her scarf upon his
arm, her colours on his shield--were they worth the risk of horse and
spear? Yet the little that she gave him, made him invincible in the
field.
To-day there is a subtle change. She is loved as dearly as was
Guenevere, but she gives him neither scarf nor glove. Her love in his
heart is truly his shield and his colours are the white of her soul.
He needs no gage but her belief, and having that, it is a trust only a
coward will betray. The battle is still to the strong, but just as
surely her knight comes back with his shield untarnished, his colours
unstained, and his heart aglow with love of her who gave him courage.
The centuries have brought new striving, which the Lady of the Court
could never know. The daughter of to-day endeavours to be worthy of the
knightly worship--to be royal in her heart and queenly in her giving; to
be the exquisitely womanly woman he sees behind her faulty clay, so that
if the veil of illusion he has woven around her should ever fall away,
the reality might be even fairer than his dream.
Through the sombre pages of history the knights and ladies move, as
though woven in the magic web of the Lady of Shalott. Tournament and
shield and spear, the Round Table and Camelot, have taken on the mystery
of fables and dreams.
[Sidenote: By Grace of Magic]
Yet, by the grace of magic, the sweet old story lives to-day,
unforgotten, because of its single motive. Elaine still dies for love of
Lancelot, Isolde urges Tristram to new proofs of devotion, and
Guenevere, the beautiful, still shares King Arthur's throne. For
chivalry is not dead--- it only sleeps--and the nobleness and valour of
that far-off time are ever at the service of her who has found her
knight.
The Lost Art of Courtship
[Illustration]
The Lost Art of Courtship
[Sidenote: Liberty of Choice]
Civilisation is so acutely developed at present that the old meaning of
courtship is completely lost. None of the phenomena which precede a
proposal would be deemed singular or out of place in a platonic
friendship. This state of affairs gives a man every advantage and all
possible liberty of choice.
Our grandparents are scandalised at modern methods. "Girls never did
so," in the distant years when those dear people were young. If a young
man called on grandmother once a week, and she approved of him and his
prospects, she began on her household linen, without waiting for the
momentous question.
Judging by the fiction of the period and by the delightful tales of old
New England, which read like fairy stories to this generation, the
courtships of those days were too leisurely to be very interesting.
Ten-year engagements did not seem to be unusual, and it was not
considered a social mistake if a man suddenly disappeared for four or
five years, without the formality of mentioning his destination to the
young woman who expected to marry him.
[Sidenote: Faithful Maidens]
We have all read of the faithful maidens who kept on weaving stores of
fine linen and making regular pilgrimages for the letter which did not
come. Years afterward, when the man finally appeared, it was all right,
and the wedding went on just the same, even though in the meantime the
recreant knight had married and been bereaved.
Two or three homeless children were sometimes brought cheerfully into
the story, and assisted materially in the continuation of the
interrupted courtship. The tears which the modern spinster sheds over
such a tale are not at the pathos of the situation, but because it is
possible, even in fiction, for a woman to be so destitute of spirit.
[Sidenote: Without Saying a Word]
"In dem days," as Uncle Remus would say, any attention whatever meant
business. Small courtesies which are without significance now were
fraught with momentous import then. In this year of grace, among all
races except our own, there are ways in which a man may definitely
commit himself without saying a word.
A flower or a serenade is almost equivalent to a proposal in sunny
Spain. A "walking-out" period of six months is much in vogue in other
parts of Europe, but the daughter of the Anglo-Saxon has no such guide
to a man's intentions.
Among certain savage tribes, if a man is in love with a girl and wishes
to marry her, he drags her around his tent by the hair or administers a
severe beating. It may be surmised that these attentions are not
altogether pleasant, but she has the advantage of knowing what the man
means.
Flowers are a pretty courtesy and nothing more. The kindly thought which
prompts them may be as transient as their bloom. Three or four men
serenade girls on summer nights because they love to hear themselves
sing. Books, and music, and sweets, which convention decrees are the
only proper gifts for the unattached, may be sent to any girl, without
affecting her indifference to furniture advertisements and January sales
of linen.
If there is any actual courtship at the present time, the girl does just
as much of it as the man. Her dainty remembrances at holiday time have
little more meaning than the trifles a man bestows upon her, though the
gift latitude accorded her is much wider in scope.
[Sidenote: Furniture]
When a girl gives a man furniture, she usually intends to marry him, but
often merely succeeds in making things interesting for the girl who does
it in spite of her. The newly-married woman attends to the personal
belongings of her happy possessor with the celerity which is taught in
classes for "First Aid to the Injured."
One by one, the cherished souvenirs of his bachelor days disappear.
Pictures painted by rival fair ones go to adorn the servant's room,
through gradual retirement backward. Rare china is mysteriously broken.
Sofa cushions never "harmonise with the tone of the room," and the
covers have to be changed. It takes time, but usually by the first
anniversary of a man's marriage, his penates have been nobly weeded
out, and the things he has left are of his wife's choosing, generously
purchased with his own money.
Woe to the girl who gives a man a scarf-pin! When the bride returns the
initial call, that scarf-pin adds conspicuously to her adornment. The
calm appropriation makes the giver grind her teeth--- and the bride
knows it.
In the man's presence, the keeper of his heart and conscience will say,
sweetly: "Oh, my dear, such a dreadful thing has happened! That
exquisitely embroidered scarf you made for Tom's chiffonier is utterly
ruined! The colours ran the first time it was washed. You have no idea
how I feel about it--it was such a beautiful thing!"
The wretched donor of the scarf attempts consolation by saying that it
doesn't matter. It never was intended for Tom, but as every stitch in it
was taken while he was with her, he insisted that he must have it as a
souvenir of that happy summer. She adds that it was carefully washed
before it was given to him, that she has never known that kind of silk
to fade, and that something must have been done to it to make the
colours run.
[Sidenote: A Pitched Battle]
The short-sighted man at this juncture felicitates himself because the
two are getting on so well together. He never realises that a pitched
battle has occurred under his very nose, and that the honours are about
even.
If Tom possesses a particularly unfortunate flash-light photograph of
the girl, the bride joyfully frames it and puts it on the mantel where
all may see. If the original of the caricature remonstrates, the happy
wife sweetly temporises and insists that it remain, because "Tom is so
fond of it," and says, "it looks just like her."
Devious indeed are the paths of woman. She far excels the "Heathen
Chinee" in his famous specialty of "ways that are dark and tricks that
are vain."
Courtship is a game that a girl has to play without knowing the trump.
The only way she ever succeeds at it is by playing to an imaginary trump
of her own, which may be either open, disarming friendliness, or simple
indifference.
When a man finds the way to a woman's heart a boulevard, he has taken
the wrong road. When his path is easy and his burden light, it is time
for him to doubt. When his progress seems like making a new way to the
Klondike, he needs only to keep his courage and go on.
For, after all, it is woman who decides. A clever girl may usually marry
any man she sees fit to honour with the responsibility of her bills. The
ardent lover counts for considerably less than he is wont to suppose.
[Sidenote: The Only One They Know]
There is a good old scheme which the world of lovers has unanimously
adopted, in order to find out where they stand. It is so simple as to
make one weep, but it is the only one they know. This consists of an
intentional absence, judiciously timed.
Suppose a man has been spending three or four evenings a week with the
same girl, for a period of two or three months. Flowers, books, and
chocolates have occasionally appeared, as well as invitations to the
theatre. The man has been fed out of the chafing-dish, and also with
accidental cake, for men are as fond of sugar as women, though they are
ashamed to admit it.
Suddenly, without warning, the man misses an evening, then another, then
another. Two weeks go by, and still no man. The neighbours and the
family begin to ask questions of a personal nature.
It is at this stage that the immature and childish woman will write the
man a note, expressing regret for his long absence, and trusting that
nothing may interfere with their "pleasant friendship." Sometimes the
note brings the man back immediately and sometimes it doesn't. He very
seldom condescends to make an explanation. If he does, it is merely a
casual allusion to "business." This is the only excuse even a bright man
can think of.
[Sidenote: "Climbing a Tree"]
This act is technically known among girls as "climbing a tree." When a
man does it, he wants a girl to bring a ladder and a lunch and plead
with him to come down and be happy, but doing as he wishes is no way to
attract a man up a tree.
Men are as impervious to tears and pleadings as a good mackintosh to
mist, but at the touch of indifference, they melt like wax. So when her
quondam lover attempts metaphorical athletics, the wise girl smiles and
withdraws into her shell.
She takes care that he shall not see her unless he comes to her. She
draws the shades the moment the lamps are lighted. If he happens to pass
the house in the evening, he may think she is out, or that she has
company--it is all the same to her. She arranges various evenings with
girl friends and gets books from the library. This is known as
"provisioning the citadel for a siege."
[Sidenote: Pride and Pride]
It is a contest between pride and pride which occurs in every courtship,
and the girl usually wins. True lovers are as certain to return as
Bo-Peep's flock or a systematically deported cat. Shame-faced, but
surely, the man comes back.
Various laboratory note-books yield the same result. A single entry
indicates the general trend of the affair.
_MAN calls on GIRL after five weeks of unexplained absence. She asks no
questions, but keeps the conversation impersonal, even after he shows
symptoms of wishing to change its character._
MAN. (_Finally._) "I haven't seen you for an awfully long time."
GIRL. "Haven't you? Now that I think of it, it has been some time."
MAN. "How long has it been, I wonder?"
GIRL. "I haven't the least idea. Ten days or two weeks, I guess."
MAN. (_Hastily._) "Oh no, it's been much longer than that. Let's see,
it's"--(_makes great effort with memory_)--"why, it's five weeks! Five
weeks and three days! Don't you remember?"
GIRL. "I hadn't thought of it. It doesn't seem that long. How time does
fly, doesn't it!" (_Long silence._)
MAN. "I've been awfully busy. I wanted to come over, but I just
couldn't."
GIRL. "I've been very busy, too." (_Voluminous detail of her affairs
follows, entirely pleasant in character._)
MAN. (_Tenderly._) "Were you so busy you didn't miss me?"
GIRL. "Why, I can't say I missed you, exactly, but I always thought of
you pleasantly."
MAN. "Did you think of me often?"
GIRL. (_Laughing._) "I didn't keep any record of it. Do you want me to
cut a notch in the handle of my parasol every time I think of you? If
all my friends were so exacting, I'd have time for nothing else. I'd
need a new one every week and the house would be full of shavings. All
my fingers would be cut, too."
MAN. (_Unconsciously showing his hand._) "I thought you'd write me a
note."
[Sidenote: His Short Suit]
GIRL. (_Leading his short suit._) "You could have waited on your front
steps till the garbage man took you away, and I wouldn't have written
you any note."
MAN. (_With evident sincerity._) "That's no dream! I could do just
that!" (_Proposal follows in due course, MAN making full and complete
confession._)
If he is foolish enough to complicate his game with another girl, he
loses much more than he gains, for he lowers the whole affair to the
level of a flirtation, and destroys any belief the girl may have had in
him. He also forces her to do the same thing, in self-defence.
Flirtation is the only game in which it is advisable and popular to
trump one's partner's ace.
He who would win a woman must challenge her admiration, prove himself
worthy of her regard, appeal to her sympathy--and then wound her. She
is never wholly his until she realises that he has the power to make her
miserable as well as to make her happy, and that love is an infinite
capacity for suffering.
A man who does it consciously is apt to overdo it, out of sheer
enthusiasm, and if a girl suspects that it is done intentionally, the
hurt loses its sting and changes her love to bitterness. A succession of
attempts is also useless, for a man never hurts a woman twice in exactly
the same way. When he has run the range of possible stabs, she is out of
his reach--unless she is his wife.
[Sidenote: A State Secret]
The intentional absence scheme is too transparent to succeed, and
temporary devotion to another girl is definite damage to his cause, for
it indicates fickleness and instability. There is only one way by which
a man may discover his true position without asking any questions, and
that is--a state secret. Now and then a man strikes it by accident, but
nobody ever tells--even brothers or platonic friends.
Some men select a wife as they would a horse, paying due attention to
appearance, gait, disposition, age, teeth, and grooming. High spirits
and a little wildness are rather desirable than otherwise, if both are
young. Men who have had many horses or many wives and have grown old
with both, have a slight inclination toward sedate ways and domestic
traits.
[Sidenote: The "Woman's Column"]
Modern society makes it fully as easy to choose the one as the other. In
communities where the chaperone idea is at its prosperous zenith, a man
may see a girl under nearly all circumstances. The men who conduct the
"Woman's Column" in many pleasing journals are still writing of the
effect it has on a man to catch a girl in curl papers of a morning,
though curl papers have been obsolete for many and many a moon.
Cycling, golf, and kindred out-door amusements have been the death of
careless morning attire. Uncorseted woman is unhappy woman, and the girl
of whom the versatile journalist writes died long ago. Perhaps it is
because a newspaper man can write anything at four minutes' notice and
do it well, that the press fairly reeks with "advice to women."
The question, propounded in a newspaper column, "What Kind of a Girl
Does a Man Like Best," will bring out a voluminous symposium which adds
materially to the gaiety of the nation. It would be only fair to have
this sort of thing temporarily reversed--to tell men how to make home
happy for their wives and how to keep a woman's love, after it has once
been given.
Some clever newspaper woman might win everlasting laurels for herself if
she would contribute to this much neglected branch of human knowledge.
How is a man to know that a shirt-front which looks like a railroad map
diverts one's mind from his instructive remarks? How is he to know that
a cane is a nuisance when he fares forth with a girl? It is true that
sisters might possibly attempt this, but the modern sister is heavily
overworked at present and it is not kind to suggest an addition to her
cares.
[Sidenote: Neglected By His Kind]
There is no advice of any sort given to men except on the single subject
of choosing a wife. This is to be found only in the books in the
Sabbath-School library, or in occasional columns of the limited number
of saffron dailies which illuminate the age. Surely, man has been
neglected by his kind!
[Sidenote: Indecision]
The general masculine attitude indicates widespread belief in the
promise, "Ask, and ye shall receive." A man will tell his best friend
that he doesn't know whether to marry a certain girl. If she hears of
his indecision there is trouble ahead, if he finally decides in the
affirmative, and it is quite possible that he may not marry her.
After the door of a woman's heart has once swung on its silent hinges, a
man thinks he can prop it open with a brick and go away and leave it. A
storm is apt to displace the brick, however--and there is a heavy spring
on the door. Woe to the masculine finger that is in the way!
A man often hesitates between two young women and asks his friends which
he shall marry. Custom has permitted the courtship of both and neither
has the right to feel aggrieved, because it is exceedingly bad form for
a girl to love a man before he has asked her to.
Now and then a third girl is a man's confidante at this trying period.
Nothing so bores a person as to be a man's "guide, philosopher and
friend" in his perplexities with other girls. To one distinct class of
women men tell their troubles and the other class sees that they have
plenty to tell. It is better to be in the second category than in the
first.
Sooner or later, the confidante explains the whole affair to the
subjects of the confidence and strange, new kinds of trouble immediately
come to the rash man. It is a common failing to expect another person to
keep a secret which we have just proved is beyond our own capability.
[Sidenote: The Adamantine Fortress]
When a man has once deeply wounded a woman's pride, he may just as well
give up his hope of winning her. At that barrier, the little blind god
may plead in vain. Love's face may be sad, his big, sightless eyes soft
with tears, and his helpless hands outstretched in pleading and prayer,
but that stern sentinel will never yield. Wounded love is easily
forgiven, wounded belief sometimes forgotten, but wounded pride--never.
It is the adamantine fortress. There is only one path which leads to the
house of forgiveness--that of understanding, and it is impassable if
woman's pride has come between.
A girl never knows whether a courtship is in progress or not, unless a
man tells her. He may be interested and amused, but not in love. It is
only in the comic papers that a stern parent waits upon the continuous
caller and demands to know his "intentions," so a girl must, perforce,
be her own guide.
[Sidenote: The Continuous Caller]
A man may call upon a girl so constantly and so regularly that the
neighbours daily expect wedding invitations, and the family inquire why
he does not have his trunk sent to the house. Later, quite casually, he
will announce his engagement to a girl who is somewhere else. This
fiancée is always a peculiarly broad-minded girl who knows all about her
lover's attentions to the other and does not in the least object. She
wants him to "have a good time" when he is away from her, and he is
naturally anxious to please her. He wants the other girl to know his
wife--he is sure they will be good friends.
Lasting feminine friendships are not built upon foundations of that
kind. It is very unfortunate, for the world would be gladdened by many
more than now exist.
According to geometry, "things which are equal to the same thing are
equal to each other," and it would seem, from the standpoint of pure
reason, that people who are fond of the same people would naturally be
congenial and take pleasure in being together.
But a sensitive spinster is often grieved when she discovers that her
men friends do not readily assimilate. If she leaves two of them to
entertain each other, the conversation does not flow with desirable
spontaneity. There is no lack of courtesy between them, however, even of
that finer sort which keeps them both there, lest one, by leaving,
should seem to remind his companion that it was late.
On the contrary, if a man is fond of two different girls, they are
seldom to be seen apart. They exchange long visits regularly and this
thoughtfulness often saves him from making an extra call.
[Sidenote: A Happy Triumvirate]
A happy triumvirate is thus formed and the claws of it do not show.
Sometimes it is hard to decide between them, and he cuts the Gordian
knot by marrying someone else, but the friendship is never the same
afterward. The girls are no longer boon companions and when the man
crosses their paths, they manage to convey the impression of great
distance.
[Sidenote: Narrowed Down to Two]
In the beginning, almost any number may join in the game, but the
inevitable process of selection eventually narrows it down to two.
Society has given men a little the best of it, but perhaps woman's finer
sight compensates her for the apparent disadvantages--and even Love, who
deals the cards, is too blind to see the fatal consequences of his
mistakes.
The Natural History of Proposals
[Illustration]
The Natural History of Proposals
[Sidenote: The Inquiring Spinster]
There is no subject which presents more difficulties to the inquiring
spinster. Contemporary spinsters, when approached upon the topic, are
anything but encouraging; apparently lacking the ability to distinguish
between impertinent intrusion into their personal affairs and the
scientific spirit which prompts the collection of statistics.
Married women, when asked to repeat the exact language of the lover at
the happy moment, are wont to transfix the sensitive aspirant for
knowledge with lofty scorn. Mothers are accustomed to dissemble and say
they "have forgotten." Men in general are uncommunicative, though
occasionally some rare soul will expand under the influence of food and
freely give more valuable information than can be extracted from an
indefinite number of women.
One's own experience is naturally limited, even though proposals
constitute the main joy and excitement of the spinster's monotonous
life. Emerson says: "All is sour if seen as experience," though the
gentle sage was not referring especially to offers of marriage.
Nevertheless, there is a charm about other people's affairs which would
render life beautiful indeed if it could be added to one's own.
Nothing strengthens a woman's self-confidence like a proposal. One is a
wonder, two a superfluity, and three an epidemic. Four are proof of
unusual charm, five go to the head, and it is a rare girl whom six or
seven will not permanently spoil.
[Sidenote: Disillusion]
To the girl fed upon fiction, the first proposal comes in the nature of
a shock. Disillusion follows as a matter of course. Men, evidently, do
not read fiction, or at least do not profit by the valuable hints to be
found in any novel.
A small book entitled: _How Men Propose_, was eagerly sought by young
women who were awaiting definite experience. This was discovered to be a
collection of proposals carefully selected from fiction. It was done
with care and discernment, but was not satisfying. The natural
inference was that the actual affairs were just like those in the book.
[Sidenote: "In Books?"]
Nothing can exceed the grace and tenderness with which men propose--in
books. Such chivalrous worship, such pleasing deference is accorded--in
books! Such pretty pleading, such knightly vows of eternal allegiance,
as are always found--in books!
The hero of a few years back was wont to make his offer on his knees. He
also haunted the home of the beloved maiden, deeming himself well repaid
for five hours wait if he had a fleeting glimpse of her at the window.
Torn hair was frequent, and refusal drove men to suicide and madness.
The young women who were the cause of all this trouble were never more
than eighteen or twenty years of age. Mature spinsters of twenty-five
figured as envious deterrents in the happy affair. Many a story-book
marriage has been spoiled by the jealousy of the wrinkled rival of
twenty-five.
[Sidenote: The First Proposal]
The violent protestations of the lover in the novel were indeed
something to be awaited with fear and trembling. With her anticipations
aroused by this kind of reading and her eagerness whetted by
interminable years of waiting, Mademoiselle receives her first offer of
marriage.
She is in doubt, at first, as to whether it is a proposal. It seems like
some dreadful mistake. Where is the courtly manner of the lover in the
book? What is the matter with this red-faced boy? Where is the pretty
pleading, the gracious speech? Why should a lover stammer and confuse
his verbs?
Mademoiselle recoils in disgust. This, then, is what she has been
waiting for. It is not at all like the book. Her lover is entirely
different from other girls' lovers--so different that he is pathetic.
Her faith in the gospel of romance is sadly shaken, when the next
experience is a great deal like the first. No one, in the book, could
doubt the lover's meaning. Yet in the halting sentences and confused
metaphors of actual experience, there is sometimes much question as to
what he really means. A girl often has to ask a man if he has just
proposed to her, that she may accept or refuse, in a gracious and proper
way.
[Sidenote: The Ordeal]
In a girl's early ideas on the subject, she has much sympathy for the
man who has to undergo the ordeal of asking a woman to be his wife. She
thinks he must contemplate the momentous step for weeks, await the
opportunity with expectant terror, and when his lady is in a happy mood,
recite with fear and trembling, the proposal which he has written out
and learned, appropriately enough, by heart.
Later, she comes to know that after the first few times, men propose as
thoughtlessly and easily as they dress for dinner, that they devote no
particular study to the art, that constant practice makes them
proficient, and that almost any girl will do when the proposal mood is
on.
She discovers that they often do it simply to make a pleasing impression
upon a girl, with no thought of acceptance. Many an engagement is more
of a surprise to the man than to anybody else.
Because fiction comes very near to the heart of woman, she invariably
follows its dictates and shows great astonishment at every proposal. The
women who have been thus surprised are even more rare than days in
June.
[Sidenote: The False and the True]
When a man begins to compare a girl to a flower, a baby, or a kitten,
she knows what is coming next. She spends her mental energy in
distinguishing the false from the true--which is sufficient employment
for anyone. There is not enough cerebral tissue to waste much of it upon
unnecessary processes.
It is very hard to tell whether a man really means a proposal. It may
have been made under romantic circumstances, or because he was lonesome
for the other girl, or, in the case of an heiress, because he was tired
of work. Longing for the absent sweetheart will frequently cause a man
to become engaged to someone near by, because, though absence may make a
woman's heart grow fonder, it is presence that plays the mischief with a
man. No wise girl would accept a man who proposed by moonlight or just
after a meal. The dear things aren't themselves then.
Food, properly served, will attract a proposal at almost any time,
especially if it is known that the pleasing viands were of the girl's
own making. Cooking and love may seem at first glance to be widely
separated, but no woman can have one without the other. The brotherly
love for all creation, which emanates from the well-fed man, overflows,
concentrates, and naturally becomes a proposal.
[Sidenote: Written Proposals]
Other things being equal, a written proposal is apt to be genuine,
especially if it is signed with the full name and address of the writer,
and the date is not omitted. Long and painful experience in the courts
of his country has made man wary of direct evidence.
But a written proposal is extremely bad form. A girl never can be sure
that her lover did not attempt to fish it out of the letter-box after it
had slipped from his fingers. The author of _How to Be Happy, Though
Married_, once saw a miserable young man attempting to get his
convicting letter back by means of a forked stick. The sight must be
quite common everywhere. Proposing in haste and repenting at leisure is
not by any means unusual.
Then, too, a girl misses a possible opportunity of seeing a man blush
and stammer. One does not often get a chance to see a man willingly
making himself ridiculous, and the spectacle is worth waiting for.
[Sidenote: Confusion and Awkwardness]
Confusion and awkwardness are high trumps with a woman, for they
indicate inexperience and uncertainty. The man who proposes in a
finished and nonchalant manner, as if he had done it frequently and were
sure of the result, is now and then astonished at a refusal. It is also
a risk to offer a ring immediately after acceptance. The suspicion is
that the ring has been worn before, or else the man was sure enough of
the girl to invest heavily in his future.
Sometimes a man will disclose to a platonic friend the form he
habitually employs in proposals. The hero of battle engagements has
proverbial charm for woman, and the hero of matrimonial engagements is
meat and drink to the spinster athirst for knowledge.
Feed the man, and when the brotherly love for the entire universe begins
to radiate, approach him gently upon the subject.
"Why, bless your little heart," the man will say, "of course I'll tell
you about it. Yes, you're right in supposing that I know more about it
than anyone else you know. I've never been refused in my life and I
know I've asked a hundred. I've had medals for that.
"I always try to make each one different," he will continue. "Girls
sometimes compare notes and it makes it awkward. The girl I'm engaged to
now doesn't know any of my other girls, though, so I'm safe enough.
[Sidenote: "One of the Best Proposals"]
"I'll never forget the way I did that. I think it was one of the best
proposals I ever made. She's a mighty pretty little thing,--blue eyes
and black hair,--a regular Irish type. I must tell you first, though,
how I came to know her.
"The one I was engaged to just before I asked her, had just broken it
off on account of property which her children would lose if she married
again. She was a widow, you know. I've told you about her--the one with
red hair. Between you and me, that's the only woman in God's world my
heart ever went out to. That is the love of my life. Her little girl,
eleven years old, was in love with me, too. She used to tremble when I
kissed her, and was jealous of her mother. But this little girl I'm
engaged to now, why I just love the ground she walks on.
[Sidenote: "A Very Peculiar Affair"]
"Well," after a pause, "this was a very peculiar affair. Of course I was
all broken up over losing her--couldn't eat nor sleep--I was a perfect
wreck. This old friend of mine happened along, and he says, 'You'll have
to brace up, old man. Come on out to my house in the country and rest up
a bit.' So I went, and met his daughter.
"Five days after I met her, I asked him for her hand. I explained it to
him just as I would to my own father, and he understood all right. He's
a fine fellow. He said I could have her. Of course I'd asked her first.
"Yes--I'm getting to that. I took her out for a walk one afternoon, and
when we came to the river, we sat down to talk. It was a perfect day. I
began by saying how sad it was to see a beautiful flower and to know
that it was out of one's reach, or to see anything beautiful and know
that one never could possess it. I led up to the subject by gentle
degrees, and then I said: 'You must have seen that I love you, and you
know without my telling you, that I want you to be my wife. I don't say
I want you to marry me, because I want you to do more than that--I want
you to be my wife.' (Fine distinction that!)
"Well, she was very much surprised, of course, but she accepted me all
right. Yes, I told her about the other woman, but in such a way that she
understood it perfectly. Lots of other fellows wanted her and I snatched
the prize from right under their very noses. I don't suppose I'll ever
propose any more now. I'd never propose to you, even if I were free to
do so, because I know you'd refuse me. You'd refuse me, wouldn't you?
Somebody else might just as well have me, if you don't want me."
[Sidenote: In Spite of Varied Resources]
Yet in spite of the varied resources at woman's command, we sometimes
hear of one who yearns for the privilege of seeking man in marriage. The
woman who longs for the right to propose is evidently not bright enough
to bring a man to the point.
Still worse than this, there are cases on record where women, not
reigning queens, have actually proposed to men. The men who are thus
sought in the bonds of matrimony are not slow to tell of it, confining
themselves usually to their own particular circle of men friends. But
the news sometimes filters through man's capacity to keep a secret, and
the knowledge is diffused among interested spinsters.
[Sidenote: Hints]
What men term "hints" are not out of place, for the proposal market
would be less active, were it not for "hints." But these are seldom
given in words--unless a man happens to be particularly stupid.
When the proposal habit is not firmly fastened upon a man, and he begins
to have serious designs upon some one girl, she knows it long before he
does. Incidentally, the family and the neighbours have their suspicions.
Woman, with her strong dramatic instinct, wishes the proposal to occur
according to accepted rules. Hence, if a man shows symptoms of
whispering the momentous question in a crowd, he is apt to be delicately
discouraged, and if the girl is not satisfied with her own appearance,
there will also be postponement. No girl wants to be proposed to when
her hair is dishevelled, her collar wilted, and her soul distraught by
pestiferous mosquitoes.
But an ambitious and painstaking girl will arrange the stage for a
proposal, with untiring patience, months before it actually happens.
When she practices assiduously all the morning, that she may execute
difficult passages with apparent ease in the evening, and willingly
turns the freezer that there may be cooling ice opportunely left after
dinner, to "melt if somebody doesn't eat it," she expects something to
happen.
When the man finally appears, and the little brother marches off like a
well-trained soldier, with two nickels jingling in his pocket, even the
victim might be on his guard. When the family are unceremoniously put
out of the house, and father, mother, and sisters are seen in the summer
twilight, wandering in disconsolate pairs, let the neighbours keep away
from the house under penalty of the girl's lasting hate.
Sometimes, when the family have been put out, and the common human
interest leads intimate spinster friends to pass the house, there is
nothing to be seen but the girl playing accompaniments for the man while
he sings.
Yet the initiated know, for if a girl only praises a man's singing
enough, he will most surely propose to her before many moons have
passed. The scheme has a two-fold purpose, because all may see that he
finds the house attractive, and if no engagement is announced, the
entire affair may easily be explained upon musical and platonic grounds.
[Sidenote: A Formal Proposal]
Owing to the distorted methods of courtship which prevail at the present
day, a girl may never be sure that a man really cares for her until he
makes a formal proposal. If a man were accepted the minute he proposed,
he would think the girl had been his for some time, and would
unconsciously class her as among those easily won.
The insinuation that she has been easily won is the thing which is not
to be borne. It may have been simple enough, in fact, but let a man
beware how he trifles with this delicate subject, even after fifty years
of marriage.
[Sidenote: On Probation]
Consequently, it is the proper thing to take the matter under advisement
and never to accept definitely without a period of probation. This is
the happiest time of a girl's life. She is absolutely sure of her lover
and may administer hope, fear, doubt, and discouragement to her heart's
content.
The delicate attentions which are showered upon her are the envy of
every spinster on the street who does not know the true state of the
affair. Sometimes, with indifferent generosity, she divides her roses
and invites the less fortunate to share her chocolates. This always
pleases the man, if he knows about it.
Also, because she is not in the least bound, she makes the best of this
last freedom and accepts the same courtesies from other men. Nothing is
so well calculated to sound the depths of original sin in man's nature,
as to find his rival's roses side by side with his, when a girl has him
on probation. And he never feels so entirely similar to an utter idiot,
as when he sees a girl to whom he has definitely committed himself,
flirting cheerfully with two or three other men.
Woe be to him if he remonstrates! For Mademoiselle is testing him with
this end in view. If he complains bitterly of her outrageous behaviour,
she dismisses him with sorrowful dignity, jealousy being the one thing
she cannot tolerate in men.
[Sidenote: Opportunity for Fine Work]
There is opportunity for fine work in the situation which the young
woman immediately develops. A man may take his choice of the evils which
lie before him, for almost anything may happen.
He may complain, and if he shows anger, there is war. If he betrays
jealousy, there is trouble which marriage will accentuate, rather than
lessen. If he shows concern because his beloved is so fickle, and
insinuates that so unstable a person will not make a good wife, he
touches pride in a vital spot and his cause is no more. Let him be
manfully unconcerned; as far above jealousy and angry reproach as a St.
Bernard is above a kitten--and Mademoiselle is his.
Philosophers laugh at woman's fickleness, but her constancy, when once
awakened, endures beyond life and death, and sometimes beyond betrayal.
But this is not to be won by a jealous man, for jealousy is the
mother-in-law of selfishness, and a woman never permits a man to rival
her in her own particular field.
[Sidenote: Another Danger]
If a man safely passes the test of probation, there is yet another
danger which lies between him and the realisation of his ambition. This
is the tendency of women to conduct excavations into a man's previous
affairs.
He needs the wisdom of the serpent at this juncture, for under the
smiling sweetness a dagger is often concealed. If the point is allowed
to show during an engagement, the whole blade will frequently flash
during marriage.
"Yes, dearest," a man will say, tenderly, "I have loved before, but that
was long ago--long before I met you. She was beautiful, tall, dark,
majestic, with a regal nature like herself--Good Heavens, how I loved
her!"
This is apt to continue for some little time, if a man gets thoroughly
interested in his subject and thinks he is talking rather well, before
he discovers that his petite blonde divinity is either a frozen statue,
or a veritable Niobe as to tears. And not one man in three hundred and
nineteen ever suspects what he has done!
[Sidenote: The Thought of Defection]
A woman is more jealous of the girls a man has loved, whom she has never
seen, than of any number of attractive rivals. In the blind adoration
which he yields her, she takes no thought of immediate defection, for
her smile always makes him happy--her voice never loses its mystic power
over his senses.
On the contrary, a man never stoops to be jealous of the men who have
pleaded in vain for what he has won, nor even of possible fiancés whom
later discretion has discarded. He is sure of her at the present moment
and his doubt centres itself comfortably upon the future, which is
always shadowy and unreal to a man, because he is less imaginative than
woman.
And yet--there is no more dangerous companion for a woman than the man
who has loved her. It is easier to waken a woman's old love than to
teach her a new affection. Strangely enough, the woman a man has once
loved and then forgotten is powerless in the after years. A man's dead
friendship may dream of resurrection, but never his dead love.
Jealousy and distrust have never yet won a doubting heart. Bitterness
never accomplishes miracles which sweetness fails to do. Too often men
and women spend their time in wondering why they are not loved, trying
various schemes and pitiful experiments, and passing by the simple
method of trying to be lovable and unconscious of self.
[Sidenote: "The Milk of Human Kindness"]
"The milk of human kindness" seldom produces cream, but there is only
one way by which love may be won or kept. Perfection means a continual
shifting of standards and must ever be unattainable, but the man or
woman who is simply lovable will be wholly taken into other
hearts--faults and all.
Now and then a man's love is hopeless, from causes which are innate and
beyond control. Sometimes regret strikes deep and lasts for more than a
day, as in the pages of the story books which women love to read.
Sometimes, too, a tender-hearted woman, seeing far into the future, will
do her best to spare a fellow-creature pain.
[Sidenote: The Wine of Conquest]
But this is the exception, rather than the rule. The average woman
regards a certain number of proposals as but a just tribute to her own
charm. Sometimes she sees what she has unconsciously done when it is too
late to retreat, but even then, though pity, regret, and honest pain
may result from it, there is one effect more certain still--the
intoxication of the wine of conquest, against which no woman is proof.
Love Letters: Old and New
[Illustration]
Love Letters: Old and New
[Sidenote: The Average Love Letter]
The average love letter is sufficient to make a sensitive spinster weep,
unless she herself is in love and the letter be addressed to her. The
first stage of the tender passion renders a man careless as to his
punctuation, the second seriously affects his spelling, and in the last
period of the malady, his grammar develops locomotor ataxia. The single
blessedness of school-teachers is largely to be attributed to this
cause.
A real love letter is absolutely ridiculous to everyone except the
writer and the recipient. A composition, which repeats the same term of
endearment thirteen times on a page, has certainly no particular claim
to literary art.
When a man writes a love letter, dated, and fully identified by name and
address, there is no question but that he is in earnest. A large number
of people consider nothing so innocently entertaining as love letters,
read in a court-room, with due attention to effect, by the counsel for
the other side.
Affairs of that kind are given scarlet headlines in the saffron
journals, and if the letters are really well done, it means the sale of
an "extra." No man can hope to write anything which will possess such
general interest as his love letters. If Shakespeare had written
voluminously to his sweetheart--to any of his sweethearts--and the
letters should be found by this generation, what a hue and cry would be
raised over his peaceful ashes!
[Sidenote: Sins of Commission]
Doing the things which ought not to be done never loses fascination and
charm. The rare pleasure thus obtained far exceeds the enjoyment of
leaving undone things which ought to be done. Sins of commission are far
more productive of happiness than the sins of omission.
[Sidenote: For Posterity]
Thus people whose sense of honour would not permit them to read an open
letter which belonged to someone else will go by thousands to purchase
the published letters of some famous man. Dr. Arbuthnot, in speaking of
the publication of letters, said that it added a new terror to death, so
true it is that while a man may think for the present, he unavoidably
writes for posterity.
No passion is too sacred to be hidden from the eagle eye of the public.
The death of anyone of more than passing fame is followed by a volume of
"letters." It is pathetic to read these posthumous pages, which should
have been buried with the hands that wrote them, or consigned to the
never-failing mercy of the flames.
Burial has not always sufficed. The manuscript of one well-known book of
poems was buried with the lady to whom they were written, but in later
years her resting-place was disturbed, with the consent of her lover,
for this very manuscript.
Her golden hair had grown after her death, and was found closely
entwined with the written pages--so closely that it had to be cut. The
loving embrace which Death would not break was rudely forced to yield.
Even in her "narrow house" she might not keep her love letters in peace,
since the public wanted to read what had been written for her alone and
the publisher was waiting for "copy."
[Sidenote: Letters in a Grave]
In a paper of the _Tatler_, written by Addison or Steele, or possibly
by both, is described a party in a country village which is suddenly
broken into confusion by the entrance of the sexton of their parish
church, fresh from the digging of a grave. The sexton tells the
merrymakers how a chance blow of his pickaxe has opened a decayed
coffin, in which are discovered several papers.
These are found to be the love letters received by the wife of Sir
Thomas Chichley, one of the admirals of King William. Most of the
letters were ruined by damp and mould, but "here and there," says the
_Tatler_, "a few words such as 'my soul,' 'dearest,' 'roses,' and 'my
angel,' still remained legible, resisting the corrupting influence of
Time."
One of these letters in a grave, which Lady Chichley had requested might
be buried with her in her coffin, was found entire, though discoloured
by the lapse of twenty years. Its words were these:
"Madam:
"If you would know the greatness of my love, consider that of your own
beauty. That blooming countenance, that snowy bosom, that graceful
person, return every moment to my imagination; the brightness of your
eyes hindered me from closing mine since I last saw you. You may still
add to your beauties by a smile. A frown will make me the most wretched
of men, as I am the most passionate of lovers."
[Sidenote: The Advertisement]
Death is the advertisement, at the end of an autobiography, wherein
people discover its virtues. The public which refused a bare subsistence
to the living genius will make his children comfortable by generously
purchasing his letters, which were never meant for them.
The pathetic story of the inner struggle, which would have crucified the
sensitive soul were it known to any save his dearest friends, is proudly
blazoned forth--in print! Hopes and fears and trials are no longer
concealed. Illness, poverty, and despair are given rubricated pages. The
sorrowful letter to a friend, asking for five or ten dollars, is
reproduced in facsimile.
[Sidenote: The Soldier of the World]
That it shows the human side of the genius is no excuse for the
desecration. What of the sunny soul who always sang courage, while he
himself was suffering from hope deferred! What of him who wrote in an
attic, often hungry for his daily bread, and took care to give the
impression of warmth and comfort! Why should his stern necessity be
disclosed to the public that would not give him bread in return for his
songs? It is enough to make the gallant soldier of the world turn
uneasily in his grave.
In this way a bit of the greatness so bravely won is often lost, and
sometimes illusions are dispelled which all must regret. For years, we
have read with delight Mrs. Browning's exquisite poem beginning:
"I have a name, a little name
Uncadenced for the ear."
Throughout the poem there is no disclosure, but, so sure is her art,
that there is no sense of loss or wonder. But the pitiless searchlight
of the century is turned upon the Browning love letters, and thus we
learn that Mrs. Browning's pet name was _Ba_!
Pretty enough, perhaps, when spoken by a lover and a poet, or in shaded
nooks, to the music of Italian streams, but quite unsuited to the
present, even though it were to be read only by lovers equally fond.
"Though I write books, it will be read
Upon the page of none--"
Poor Mrs. Browning! Little did she know!
[Sidenote: With the Future in View]
There have been some, no doubt, who have written with the future in
view, though Abelard, who broke a woman's heart, could not have foreseen
that his only claims to distinction would rest upon his letters to
loving, faithful Héloise. The life which was to be too great for her to
share is remembered now only because of her. Mocking Fate has brought
the wronged woman an exquisite revenge.
That delightful spendthrift and scapegrace, Richard Steele, has left a
large number of whimsical letters, addressed to the lady he married. She
might possibly object to their publication, but not Steele! Indeed, she
was a foolish woman to keep this letter:
"Dear Prue:
"The afternoon coach will bring you ten pounds. Your letter shows that
you are passionately in love with me. But we must take our portion of
life without repining and I consider that good nature, added to the
beautiful form God has given you, would make our happiness too great for
human life. Your most obliged husband and most humble servant,
Rich. Steele."
Alexander Pope was another who wrote for posterity. In spite of his
deformity, he appears to have been touched to the heart by women, but
vanity and selfishness tinged all of his letters.
[Sidenote: Systematic Lovers]
Robert Burns was a systematic lover of anything in petticoats, and has
left such a mass of amatory correspondence that his biographer was
sorely perplexed. There could not have been a pretty maid in the British
Isles, to whom chance had been kind, who had not somewhere the usual
packet of love letters from "Bobby" Burns.
Laurence Sterne was no less generous with his affection, if the stories
are true. At twenty, he fell in love with Elizabeth Lumley, and from his
letters to her, one might easily fancy that love was a devastating and
hopeless disease. There was a pretty little "Kitty" who claimed his
devotion, and countless other affairs, before "Eliza" appeared. "Eliza"
was a married woman and apparently the last love of the heart-scarred
Sterne.
[Sidenote: Left by the Dead]
No earthly thing is so nearly immortal as a love letter, and nothing is
so sorrowful as those left by the dead. The beautiful body may be dust
and all but forgotten, while the work of the loving hands lives on. Even
those written by the ancient Egyptians are seemingly imperishable. The
clay tablet on which one of the Pharaohs wrote a love letter, asking the
hand of a foreign princess, is to-day in the British Museum.
The first time a woman cries after she is married, she reads over all
the love letters the other men have written her, for a love letter is
something a tender-hearted woman cannot bring herself to destroy.
[Sidenote: The New Child]
The love letters of the man she did not marry still possess lingering
interest. The letters of many a successful man of affairs are still
hidden in the treasure-box of the woman he loved, but did not marry.
Both have formed other ties and children have risen up to call them
blessed, or whatever the children may please, for even more dreadful
than the new woman is the new child. Between them, they are likely to
produce a new man.
The new child is apt to find the letters and read them aloud to the
wrong people, being most successfully unexpected and inopportune. A box
of old letters, distributed sparingly at the doors of mutual friends, is
the distinguishing feature of a lovely game called "playing postman."
Social upheavals have occurred from so small a cause as this.
It sometimes happens, too, that when a girl has promised to marry a man
and the wedding day is set, she receives from a mutual friend a package
of faded letters and a note which runs something like this:
"My Dear:
"Now that my old friend's wedding day is approaching, I feel that I have
no longer the right to keep his letters. They are too beautiful and
tender to be burned and I have not the heart to make that disposition of
them. Were I to return them to him, he would doubtless toss them into
the fire, and I cannot bear to have them lost.
"So, after thinking about it for some time, I have concluded to send
them to you, who are the rightful keeper of his happiness, as well as of
his letters. I trust that you may find a place for these among those
which he has addressed to you. Wishing you all happiness in the future,
believe me to be
"Very sincerely and affectionately yours."
[Sidenote: On the Firing Line]
The dainty and appropriate wedding gift is not often shown to the happy
man, but every page and every line is carefully read. Now and then the
bride-elect advances boldly to the firing line and writes a letter of
thanks after this fashion:
"It is very sweet and thoughtful of you, my dear friend, to send me the
letters. Of course I shall keep them in with mine, though I have but
few, for the dear boy has never been able to leave me for more than a
day, since first we met.
"Long before we became engaged, he made me a present of your letters to
him, which he said were well worth the reading, and indeed, I have
found them so. I shall arrange them according to date and sequence,
though I observe that you have written much more often than he--I
suppose because we foolish women can never say all we want to in one
letter and are compelled to add postscripts, sometimes days apart.
"Believe me, I fully appreciate your wishes for our happiness. I trust
you may come to us often and see how your hopes are fulfilled. With many
thanks for your loving thought of me, as ever,
Affectionately yours."
[Sidenote: If a Girl is in Love]
If a girl is in love, she carries the last letter inside her shirt-waist
in the day time, and puts it under her pillow at night, thereby
expecting dreams of the beloved.
But the dispenser of nocturnal visions delights in joking, and though
impalpable arms may seem to surround the sleeping spinster and a tender
kiss may be imprinted upon her lips, it is not once in seventeen days
that the caresses are bestowed by the writer of the letter. It is a
politician whose distorted picture has appeared in the evening paper,
some man the girl despises, the postman, or worse yet, the tramp who has
begged bread at the door.
[Sidenote: When a Man is in Love]
When a man is in love, he carries the girl's last letter in his pocket
until he has answered it and has another to take its place. He stoops to
no such superstition as placing it under his pillow. Neither is it read
as often as his letters to her.
A woman never really writes to the man she loves. She simply records her
fleeting moods--her caprice, her tenderness, and her dreams. Because of
this, she is often misunderstood. If the letter of to-day is different
from that of yesterday, her lover, in his heart at least, accuses her of
fickleness.
A man's letters to a girl are very frequently shown to her most intimate
friend, if they are sufficiently ardent, but a man never shows the
letters of a woman he truly cares for, unless he feels the need of some
other masculine intellect to assist him in comprehending the lady of his
heart.
"Nothing feeds the flame like a letter. It has intent, personality,
secrecy." But that is love indeed which stands the test of long
separation--and letters.
[Sidenote: A Single Drop of Ink]
With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the old Egyptian sorcerer
promised to reveal the past and foretell the future. The single drop of
ink with which a lover writes may sadly change the blissful future of
which he dreams.
The written word is so sadly different from that which is spoken! The
malicious demon concealed in the ink bottle delights in wrecking love.
Misunderstandings and long silences follow in rapid succession,
tenderness changes to coldness, and love to bitter regret.
Someone has said that the true test of congeniality is not a matter of
tastes, but of humour. If two people find the same things amusing, their
comradeship is a foregone conclusion, but even so, it requires unusual
insight to distinguish the playful parts of a letter from the serious
passages. If the separated lovers would escape the pit of destruction,
let all jokes be plainly marked with a cross or a star.
A letter is an unfair thing. It follows its own mood blindly without
reference to others. If penned in sadness it often makes a sunny day a
cloudy one, and if written in jest it may be as inopportune as mirth at
a funeral.
[Sidenote: Misunderstood]
A letter betraying anger and hurt pride may often crystallise a yielding
mood into determination and summon evil spirits which love cannot
banish. The letter asking forgiveness may cross the path of the one
which puts an end to everything. It would seriously test the power of
the Egyptian to foretell what might result from a single letter, written
in all love and tenderness, perhaps, but destined to be completely
misunderstood.
Old love letters often mean tears, because they have been so wrongly
read. Later years, with fine irony, sometimes bring new understanding of
the loving heart behind the faulty lines. After all, it is the
inexpressible atmosphere of a letter which is felt, rather than the
meaning which the phrases ostensibly convey.
[Sidenote: The Postman]
Tender secrets are concealed in the weather-worn bag of the postman. The
lovers may hide their hearts from all but him. Parents, guardians, and
even mature maiden aunts may be successfully diverted, but not the
postman!
He knows that the girl who eagerly watches for him in the morning has
more than a passing interest in the mail. He knows where her lover is,
how often he writes, when she should have a letter, and whether all is
well.
Sometimes, too, he knows that it is better to take a single letter to
the house three or four times in succession, rather than to leave it in
the hands of one to whom it is not addressed.
Blessed be the countless Cupids in the uniform of the postal service!
The little blind god is wont to assume strange forms, apparently at
will. But no stern parent could suspect that his sightless eyes were
concealed behind the spectacles of a sedate postman, nor that his wicked
arrows were hidden under piles of letters.
The uninitiated wonder "what there is to write about." A man may have
seen a girl the evening before, and yet a bulky letter comes in the
afternoon. And what mysterious interest can make one write three or four
times a week?
Where is the girl whose love letter was left in pawn because she could
not find her purse? The grizzled veteran never collects the "two cents
due" on the love letters that are a little overweight. He would not put
a value upon anything so precious, and he is seldom a cynic--perhaps
because, more than anyone else, he is the dispenser of daily joy.
The reading of old love letters is in some way associated with
hair-cloth trunks, mysterious attics, and rainy days. The writers may be
unknown and the hands that laid them away long since returned to dust,
but the interest still remains.
[Sidenote: Dead Roses]
Dead roses crumble to ashes in the gentle fingers that open the long
folded pages--the violets of a forgotten spring impart a delicate
fragrance to the yellowed spot on which they lay. The ink is faded and
the letter much worn, as though it had lain next to some youthful
breast, to be read in silence and solitude until the tender words were
graven upon the heart in the exquisite script of Memory.
The phrasing has a peculiar quaintness, old fashioned, perhaps, but with
a grace and dignity all its own. Through the formal, stately sentences
the hidden sweetness creeps like the crimson vine upon the autumn
leaves. Brave hearts they had, those lovers of the past, who were making
a new country in the wilderness, and yet there was an unsuspected
softness--the other "soul side" which even a hero may have, "to show a
woman when he loves her."
There are other treasures to be found with the letters--old
daguerreotypes, in ornate cases, showing the girlish, sweet face of her
who is a grandmother now, or perhaps a soldier in the trappings of war,
the first of a valiant line.
There are songs which are never sung, save as a quavering lullaby to
some mite who will never remember the tune, and fragments of nocturnes
or simple melodies, which awaken the past as surely as the lost shell
brings to the traveller inland the surge and thunder of the distant sea.
[Sidenote: The Mysteries of Life and Death]
All the mysteries of life and death are woven in with the letters; those
pathetic remembrances which the years may fade but never destroy. There
are old school books, dog-eared and musty, scraps of rich brocade and
rustling taffeta, the yellowed sampler which was the daily trial of
some little maid, and the first white robe of someone who has grown
children of his own.
[Sidenote: Memory's Singing]
Give Memory an old love letter and listen to her singing. There is quiet
at first, as though she were waiting for some step to die away, or some
childish laughter to cease. Then there is a hushed arpeggio, struck from
strings which are old and worn, but sweet and tender still.
Sometimes the song is of an old farmhouse on the western plains, where
life meant struggle and bitter privation. Brothers and sisters, in the
torn, faded clothes which were all they had; father's tremulous "God
bless you," when someone went away. Mother's never-ending toil, and the
day when her roughened hands were crossed upon her breast, at rest for
the first time, while the children cried in wonder and fear.
Then the plaintive minor swells for a moment into the full major chord,
when Love, the King, in royal purple, took possession of the desolate
land. Corn huskings and the sound of "Money Musk," scarlet ears and
stolen kisses under the harvest moon, youth and laughter, and the
eternal, wavering hope for better things. Long years of toil, with
interludes of peace and divine content, little voices, and sometimes a
little grave. Separation and estrangement, trust and misgiving,
heartache and defeat.
[Sidenote: A Magic in the Strings]
The tears may start at Memory's singing, but as the song goes on there
comes peace, for there is a magic in the strings which changes sadness
into something sweet. Memory's eyes are deep and tender and her heart is
full of compassion. So the old love letters bring happiness after
all--like the smile which sometimes rests upon the faces of the dead.
An Inquiry into Marriage
[Illustration]
An Inquiry into Marriage
[Sidenote: Like a Grape]
Marriage appears to be somewhat like a grape. People swallow a great
deal of indifferent good for the sake of the lurking bit of sweetness
and never know until it is too late whether the venture was wise.
Chaucer compared it to a crowded church. Those left on the outside are
eager to get in, and those caught inside are straining every nerve to
get out. There are many, in this year of grace, who have safely made
their escape, but, unfortunately, the happy ones inside say little about
it, and do not seem anxious to get out.
Fate takes great pleasure in confusing the inquiring spinster. Some of
the disappointed ones will advise her never to attempt it, and in the
voluble justification which follows, she sees clearly that the discord
was not entirely caused by the other. Her friends, who have been married
a year or so, regard her with evident pity, and occasionally suggest,
delicately enough, to be sure, that she could never have had a proposal.
[Sidenote: The Consistent Lady]
Among her married friends who are more mature, there is usually one who
chooses her for a confidant. This consistent lady will sob out her
unhappiness on the girl's shoulder, and the next week ask her why she
doesn't get married. Sometimes she invites the girl to her house to meet
some new and attractive man--with the memory of those bitter tears still
in her heart.
A girl often loses a friend by heartily endorsing the things the weeper
says of her husband. The fact that he is an inconsiderate brute is
frequently confided to the kindly surface of a clean shirt-waist,
regardless of laundry bills. The girl remarks dispassionately that she
has noticed it; that he never considers the happiness of his wife, and
she doesn't see how the tearful one stands it. Behold the instant and
painful transformation! It is very hard to be a popular spinster when
one has many married friends.
That interesting pessimist, Herr Arthur Schopenhauer, advocates
universal polygamy upon the theory that all women would thus be
supported. To the unprejudiced observer who reads the comic papers and
goes to afternoon receptions, it would seem that each woman should have
several husbands, to pay her bills and see that she is suitably escorted
to various social affairs.
[Sidenote: Seven Husbands]
If a woman had seven husbands, for instance, it is possible that some
one of them would be willing to take her out whenever she wanted to go.
If she yearned for a sealskin coat or a diamond pin and no one of them
was equal to the occasion, a collection could be taken up. Two or three
might contribute to the good cause and be so beautifully rewarded with
smiles and favourite dishes that the remainder of the husbands would be
inspired to do something in the same line.
At least five of them could go out every night in the week. The matter
could be arranged according to a simple system of rotation, or they
might draw lots. There could be a club-room in the house, where they
might smoke without affecting the curtains and Madam's temper. Politics
and poker make more widows than war, but no woman could find it in her
heart to object to the innocent pastime under such happy circumstances,
because she would be deprived of nothing--not even her husband's
society. Six of them might play, while the other read to their wife, and
those who won could buy some lovely new china for the house.
The sweetness of the lady of their several hearts would be increased
seven-fold, while her frowns would be equally divided among them. There
would be a large and enviable freedom accorded everyone. There would
always be enough at home so dinner need not wait, and Madam would be
spared one great annoyance. If the servants left suddenly, as is not
unusual, there would be men enough to cook a dinner Epicurus might envy,
each one using his own chafing-dish. Men make better cooks than women
because they put so much more feeling into it.
The spirit of gentle rivalry, which would thus be developed, is well
worth considering. Some one of the seven would always be a lover. To
sustain the old relation continuously after marriage undoubtedly
requires gifts of tact and temperament which are not often vouchsafed
to men, and this would not prove so irksome if the tender obligation
were shared. Marriage would no longer be the cold potato of love.
Different men always admire different qualities of the same woman, and
the beauty of the much-married lady would be developed far beyond that
of her who had only one husband, because a recognised virtue is
stimulated.
If a man admires a woman's teeth, she gets new kinds of dentifrice and
constantly endeavours to add to their whiteness. If he speaks
approvingly of her hair, various tonics are purchased. If he alludes to
her mellow voice, she tries conscientiously to make it more beautiful
still.
There is a suspected but not verified relation between a man's affection
and his digestion. With this ideal method of marriage in force, the
dyspeptics could go off by themselves until they felt better, and not be
bothered with tender inquiries concerning their health. If the latch key
unaccountably refused to work at two o'clock in the morning, some other
member of the husband could always assist the absent ones in, and Madam
would never know how many were late.
[Sidenote: The Financial Burden]
The financial burden would indeed be light. The household expenses might
be divided equally and relieving the wife's necessities would be the
happiness of all. One might assume the responsibility of her gowns,
another of her hats and gloves, another might keep her supplied with
bonbons, matinée tickets, flowers, and silk stockings, another might
attend to her jackets and her club dues, her jewels might be the care of
another, and so on. It would be the joy of all of them to see their
peerless wife well dressed, and when she wanted anything in particular,
she need only smile sweetly upon the one whose happy lot it was to have
charge of that department of expense.
There would be no friction, no discord. Madam would be blissfully
content, and men have claimed for years that they could live together
much more amicably than women, and that they never quarrel among
themselves, save in rare instances. This, they say, is because they are
so liberal in their views, but a great many men are so broad-minded that
it makes their heads flat.
It is strange that this happy form of polygamy did not occur to Herr
Schopenhauer. It may be because he was a pessimist--and a man.
[Sidenote: The Most Nervous Time]
The most nervous time of a man's life is the day of his wedding. The
bachelors and benedicts give different reasons for this when they are
gently approached upon the subject, but the majority admit, with lovable
and refreshing conceit, that it is because of their innate modesty and
their aversion to conspicuous prominence.
If this is truly the reason, the widespread fear may be much lessened,
for in the grand matrimonial pageant, the man is the most obscure member
of the procession. People are not apt to think of him at all until the
ceremony is over and the girl has a new name. What he wears is of no
consequence, and he has no wedding gifts, though he may be remembered
for a moment if he gives a diamond star to the bride. Yet it is this
ceremony which changes him from a vassal to a king. Before marriage he
is a low and useless trump, but afterward he is ace high in the game.
[Sidenote: A Trip Down Town]
A latter-day philosopher has beautifully likened marriage to a trip
down-town. A man leaves the house in the morning, his mind already
active concerning the affairs of the day. His newspaper is in his
pocket, he has plenty of time to reach the office, and his breakfast has
begun to assimilate. Suddenly he sees a yellow speck on the horizon.
He calculates the distance to the corner and quickens his pace, his eyes
nobly fixed meanwhile upon the goal of his ambition. Anxiety develops,
then fear. At last he surrenders all dignity and gallops madly toward
the approaching car, with his coat tails spread to the morning breeze
and tears in his eyes. Out of breath, but triumphant, he swings on just
as farther pursuit seemed well-nigh hopeless.
Does he stop to chat cheerily with the conductor? Does he dwell upon the
luxurious aspect of his conveyance? Does the comfort which he has just
secured fill his heart with gladness? Does the plush covering of the
seat appeal to his æsthetic sense? No mere woman may ever hope to know,
for he grudgingly gives the conductor five pennies, one of them badly
battered and the date beaten out of it--and devotes himself to his
paper.
[Sidenote: The Masculine Mental Process]
The thing which appears unattainable is ever desired by man. A girl who
wears an engagement ring upon her finger has a charm for which the
unattached sigh in vain. The masculine mental process in such a case,
briefly summarised, is something like this.
I. "Wonder who that girl is over there? Red hair and quite a bit of
style. Never cared much for red hair--suppose she's got freckles too.
Now she's coming this way. Why, there's a solitaire on her finger; she's
engaged. Well, he can have her--I won't cut him out. Wonder who she is!
II. "Really, she isn't so bad--I've seen worse. She knows how to dress,
and she hasn't so many freckles. Brown eyes--that means temper when
associated with red hair. Must be quite a little trick to tame a girl
like that. She doesn't look as though she were quite subdued.
III. "He probably doesn't know how to manage her. I could train her all
right. I wouldn't mind doing it; I haven't anything much on hand in the
girl line. So that's the cad she's engaged to? Poor little girl!
IV. "I feel sorry for that girl, I honestly do. She's throwing herself
away. She can't love that fellow. She'll get over it when she's married,
and be miserable all the rest of her life. I suppose I ought to save her
from him. I think I'll talk to her about it, but it will have to be done
cautiously.
V. "Fine young woman, that. Broad-minded, bright, vivacious, and not
half bad to look at. Seemed to take my advice in good part. Those great,
deep brown eyes are pathetic. That's the kind of a girl to be shielded
and guarded from all the hard knocks in the world.
VI. "The more I see of that girl, the more I think of her. Those Frenchy
touches of dress and that superb red hair make her beautiful. I always
did like red hair. Honestly, I think she's the prettiest girl I ever
saw. And her womanliness matches her beauty. Any man might be proud of
winning a girl like that.
VII. "The irony of Fate! The one soul in all the universe that is deep
enough to comprehend mine, the peerless queen of womankind, she for
whom I have waited all my life, is pledged to another! I shall go mad if
I bear this any longer. I simply must have her. 'All is fair in love and
war'--I'll go and ask her!"
[Sidenote: Gold-Brick Tactics]
When one man alludes to another as a "confidence man," it is no
distinguishing mark, for they instinctively adopt gold-brick tactics
when seeking woman in marriage.
Those exquisite hands shall never perform a single menial task! Yet,
after marriage, Her Ladyship finds that she is expected to be a cook,
nurse, housekeeper, seamstress, chambermaid, waitress, and practical
plumber. This is an unconscious tribute to the versatility of woman,
since a man thinks he does well if he is a specialist in any one line.
Her slightest wish shall be his law! Yet not only are wishes of no
avail, but even pleading and prayer fall upon deaf ears. It will be his
delight to see that she wants for nothing, yet she is reduced to the
necessity of asking for money--even for carfare--and a man will do for
his bicycle what his wife would ask in vain.
Many of the matrimonial infelicities of which both men and women
bitterly complain may be traced to the gold-brick delusion. A woman
marries in the hope of having a lover and discovers, too late, that she
merely has a boarder who is most difficult to please.
[Sidenote: A Certain Pitiful Change]
There is a certain pitiful change which comes with marriage. The sound
of her voice would thrill him to his finger-tips, the touch of her hand
make his throat ache, and the light in her eyes set the blood to singing
in his veins. With possession, ecstasy changes to content, and the
loving woman, dreaming that she may again find what she has so strangely
lost, tries to waken the old feeling by pathetic little ways which women
read at once, but men never know anything about.
In a way, woman is to blame, but not so much. Her superior insight
should give her a better understanding of courtship. A man may mean what
he says--at the time he says it--but men and seasons change.
[Sidenote: Value and Proportion]
The happiness of the after-years depends largely upon her sense of value
and proportion. No woman of artistic judgment would crowd her rooms
with bric-à-brac, even though comfort were not lacking. Pictures hung
together so closely that the frames touch lose beauty. Space has
distinct value, and solid colours, judiciously used, create a harmony
impossible to obtain by the continuous use of figured fabrics.
Yet many a woman whose house is a model of taste, whose rooms are
spacious and restful, insists upon crowding her marriage with the
bric-à-brac of violent affection. She is not content with undecorated
spaces; with interludes of friendship and the appreciation which is
felt, rather than spoken. She demands the constant assurances, the
unfailing devotion of the lover, and thus loses her atmosphere--and her
content.
It seems to be a settled thing that men shall do the courting before
marriage and women afterward. Nobody writes articles on "How to Make a
Wife Happy," and the innumerable cook books, like an army of
grasshoppers, consume and devastate the land.
If women did not demand so much, men in general would be more
thoughtful. If it were understood that even after marriage man was
still to be the lover, the one who sent roses to his sweetheart would
sometimes bring them to his wife. The pretty courtesies would not so
often be forgotten.
[Sidenote: The Tender Thought]
If the tender thought were in some way shown, and the loving word which
leaps to the lips were never forced back, but always spoken, marriage
and even life itself would take on new beauty and charm. If a woman has
daily evidence of a man's devotion, no matter in how small a way, her
hunger and thirst for love are bountifully assuaged. Misunderstandings
rapidly grow into coldness and neglect, and foolish woman, blind with
love, adopts retribution and recrimination as her weapons. There are a
great many men who love their wives simply because they know they would
be scalped if they didn't.
Making an issue of a little thing is one of the surest ways to spoil
happiness. One's personal pride is felt to be vitally injured by
surrender, but there is no quality of human nature so nearly royal as
the ability to yield gracefully. It shows small confidence in one's own
nature to fear that compromise lessens self-control. To consider
constantly the comfort and happiness of another is not a sign of
weakness but of strength.
[Sidenote: Spoiled Children]
Too many men and women are only spoiled children at heart. The little
maid of five or six takes her doll and goes home because her playmates
have been unkind. Twenty years later she packs her trunk and goes to her
mother's because of some quarrel which had an equally childish
beginning.
But the hurts of the after-years are not so easily healed. The children
kiss and make up no later than the next day, but, grown to manhood and
womanhood, they consider it far beneath their dignity and importance to
say "Forgive me," and thus proceed to the matrimonial garbage box by way
of the divorce court.
Lovers are wont to consider a marriage license a free ticket to
Paradise. Sometimes happiness may be freely given by the dispenser of
earthly blessings, but it is more often bought. It is a matter of
temperament rather than circumstance, and is to be had only by the two
who work for it together, forgiving, forgetting, graciously yielding,
and looking forward to the perfect understanding which will surely
come.
Matches are not all made in heaven. Even the parlour variety sometimes
smell of brimstone, and Cupid is blamed for many which are made by
cupidity. The gossips and the busybodies would die of mal-nutrition were
it not for marriage and its complications.
[Sidenote: The Tabbies]
Two people who have quarrelled cheerfully before marriage and whose
engagement has been broken three or four times often surprise the
tabbies who prophesy misfortune by settling down into post-nuptial
content. Two who are universally pronounced to be "perfectly suited to
each other" are soon absolutely miserable. Marriage is the one thing
which everyone knows more about than people who are intimately
concerned.
[Sidenote: "Unequal Marriages"]
We hear a great deal of "unequal marriages," not merely in degree of
fortune, but in taste and mental equipment. A man steeped to his
finger-tips in the lore of the ancients chooses a pretty butterfly who
does not know the difference between a hieroglyph and a Greek verb, and
to whom Rome and Carthage are empty names. His friends predict misery,
and wonder at his blindness in passing by the young woman of equal
outward charm who delivered a scholarly thesis at her commencement and
has the degree of Master of Arts.
A talented woman marries a man without proportionate gifts and the
tabbies call a special session. It is decided at this conclave that "she
is throwing herself away and will regret it." To everyone's surprise,
she is occasionally very happy with the man she has chosen, though about
some things of no particular importance she knows much more than he.
The law of compensation is as certain in its action as that of
gravitation, though it is not so widely understood. Nature demands
balance and equality. She is constantly chiselling at the mountain to
lower it to the level of the plain, and welding heterogeneous elements
into homogeneous groups.
[Sidenote: The Certain Instinct]
The pretty butterfly may easily prove a balance wheel to the man of much
wisdom. She will add a vivid human interest to his abstract pursuits and
keep him from growing narrow-minded. He chose the element he needed to
make him symmetrical, with the certain instinct which impels isolated
atoms of hydrogen and oxygen to combine in the proportion of two to one.
It never occurs to the tabbies that no talent or facility can ever
stifle a woman's nature. The simple need of her heart is never taken
into account in the criticism of these marriages which are deemed
"unequal." If a woman holds an assistant professorship of mathematics in
a university, it is a foregone conclusion that she should fall in love
with someone who is proficient in trigonometry and holds his tangents
and cosines in high esteem. Happy evenings could then be spent with a
book of logarithms and sheets of paper specially cut to accommodate a
problem.
Similarity of tastes may sometimes prove an attraction, but very seldom
similarity of pursuit. Musicians do not often intermarry, and artists
and writers are more apt to choose each other than exponents of their
own cult.
[Sidenote: Appreciation and Accomplishment]
It is not surprising if a man who is passionately fond of music falls in
love with a woman who has a magnificent voice, or a power which amounts
to magic over the strings of her violin. Appreciation is as essential
to happiness as accomplishment, and when the two are balanced in
marriage, comradeship is inevitable. An artist may marry a woman who
does not understand his pictures, but if she had not appreciated him in
ways more vital to his happiness, there would have been no marriage.
It is pathetic to see what marriage sometimes is, compared with what it
might be--to see it degraded to the level of a business transaction when
it was meant to be infinitely above the sordid touch of the dollar and
the dime. It is a perverted instinct which leads one to marry for money,
for it will not buy happiness, though it may secure an imitation which
pleases some people for a little while.
There is nothing so beautiful as a girl's dream of her marriage, and
nothing so sad as the same girl, if Time brings her disillusion instead
of the true marriage which is "a mutual concord and agreement of souls,
a harmony in which discord is not even imagined; the uniting of two
mornings that hope to reach the night together."
The world is full of pain and danger for those who face it alone, and
home, that sanctuary where one may find strength and new courage, must
be built upon a foundation of mutual helpfulness and trust. No one can
make a home alone. It needs a man's strong hands, a woman's tender
hands, and two true hearts.
[Sidenote: The Light upon the Altar]
The light which shines upon the bridal altar is either the white flame
of eternal devotion or the sacrificial fire which preys hungrily upon
someone's disappointment and someone's broken heart. But to the utter
rout of the cynic, the dream which led the two souls thither sometimes
becomes divinely true.
Marriage is said to be sufficient "career" for any woman, and it is
equally true of men. Like Emerson's vision of friendship, it is fit "not
only for serene days and pleasant rambles, but for all the passages of
life and death."
It is to make one the stronger because one does not have to go alone. It
is to make one's joy the sweeter because it is shared. It is to take the
sting away from grief because it is divided, and the dear comfort of the
other's love lies forever around the sore and doubting heart.
[Sidenote: Fire and Snow]
It is to be the light in the darkness, the belief in the distrust, the
never-failing source of consolation. It is to be the gentlest of
forgiveness for all of one's mistakes--strength and tenderness, passion
and purity, the fire and the snow.
It is to make one generous to all the world with one's sympathy and
compassion, because in the sanctuary there is no lack of love. It is
"the joining together of two souls for life, to strengthen each other in
all peril, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each
other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent, unspeakable
memories at the moment of the last parting."
The Physiology of Vanity
[Illustration]
The Physiology of Vanity
[Sidenote: Conceit and Vanity]
"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" It is the common human emotion, the
root of the personal equation, the battling residuum in the last
analysis of social chemistry. There is a wide difference between conceit
and vanity. Conceit is lovable and unconcealed; vanity is supreme
selfishness, usually hidden. Conceit is based upon an unselfish desire
to please; vanity takes no thought of others which is not based upon
egotism.
Vanity and jealousy are closely allied, while conceit is a natural
development of altruistic virtue. Conceit is the mildest of vices;
vanity is the worst. Men are usually conceited but infrequently vain,
while women are seldom afflicted with the lesser vice.
Man's conceit is the simplest form of self-appreciation. He thinks he is
extremely good-looking, as men go; that he has seen the world; that he
is a good judge of dinners and of human nature; that he is one of the
few men who may easily charm a woman.
The limits of man's conceit are usually in full view, but eye nor
opera-glass has not yet approached the end of woman's vanity. The
disease is contagious, and the men who suffer from it are usually those
whose chosen companions are women.
Woman's vanity is a development of her insatiate thirst for love. Her
smiles and tears are all-powerful with her lover, and nothing goes so
quickly to a woman's head as a sense of power. She forever defies the
Salic law--each woman feels that her rightful place is upon a throne.
[Sidenote: The One Object]
The one object of woman's life is the acquirement of power through love.
It is because this power is freely recognised by the men who seek her in
marriage that her vanity seldom has full scope until after she is
married.
[Sidenote: The Destroyer]
After marriage, a great many women begin the slow process of alienating
a man from his family, blind to the fact that by lessening his love for
others, they add nothing to their own store. The filial and fraternal
love is not to be given to anyone but mother and sisters--they have no
place in a man's heart that another woman could fill. The destroyer
simply obliterates that part of his life and offers nothing in its
place.
The achievement sometimes takes years, but it is none the less sure.
Later, it may be extended to father and brothers, but they are always
the last to be considered.
It is most difficult of all to break the tie which binds a man to his
mother. The one who bore him is not faultless, for motherhood brings new
gifts of feeling, sometimes sacrificing judgment and clear vision to
selfish unselfishness. It is only in fiction and poetry that such love
is valued now, for the divine blindness which does not question, which
asks only the right to give, has lost beauty in our age of reason and
restraint.
He had thought that face the most beautiful in all the world--until he
fell in love. Now he sees his mother as she is; a wrinkled old woman,
perverse, unreasonable, and inclined to meddle with his domestic
affairs. The hands that soothed his childish fretting are no longer
lovely. Inattention to small details of dress, which he never noticed
before, are painfully evident. The eyes that have watched him all his
life with loving anxiety, shining with pride at his success and
softening with tenderest pity at his mistakes, are subtly different now.
He wonders at his blindness. It is strange, indeed, that he has not
realised all this before.
[Sidenote: The Awakening]
To most men the awakening comes too late if it comes at all. Only when
the faded eyes are closed and the worn hands folded forever; when
"mother" is beyond the reach of praise or blame, her married boy
realises what has been done. With that first shock comes bitterest
repentance--and he never forgives his wife. Many a woman who complains
of "coldness" and "lost love" might trace it back to the day her
husband's mother died, and to the sudden flash of insight, the
adjustment of relation, which comes with death.
The comic papers have made the mother-in-law a thing to be dreaded. She
is the poster attached to the matrimonial magazine which inspires
would-be purchasers with awe. Many an engaged girl confides to her best
friend that her fiancé's mother is "an old cat." She usually goes still
further, and gives jealousy as the cause of it.
No right-minded mother was ever jealous of the woman her son chose for
his wife. But she has seen how marriage changes men and naturally fears
the result. The altar is the grave of many a boy's love for his mother.
Neither of the women most intimately concerned is blind to the impending
possibilities; it is only man who cannot see.
[Sidenote: One in a Thousand]
There are some girls who realise what it means, but they are few and far
between. One in a thousand, perhaps, will openly acknowledge her debt to
the woman who for twenty-five or thirty years has given her best thought
to the man she is about to marry.
Is he strong and active, healthy and finely moulded? It is his mother's
care for the first sixteen years of his life. It is the result of her
anxious days and of many a sleepless night, while the potential man was
racked with fever and childish ills. His chivalrous devotion to the girl
he loves is wholly due to his mother's influence. His clean and
open-hearted manliness is a free gift to her, from the woman now
characterised as "an old cat."
It is seldom that the mother receives credit for his virtues, but she is
invariably blamed for his faults. Too many women expect a man to be cut
out by their pattern. The supreme mental achievement is the ability to
judge other people by their own standards, and a crank is not
necessarily a person whose rules of life and conduct do not coincide
with our own.
[Sidenote: The Thirst for Power]
To this thirst for power may be traced all of woman's vanity. It is
commonly supposed that she dresses to please others, but she often
values fine raiment principally because it shows how much her husband
thinks of her. If a man's coat is shiny at the seams and he postpones
the new one that his wife may have an extra hat, she is delicately
flattered by this unselfish tribute to her charm.
From a single root vanity spreads and flowers until its poisonous blooms
affect all social life. A woman becomes vain of her house, her rugs, her
tapestries, her jewels, horses, and even of the livery of her footman.
The things which should be valued for their intrinsic beauty and the
pleasure-giving quality, which is not by any means selfish, soon become
food for a vice.
She gradually grows to consider herself a very superior person. She is
so charming and so much to be desired, that some man works night and day
in his office, sacrificing both pleasure and rest, that she may have the
baubles for which she yearns.
It is not far from absolute self-satisfaction, in either man or woman,
to generous bestowal of enlightenment upon the unfortunate savages who
linger on the outskirts of one's social sphere.
In the infinite vastness of creation, where innumerable worlds move
according to the fiat of majestic Law, there lies one called Earth.
There are planets within reach of the scientific vision of its
inhabitants that are many times larger. There are some which have more
moons, more mountains and rivers, longer days, and longer years.
Countless suns, the centres of other vast planetary systems, lie in the
inconceivable distances beyond.
[Sidenote: A Mote in the Sun]
In the midst of this unspeakable greatness, Earth swings like one of the
motes which a passing sunbeam illumines. Upon this mote, one fifth of
the inhabitants have assumed supreme knowledge and understanding, given
them, doubtless, because of their innate superiority. This preferment,
also, is theirs by the grace of an infinitely just and merciful God.
The other four fifths are supposedly in total darkness, though the same
heavens are over their heads, the same earth under their feet, and
though the light of sun and moon and the gentle radiance of the stars
are freely given to all.
There are the same opportunities for development and civilisation, but
they have not received The Enlightenment. To them must go the foreign
missionaries, to teach the things which have been graciously given them
on account of their innate superiority.
[Sidenote: Narrowing Circles]
Man's life is a succession of narrowing circles. He admits the force of
the heliocentric idea, for it is the sun which gives light and heat.
Then the circle narrows, almost imperceptibly, for, of all the planets
which circle around the sun, is not Earth the chief?
This point being gained, he is inside the geocentric circle. Earth is
the centre of creation. Sun, moon, and stars are auxiliary forces,
bountifully arranged by the Giver of all Good for Earth's beauty and
comfort. Of all the creatures who share in this, is not man the most
important? Thus he retreats to the anthropocentric circle.
[Sidenote: By Strength of Mind and Arm]
Man is the centre of organic life, and it is easily seen that his race
is far superior to the others. Their skins are not the same colour,
their ships are not so mighty, their cunning with weapons is infinitely
less. His race is dominant by strength of mind and arm.
The dark-skinned races must be taught civilisation, with fire and sword,
with cannon and bayonet, with crime and death. They must be civilised
before they can be happy. The naked savage who sits beneath a palm tree,
with his hut in the distance, while his wife and children hover around
him, is happy only because he is too ignorant to know what happiness is.
In order to be rightly happy, he must have a fine house, carriages, and
servants, and live in a crowded city where tall buildings and smoke
limit one's horizon to a narrow patch of blue. He must struggle daily
with his fellows, not for the necessaries of life, but for small pieces
of silver and bits of green paper, which are not nearly as pretty as
glass beads.
The savage, unaccustomed to refinement, stabs or beheads his enemy.
Civilisation will teach him the uses of poison, and that putting typhoid
germs into the drinking water of an Emperor is much more delicate and
fully as effectual.
[Sidenote: The Sublime Egotism]
From this small circle, it is only a step to the centre and to that
sublime egotism which has been named Vanity.
Man repeats in his own life the development of a nation. He progresses
from unquestioning happiness to childish inquiry and wonder, from fairy
tales of princes and dragons to actual knowledge; through inquiry to
doubt, through faith to disbelief, through civilisation to decay.
He is not content to let other nations and others races pursue their
normal development. He insists that the work of centuries be crowded
into a generation. And in the same manner, the growth and strivings of
his fellows call forth his unselfish aid. Having infinite treasures of
mental equipment, gained by superior opportunity and wider experience,
he will generously share his noble possessions.
[Sidenote: Personal Vanity]
It is personal vanity of the most flagrant type which intrudes itself,
unasked, into other people's affairs. There are few of us who do not
feel capable of ordering the daily lives of others, down to the most
minute detail.
We know how their houses should be arranged, how they should spend and
invest their money, how they should dress, how they should comport
themselves, and more definitely yet do we know the things they should
not do. We know what is right and what is wrong, while they, poor
things! do not. We know whom and when they should marry, how their
children should be educated and trained, and what servants they should
employ.
We know for what pursuit each one is best fitted and how each should
occupy his spare time. We know to what church all should go; what creed
all should believe. We know what particular traits are faults and how
these can be corrected. We know so much about other people that we often
have not time to give due attention to ourselves. We neglect our own
affairs that we may unselfishly direct others, and sometimes suffer in
consequence, for nobody but a lawyer makes a good living by attending to
other people's business.
[Sidenote: Theoretically]
Theoretically, this should be pleasing to each one. Every person of
sense should be delighted at being told just what to do. It would
relieve him from all care, all responsibility; the necessity for
thought, planning, and individual judgment would be wholly removed.
The musical student would not have to select his own instrument, his own
teacher, nor even his own practice time. Every author would know just
how and when to write, and in order to become famous, he need only act
upon the suggestions for stories and improvement of style which are
gratuitously given him from day to day, by people who cannot write a
clear and correct sentence. This thing actually happened; consequently
it is just the theme for fiction. This plot, suitably developed, would
make the nations sit up, and send the race by hundred thousands to the
corner bookstore.
The cares incident to selecting a wardrobe would be wholly removed.
Every woman knows how every other should dress. Her sure taste selects
at a glance the thing which will best become the other, and over which
the Unenlightened may ponder for hours.
[Sidenote: A Common Vanity]
There is no more common vanity than claiming to "know" some particular
person. We are "all things to all men." The two who love each other
better than all the world beside, have much knowledge, but it is not by
any means complete. "Souls reach out to each other across the impassable
gulfs of individual being." And yet, daily, people who have no sympathy
with us, and scarcely a common interest, will assume to "know" us, when
we do not fully know ourselves, and when we earnestly hide our real
selves from all save the single soul we love.
To assume intimate knowledge of the hundred considerations which make up
a single situation, the various complexities of temperament and
disposition which the personal equation continually produces in human
affairs, of the imperceptible fibres of the web which lies between two
souls, preventing always the fullest understanding, unless Love, the
magician, gives new sight--amounts to the proclamation of practical
Omnipotence.
[Sidenote: "I Told You So"]
There is no position in life which is secure. No complication ever comes
to our friends, which our advice, acted upon, would not immediately
solve. If our most minute directions are not thankfully received and put
into effect, there is always the comforting indication of
superiority--"I told you so."
And when the jaded soul revolts in supreme defiance, declaring its right
to its own life, its own duties, its own friendships, and its own loves,
there is much expressed disgust, much misfortune predicted, and, saddest
of all, much wounded vanity.
The dominant egotism forbids that anything shall be better than itself.
No success is comparable to one's own, no life so wisely ordered, and
there is nothing so sad as the fame attained by those who do not follow
our advice.
Adversity is commonly accepted as the test of friendship, but there is
another more certain still--success. Anyone may bestow pity. It is
fatally easy to offer to those less fortunate than ourselves; whose
capabilities have not proved adequate, as ours have; but it requires
fine gifts of generous feeling to be genuinely glad at another's good
fortune, in which we cannot by any possibility hope to share.
[Sidenote: Advice]
Advice is usually to be had for the asking. In the case of a corporation
attorney or a specialist, there is a high value placed upon it, but it
is to be freely had from those who love us, and, strangely enough, from
those who do not.
It is one of the blessings of love, that all the experience of another,
all the battles of the other soul, are laid open for our better
understanding of our own path. But there is a subtle distinction between
the counsel of love and that of vanity. The one is unselfishly glad of
our achievements, taking new delight in every step upward, while the
other passes over triumphs in silence and carps upon the misfortune
until it is not to be borne.
From the intimate union of two loving souls, Vanity is forever shut out.
Jealousy dare not show her malignant face. These two are facing the
world together, side by side and shoulder to shoulder, each the other's
strength and shield.
Success may come only after many failures; the tide may not turn till
after long discouragement and great despair. But in the union with that
other soul, so gently baring its inmost dream that the other may
understand, defeat loses its sting.
[Sidenote: The Sanctuary of that Other Soul]
Ambition forever beckons, like a will o' the wisp. When realisation
seems within easy reach, the dream fades, or another, seemingly
unattainable, mockingly takes its place. But in the sanctuary of that
other soul, there is always new courage to be found. Long aisles and
quiet spaces lessen the fever and the unrest. Darkness and cool shadows
soothe the burning eyes, and in the clasp of those loving arms there is
certain sleep.
Vanity cares for nothing which is not in some way its own, and it is
perhaps an amorphous vanity, as carbon is akin to a diamond, that makes
a hard-won victory doubly dear.
There are always sycophants to fawn and flatter, there are hands that
will gladly help that they may claim their share of the result, but that
realised dream is wholly sweet in which only the dreamer and the other
soul have fully believed. Failure, even, is more easily borne if it is
entirely one's own; if there is no one else to be blamed.
[Sidenote: The Bitter Proof]
"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." So spake the prophet in Jerusalem
and the centuries have brought the bitter proof. Vanity has reared
palaces which have vanished like the architecture of a mirage. Vanity
has led the hosts against itself.
Where are Babylon and Nineveh; the hanging gardens and the splendour of
forgotten kings? Where are Cæsar and Cleopatra; Trianon and Marie
Antoinette? Where is the lordly Empire of France? Is it buried with
military honours, in the grave of the exiled Napoleon?
Vanity's pomp endureth for a day, but Vanity itself is perennial. Vanity
sets whole races of men in motion, pitting them against each other
across intervening seas.
One woman has a stone, no larger than a pea, brought from a mine in
South Africa. Vanity sets it proudly upon her breast and leads other
women to envy her its possession, for purely selfish reasons. One
woman's gown is made from a plant which grows in Georgia and she is
unhappy because it is not the product of a French or Japanese worm.
One woman's coat is woven from the covering of a sheep, and she is not
content because it has not cost a greater number of silver pieces and
more bits of green paper, besides the life of an Arctic seal, that never
harmed her nor hers.
Vanity allows a tender-hearted woman, who cannot see a child or a dumb
brute in pain, to order the tails of her horses cut to the fashionable
length and to wear upon her hat the pitiful little body of a song-bird
that has been skinned alive.
Vanity permits a woman to trim the outer garments of the little stranger
for whose coming she has long waited and prayed, with pretty, fluffy fur
torn from the unborn baby of another mother--who is only a sheep. Vanity
permits a woman to insist that her combs and pins shall be real
tortoise-shell, which is obtained from the quivering animal by roasting
it alive before a slow fire.
[Sidenote: All is Vanity]
"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" The mad race still goes on. It is
insatiate vanity which wrecks lives, ruins homes, torments one's
fellows, and blinds the clear vision of its victims. It harms others,
but most of all one's self.
[Sidenote: The Conqueror]
There is only one place from which it is shut out--from the union with
that other soul. Great as it is, there is still a greater force; there
is the inevitable conqueror, for Vanity cannot exist side by side with
Love.
Widowers and Widows
[Illustration]
Widowers and Widows
Next to burglars, mice, and green worms, every normal girl fears a
widow. Courtships have been upset and expected proposals have vanished
into thin air, simply because a widow has come into the game. There is
only one thing to do in such a case; retreat gracefully, and leave the
field to her.
[Sidenote: The Charm]
A widow's degree of blandishment is conservatively estimated at
twenty-five spinster power. At almost every session of spinsters, the
question comes up for discussion. It is difficult to see just where the
charm lies.
A widow has, of course, a superior knowledge of ways and means. She has
fully learned the value of silence, of food, and of judicious flattery.
But these accomplishments may be acquired by the observing spinster who
gives due attention to the subject.
The mystery lies deeper than is first suspected. It is possible that the
knowledge of her own limitations has something to do with it. A girl
who has been flattered, adored, placed upon a pedestal and worshipped,
naturally comes to the conclusion that she belongs there. She issues her
commands from that height and conveys to man various delicate reminders
of his servility.
[Sidenote: The Pedestal Idea]
When the same girl is married and by due operation of natural law
becomes a widow, she doubtless has come to a better understanding of the
pedestal idea. Hence she does not attempt the impossible, and satisfies
herself with working those miracles which are comparatively simple.
A widow has all of the freedom of a girl, combined with the liberty of a
married woman. She has the secure social position of a matron without
the drawback of a husband. She is nearer absolute independence than
other women are ever known to be.
Where a girl is strong and self-reliant, a widow is helpless and
confiding. She can never carry her own parcels, put on her own
overshoes, or button her own gloves. A widow's shoe laces have never
been known to stay tied for any length of time, unless she has shapeless
ankles and expansive feet.
A widow's telegrams must always be taken to the office by some man.
Time-tables are beyond her understanding and she never knows about
trains. It frequently takes three or four men to launch a widow upon a
two-hundred-mile journey, while a girl can start across the continent
with considerably less commotion.
[Sidenote: The Inference]
The inference is, of course, that she has been accustomed to these
delicate attentions--that the dear departed has always done such things.
The pretty way in which she asks favours carries out the delusion. He
would be a brute, indeed, who could refuse the little service for which
she pleads.
The dear departed, naturally, was delighted to do these things, or he
would not have done them--such being the way of the married man.
Consequently, the lady was very tenderly loved--and men follow each
other like sheep in matters of the heart.
The attraction a widower has for a girl is in inverse proportion to a
widow's influence over a man. It is true that the second wife is usually
better treated than the first, and that the new occupant of a man's
heart reaps the benefit of her predecessor's training. But it is not
until spinsterhood is fully confirmed by grey hair and the family Bible
that a girl begins to look with favour upon the army of the detached.
[Sidenote: The Food of her Soul]
It seems to her that all the romance is necessarily gone--and it is
romance upon which her soul feeds. There can be none of that dear
delight in the first home building, which is the most beautiful part of
marriage to a girl. Her pretty concern about draperies and colours is
all an old story to the man. She may even have to buy her kitchen ware
all alone, and it is considered the nicest thing in the world to have a
man along when pots and pans are bought.
If widowers and widows would only mate with each other, instead of
trespassing upon the hunting grounds of the unmarried! It is an
exceptional case in which the bereaved are not mutually wary. They seem
to prefer the unfair advantage gained by having all the experience on
one side.
The normal man proposes with ease and carelessness, but the ceremony is
second nature to a widower. If he meets a girl he likes, he proceeds at
once to business and is slow indeed for his kind if he does not offer
his hand and heart within a week.
A clever man once wrote a story, describing the coming of a girl to a
widower's house. With care and forethought, the dying wife had left a
letter for her successor, which the man fearlessly gave her before she
had taken off her hat, because, as the story-teller naïevely adds, "she
was twenty-eight and very sane."
[Sidenote: A Nice Letter]
This letter proved to be various admonitions to the bride and earnest
hopes that she might make her husband happy. It was all very pretty and
it was surely a nice letter, but no woman could fail to see that it was
an exquisite revenge upon the man who had been rash enough to install
another in the place of the dead.
There was not a line which was not kind, nor a word which did not
contain a hidden sting. It would be enough to make one shudder all one's
life--this hand of welcome extended from the grave. Yet everything
continued happily--perhaps because a man wrote the story.
A woman demands not only all of a man's life, but all of his thoughts
after she is dead. The grave may hide much, but not that particular
quality in woman's nature. If it is common to leave letters for
succeeding wives, it is done with sinister purpose.
Romance is usually considered an attribute of youth, and possibly the
years bring views of marriage which are impossible to the younger
generation. No girl, in her wildest moments, ever dreams of marrying a
widower with three or four children, yet, when she is well on in her
thirties, with her heart still unsatisfied, she often does that very
thing, and happily at that.
[Sidenote: The Hidden Heartache]
Still, there must be a hidden heartache, for woman, with her love of
love, is unable to understand the series of distinct and unrelated
episodes which make up the love of a man. It is hard to take the crumbs
another woman has left, especially if a goodly portion of a man's heart
is suspected to lie in the grave.
It is harder still, if helpless children are daily to look into her
face, with eyes which are neither hers nor his, and the supreme
crucifixion in the life of a woman whose ideals have not changed, is to
go into a home which has been made by the hands of a dead and dearly
loved wife.
To a woman, material things are always heavily laden with memories.
There is not a single article of furniture which has not its own
individuality. She cannot consider a piece of embroidery apart from the
dead hands that made it, nor a chair without some association with its
previous occupants.
Sometimes the rooms are heavily laden with portraits which are to
confront her from day to day with the taunting presence. She is obliged
to tell callers that the crayon upon the opposite wall is "the first
Mrs. ----." There are also pictures of the first wife's dead children,
and here and there the inevitable photograph, of years gone by, of bride
and groom in wedding garments--the man sitting down, of course, while
his wife stands behind him, as a servant might, with her hand upon his
chair.
[Sidenote: Day by Day]
Day by day, those eyes are fixed upon her in stern judgment. Her
failings and her conscious virtues are forever before that other woman.
Her tears and her laughter are alike subjected to that remorseless
scrutiny.
[Sidenote: A Sheeted Spectre]
Does she dare to forget and be happy? The other woman looks down upon
her like a sheeted spectre conveying a solemn warning. "You may die,"
those pictured lips seem to say, "and some other will take your place,
as you have taken mine." When the tactlessness, bad temper, or general
mulishness of man wrings unwilling tears from her eyes, there is no
sympathy to be gained from that impalpable presence. "You should not
have married him," the picture seems to say, or; "He treated me the same
way, and I died."
She is not to be blamed if she fancies that her husband also feels the
presence of the other. As she pours his coffee in the morning and he
looks upon her with the fond glance which men bestow upon women about to
give them food, she may easily imagine that he sees the other in her
place. Even the clasp of her hand or the touch of her lips may bring a
longing for that other, hidden in the far-off grave.
Broadly speaking, widowers make better husbands than widows do wives.
The presence of the dead wife may be a taunting memory, but seldom
more. It is not often that she is spoken of, unless it is to praise her
cooking. If she made incomparable biscuits and her coffee was fit to be
the nectar of the gods, there are apt to be frequent and tactless
comparisons, until painful experience teaches the sinner that this will
not do.
[Sidenote: "A Shining Mark"]
On the contrary, a widow's second husband is often the most sincere
mourner of her first. As time goes on, he realises keenly what a doleful
day it was for him when that other died. "Death loves a shining mark,"
and that first husband was always such a paragon of perfection that it
seems like an inadvertence because he was permitted to glorify this
sodden sphere at all. She keeps, in heart at least, and often by outward
observance, the anniversaries of her former engagement and marriage. The
love letters of the dead are put away with her jewels and bits of real
lace.
Small defections are commented upon and odious parallels drawn. Her home
is seen to be miserably inadequate beside the one she once had. Her
supply of pin money is painfully small, judged by the standard which has
hitherto been her guide. Callers are entertained with anecdotes of "my
first husband," and her dinner table is graced with the same stories
that famous raconteur was wont to tell.
If her present husband pays her a compliment, he is reminded that his
predecessor was accustomed to say the same thing. The relatives of the
first wife are gently made aware that their acquaintance is not desired.
His manner of life is carefully renovated and his old friendships put
away with moth balls and camphor, never to see the light again.
[Sidenote: The Best Advertisement]
Yet the best possible advertisement of matrimony is the rapidity with
which the bereaved seek new mates. There is no more delicate compliment
to a first marriage than a second alliance, even when divorce, rather
than death, has been the separating agency. A divorced man has more
power to charm than a widower, because there is always the supposition
that he was not understood and that his life's happiness is still to
come.
[Sidenote: Forgetting]
Forgetting is the finest art of life and is to be desired more than
memory, even though Mnemosyne stands close by Lethe and with her dewy
finger-tips soothes away all pain. The lowest life remembers; to the
highest only is it given to forget.
Yet, when the last word is said, this is the dread and the pity of
death. It is not "the breathless darkness and the narrow house," but the
certain knowledge that one's place can almost instantly be filled. The
lips that quiver with sobs will some day smile again, eyes dimmed by
long weeping will dance with laughter, hearts that once ached bitterly
will some day swell and overflow with a new love.
This knowledge lies heavily upon a woman's soul and saddens, though
often imperceptibly, the happiest marriage. All her toil and striving
may some day be for naught. The fruits of her industry and thrift may
some day gleam in jewels upon the white throat of another woman. Silks
and laces which she could not have will add to the beauty of the
possible woman who will ascend her vacant throne.
Sometimes a woman remains faithful to a memory, and sometimes, though
rarely, a man may do the same. There is only one relation in life which
may not be formed again--that between a mother and her child.
[Sidenote: The Child Upon Her Breast]
The little one may have lived but a few days, yet, if it has once lain
upon her breast, she has something Death may never hope to destroy.
Other children, equally dear, may grow to stalwart manhood and gracious
womanhood, but that face rises to immortality in a world of endless
change.
No single cry, no weak clasp of baby fingers is ever forgotten. Through
all the years, unchanging, and taking on new beauty with every fleeting
day, the little face is still before her. And thus in a way Death brings
her a blessing, for when the others have grown she has it still--the
child upon her breast.
Love's best gifts are not to be taken away. Tender memories must always
be inwoven with the sad, and the sympathy and unselfishness which great
loves ever bring are left to make sweet the nature of one who is
chastened by sorrow. Grief itself never stings; it is the accusing
conscience which turns the dagger remorselessly in the heart.
[Sidenote: Our unsuspected Kindness]
Life, after all, is a masquerade. We fear to show our tenderness and our
love. We habitually hide our best feelings, lest we be judged weak and
emotional, and unfit for the age in which it is our privilege to move.
Sometimes it needs Death to show us ourselves and to teach our friends
our deep and unsuspected kindness.
The woman who hungers throughout her marriage for the daily expression
of her husband's love, often looks longingly towards the day to come,
when hot tears will fall upon her upturned face and that for which she
has vainly thirsted will be laid upon her silent lips. But swiftly upon
the vision comes the thought, that even so, it would be of short
duration; that the newly awakened love would soon be the portion of
someone else.
It would be a beautiful world, indeed, if we were not at such pains to
hide our real selves--if all our kindly thoughts were spoken and all our
generous deeds were done. No one of us would think of Death as our best
friend, if we were not all so bitterly unkind. Yet we put into white
fingers the roses for which the living might have pleaded in vain, and
too often, with streaming eyes, we ask pardon of the dead.
[Sidenote: Atonement]
Atonement is not to be made thus. A costly monument in a public square
is tardy appreciation of a genius whose generation refused him bread. A
man's tears upon a woman's hands are not enough, when all her life she
has prayed for his love.
There is no law so unrelenting as that of compensation. Gravitation
itself may be more successfully defied. It is the one thing which is
absolutely just and which is universal in its action, though sometimes
as slow as the majestic forces which change rock to dust.
We cannot have more joy than we give--nor more pain. The eternal balance
swings true. The capacity for enjoyment and the capacity for suffering
are one and the same. He who lives out of reach of sorrow has sacrificed
his possible ecstasy. "He has seen only half the universe who has not
been shown the House of Pain."
[Sidenote: Emerson's "Compensation"]
"And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the
understanding also after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation,
a cruel disappointment, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid
loss and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force
that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother,
lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the
aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our
way of life, terminating an epoch of infancy or youth which was waiting
to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation or a household or style of
living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth
of character. It permits or constrains the formation of new
acquaintances, and the reception of new influences that prove of the
first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have
remained a sunny garden flower, with no room for its roots and too much
sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of
the gardener is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit
to wide neighbourhoods of men."
[Sidenote: Upon the Upland Ways]
That life alone is worth the living which sets itself upon the upland
ways. To steel one's self against joy to be spared the inevitable hurt,
is not life. We are afraid of love, because the might and terror of it
has sometimes brought despair. We are afraid of belief, because our
trust has been betrayed. We are afraid of death, because we have seen
forgetfulness.
We should not fear that someone might take our place in the heart that
loves us best--if we were only loved enough. The same love is never
given twice; it differs in quality if not in degree, and when once made
one's own, is never to be lost.
There are some natures whose happiness is a matter of persons and
things; some to love and some to be loved; the daily needs amply
satisfied, and that is enough for content.
There are others with whom persons and things do not suffice, whose love
is vital, elemental, and indestructible. It has no beginning and no end;
it simply is. With this the Grey Angel has no power; the grave is robbed
of its victory and death of its sting.
"Love never denied Death and Death will not deny Love." When the bond is
of that finer sort which does not rely upon presence for its permanence,
there is little bereavement to be felt. For mutely, like a guardian
angel, that other may live with us still; not as a shadowy presence,
but rather as a dear reality.
That little mound of earth upon the distant hill, over which the sun and
stars pass in endless sequence, and where the quiet is unbroken through
the change of spring to autumn, and the change of autumn to spring, has
not the power to destroy love, but rather to make it more sure.
The one who sleeps is forever beyond the reach of doubt and
misunderstanding. Separation, estrangement, and bitterness, which are
sometimes concealed in the cup that Life and Love have given, are
forever taken out by Death, who is never cruel and who is often kind.
[Sidenote: The Wanderer's Rest]
We tread upon earth and revile it, forgetting that at last it hides our
defects and that through it our dead hearts climb to blossom in violets
and rue. Death is the Wanderer's Rest, where there is no questioning,
but the same healing sleep for all. In that divine peace, there is no
room for regret, since the earthly loves are sure of immortality.
[Sidenote: While the Dream Seemed True]
As much as is vital will live on, unchanging, changeless, and taking on
new sweetness with the years. That which is not wholly given, which is
ours only for a little time, will fade as surely as the roses in the
marble hands. Death has saved many a heartache, by coming while the
dream still seemed true.
In a single passage, Emerson has voiced the undying beauty and the
everlasting truth which lie beneath the perplexities of life.
"Oh, believe as thou livest, that every sound which is spoken over the
round world, which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine ear.
Every proverb, every book, every byword which belongs to thee for aid or
comfort, shall surely come home, through open or winding passages. Every
friend, whom not thy fantastic will, but the great and tender heart in
thee craveth, shall lock thee in his embrace. And this, because the
heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, not an
intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls
uninterruptedly an endless circulation through all men, as the water of
the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one."
[Sidenote: The Everlasting Love]
Sometimes, into two hearts great enough to hold it, and into two souls
where it may forever abide, there comes the Everlasting Love. It is
elemental, like fire and the sea, with the depth and splendour of the
surge and the glory of the flame. It makes the world a vast cathedral,
in which they two may worship, and where, even in the darkness, there is
the peace which passeth all understanding, because it is of God.
When the time of parting comes, for there is always that turning in the
road, the sadness is not so great because one must go on alone. Life
grows beautiful after a time and even wholly sweet, when a man and a
woman have so lived and loved and worked together, that death is not
good-bye, but rather--"auf wiedersehen."
The Consolations of Spinsterhood
[Illustration]
The Consolations of Spinsterhood
[Sidenote: "A Great Miration"]
The attached members of the community are wont to make what Uncle Remus
called "a great miration," when a woman deliberately chooses
spinsterhood as her lot in life, rather than marriage.
There is an implied pity in their delicate inquiries, and always the
insinuation that the spinster in question could never have had an offer
of marriage. The husband of the lady leading the inquisition may have
been one of the spinster's first admirers, but it is never safe to say
so, for so simple a thing as this has been known to cause trouble in
families.
If it is known positively that some man has offered her his name and his
troubles, and there is still no solitaire to be seen, the logical
hypothesis is charitably advanced, that she has been "disappointed in
love." It is possible for a spinster to be disappointed in lovers, but
only the married are ever disappointed in love.
[Sidenote: A Cause of Stagnation]
The married women who ask the questions and who, with gracious kindness,
hunt up attractive men for the unfortunate young woman to meet, are, all
unknowingly, one great cause of stagnation in the marriage-license
market.
Nothing so pleases a woman safely inside the bonds of holy matrimony as
to confide her sorrows, her regrets, and her broken ideals to her
unattached friends. Many a woman thinks her ideal is broken when it is
only sprained, but the effect is the same.
Was the coffee weak and were the waffles cold, and did Monsieur express
his opinion of such a breakfast in language more concise than elegant?
Madame weeps, and gives a lurid account of the event to the visiting
spinster. By any chance, does a girl go from her own dainty and orderly
room into an apartment strewn with masculine belongings, confounded upon
confusion such as Milton never dreamed? Does she have to wait while her
friend restores order to the chaos? If so, she puts it down in her
mental note-book, upon the page headed "Against."
The small domestic irritations which crowd upon the attached woman from
day to day, leaving crow's feet around her eyes and delicate tracery in
her forehead, have a certain effect upon the observing. But worse than
this is the spectre of "the other woman," which haunts her friend from
day to day, to the grave--and after, if the dead could tell their
thoughts.
If she has been safely shielded from books which were not written for
The Young Person, Mademoiselle believes that marriage is a bond which is
not to be broken except by death. It is a severe shock when she first
discovers that death changes nothing; that it is only life which
separates utterly.
[Sidenote: That Pitiful Story]
That pitiful story of "the other woman" comes from quarters which the
uninitiated would never suspect. With grim loyalty, married women hide
their hearts from each other. Many a smile conceals a tortured soul.
When the burden is no longer to be borne, a spinster is asked to share
it.
A woman will forgive a man anything except disloyalty to herself. Crimes
which the law stands ready to punish rank as naught with her, if the
love between them is untarnished by doubt or mistrust. Any offence
prompted by her own charm, even a duel to the death with a rival suitor,
is easily condoned. But though God may be able to forgive disloyalty, in
her heart of hearts no woman ever can.
[Sidenote: An Idle Flirtation]
More often than not, it is simply an idle flirtation, or, at the most, a
passing fancy which the next week may prove transient and unreal. The
woman with the heartache will say, with wet eyes and quivering lips: "I
know, positively, that my husband has done nothing wrong. I would go to
the stake upon that belief. He is only weak and foolish and a little
vain, perhaps, and some day he will see his mistake, but I cannot bear
to see him compromise himself and me in the eyes of the world. Of
course, _I_ know," she will say, proudly, "but there are others who do
not,--who are always ready to suspect,--and I will not have them pity
me!"
When nearly all the married friends a spinster has have come to her with
the same story, the variations being individual and of slight moment,
she begins to have serious doubts of matrimony as a satisfactory
career. Women who have been married five, ten, and even twenty years;
women with children grown and whom the world counts safely and happily
married, will sob bitterly in the embrace of the chosen girl friend.
[Sidenote: Indifference]
Indifference is the only counsel one has to offer, but even so, it
gradually becomes the first of the steppes upon the heart-way which lead
to an emotional Siberia.
Of course there are women who are insanely jealous of their husbands,
and, more rarely, men who are jealous of their wives. Jealousy may be
explained as innate vanity and selfishness or as a defect in
temperament, but at any rate, it is a condition which is far past the
theoretical stage.
It is hard for a spinster to understand why any woman should wish to
hold a man against his will. A dog who has to be kept chained, in order
to be retained as a pet, is never a very satisfactory possession. It
seems natural to apply the same reasoning to human affairs, for surely
no love is worth having which is not a free gift.
No girl would feel particularly flattered by a proposal, if it were put
in this form: "Will you marry me? No one else will." Yet the same girl,
married, would gladly take her husband to a desert island, that she
might be sure of him forever.
[Sidenote: Behind Prison Bars]
Love which needs to be put behind prison bars, that it may not escape,
is not love, but attraction, fascination, or whatever the psychologists
may please. A man chooses his wife, not because there are no other
women, but in spite of them. It is a pathetic acknowledgment of his poor
judgment, if he lets the world suspect that his choice was wrong.
There are some souls that hie them faraway from civilisation, to
convents, monasteries, and western plains, that they may keep away from
temptation. In the same fashion, woman tries to isolate her lord and
master. If he meets women at all, they are those invisibly labeled "not
dangerous."
The world makes as many saints as sinners, and the man who needs to be
kept away from any sort of temptation is weak indeed. There are many of
his kind, but he is the better man in the end who meets it face to face,
fights with it like a soldier, and wins like a king.
[Sidenote: The Thousand Foes]
The mother of Sparta bade her son return with his shield or on it, and
the thought has potential might to-day. If a man honestly loves a woman,
she need have no fear of the thousand foes that wait to take him from
her. If he does not, the sooner she understands the truth, the better it
is for both. There are many people who consider love a dream, but they
usually grow to think of marriage as the cold breakfast.
Men are but children of a larger growth. A small boy forgets his promise
to stay at home and tears madly down the street in the discordant wake
of a band. The same boy, in later years, will follow his impulses with
equal readiness, for he is taught conformity to outward laws, but very
seldom self-control.
The fear of "the other woman" may be largely assuaged by a spinster's
confidence in her ability to cope with the difficult situation, should
it ever present itself, but there are other considerations which act as
a discouragement to matrimony.
The chains of love may be sweet bondage, but freedom is hardly less
dear. The spinster, like the wind, may go where she listeth, and there
is no one to say her nay. A modern essayist has pointed out that "if a
mortal knows his mate cannot get away, he is apt to be severe and
unreasonable."
The thought of being compelled to ask for money, and perhaps to meet
with refusal, frequently acts as a deterrent upon incipient love. A man
is often generous with his sweetheart and miserly with his wife. In the
days of courtship, the dollars may fly on wings in search of pleasure
for the well-beloved, and yet, after marriage, they will be squeezed
until the milling is worn smooth, the eyes start from the eagle, and
until one half-way expects to hear the noble bird scream.
[Sidenote: Unlimited Credit]
There are girls in every circle, married to men not by any means
insolvent, who have unlimited credit, but never any money of their own.
They have carriages but no car fare; fine stationery, monogrammed and
blazoned with a coat of arms, but not by any chance a postage stamp.
Many a woman in such circumstances covenants with the tradespeople to
charge as merchandise what is really cash, and sells laces and ribbons
to her friends a little below cost. When a girl is approached with a
plea to have her purchases charged to her friend's account, and to pay
her friend rather than the merchant, is it not sufficient to postpone
possible matrimony at least six months? Adversity has no terrors for a
woman; she will gladly share misfortune with the man she loves, but
simple selfishness is a very different proposition.
[Sidenote: "Wedded to their Art"]
There are also the dazzling allurements offered by various "careers"
which bring fame and perhaps fortune. The glittering triumphs of a prima
donna, a picture on the line in the Salon, or a possible book which
shall sell into the hundred thousands, are not without a certain charm,
even though people who are "wedded to their art" sometimes get a divorce
without asking for it.
The universal testimony of the great, that fame itself is barren, is
thrust aside as of small moment. She does not realise that it is love
for which she hungers, rather than fame, which is the admiration of the
many. Sometimes she learns that "the love of all is but a small thing to
the love of one" and that in a right marriage there would be no
conscious sacrifice. If she were not free to continue the work that she
loved, she would feel no deprivation.
Happiness is often thrust aside because of her ideals. She demands all
things in a single man, forgetting that she, too, is human and not by
any means faultless. Some day, perhaps too late, she understands that
love and criticism lie far apart, that love brings beauty with it, and
that the marks of individuality are the very texture of charm, as the
splendour of the opal lies in its flaws.
[Sidenote: The Vital Touch]
There is always the doubt as to whether the seeker may be the one of all
the world to find the inmost places in her heart. Taste and temperament
may be akin, position and purpose in full accord, and yet the vital
touch may be lacking. Sometimes, in the after-years, it may be found by
two who seek for it patiently together, but too often dissonance grows
into discord and estrangement.
The march of civilisation has done away with the odium which was
formerly the portion of the unattached woman. It is no disgrace to be a
spinster, and apparently it is fitting and proper to be an old maid,
since so many of them have "Mrs." on their cards, and since there are
so many narrow-minded and critical men who fully deserve the
appellation.
There is no use in saying that any particular girl is a spinster from
necessity rather than choice. One has but to look at the peculiar
specimens of womankind who have married, to be certain that there is no
one on the wide earth who could not do so if she chose.
[Sidenote: "A Discipline"]
Some people are fond of alluding to marriage as "a discipline," and
sometimes a grey-haired matron will volunteer the information that "the
first years of marriage are anything but happy." To one who has hitherto
regarded it from a different point of view, the training-school idea is
not altogether attractive.
Men and women who have been through it very seldom hold to their first
opinions. It is considered as a business arrangement, a social
contrivance, sometimes as an easy way to make money, but by very few as
the highest form of happiness.
[Sidenote: Small Extravagances]
The consolations of spinsterhood are mainly negative, but the minus sign
has its proper place in the personal equation. "The other woman" does
not exist for the spinster, save as a shadowy possibility. She is not
asked what she did with the nickel which was given her day before
yesterday, and thus forced to make confession of small extravagances, or
to reply, with such sweetness as she may muster, that she bought a lot
on a fashionable street with part of it, and has the remainder out at
interest. She does not have to stay at home from social affairs because
she has no escort, for the law has not apportioned to her a solitary
man, and she has a liberty of choice which is not accorded her married
friend.
She is not subjected to the humiliation of asking a man for money to pay
for his own food, his own service, and even his own laundry bill. She
can usually earn her own, if the gods have not awarded her sufficient
gold, and there is no money which a woman spends so happily as that
which she has earned herself.
The "career" lies before her, and she has only to choose the thing for
which she is best fitted, and work her way upward from the lowest ranks
to the position of a star of the first magnitude. Opportunity is but
another name for health, obstacles make firm stepping-stones, and that
which is dearly bought is by far the sweetest in the end. Of course
there are "strings to pull," but no one needs them. Success is more
lasting if it is won in an open field, without favour, and in spite of
generous measures of it bestowed upon the opposition.
[Sidenote: The Greatest Consolation]
But of all the consolations of spinsterhood, the greatest is this,--that
out of the dim and uncertain future, perchance in the guise of a
divorced man or a widower with four children, The Prince may yet come.
"On his plain but trusty sword are these words only--Love and
Understand." Across the unsounded, estranging seas, with a whole world
lying immutably between, he, too, may be waiting for the revelation. He
may come as a knight of old, with banners, jewels, and flashing steel,
to the clarion ring of trumpet or cymbal, or softly, in the twilight,
like one whose presence is felt before it is made known.
Out of the city streets The Prince may come, tired of the endless
struggle, when the tide of the human has beaten heavily upon his jaded
soul, or through the woods, with the silence of the forest still upon
him. His path may lie through an old garden, where marigold and larkspur
are thickly interwoven, and shadowy spikes of mignonette make all the
summer sweet, or through the frosty darkness, when the earth is dumb
with snow and the midnight stars have set the heavens ablaze with spires
of sapphire light.
[Sidenote: At the First Meeting]
Sometimes, at the first meeting The Prince is known, by that mysterious
alchemy which lies in the depths of the maiden soul and often, after
long waiting, a friend throws off his disguise and royalty stands
revealed. Sometimes he is the comrade of the far-off childish years, the
schoolmate of a later time, or someone whose hand has proved a strength
and solace in times of deepest grief.
"To Love and Understand!" All else may be forgiven, if he has but these
two gifts, for they are as the crest and royal robe. Bare and empty his
hands may be, but these are the kingly rights.
Slowly, and sometimes with a strange fear which makes her tremble, there
steals into her heart a great peace. With it comes infinite tenderness
and an unspeakable compassion, not only for him, but for all the world.
Love's laughter changes to questioning too deep for smiles or tears--the
boundless aspiration of the soul toward all things true.
Playthings and tinsel are cast away. The music of the dance dies in
lingering, discordant fragments, and in its place comes the full tone of
an organ and the majestic movement of a symphony. The web of the daily
living grows beautiful in the new light, for the Hand that set the
pattern has been gently laid upon her loom.
[Sidenote: Through all the Years to Come]
Through all the years to come, they are to be together; he and she.
There will be no terror in the wilderness, no sting in poverty or
defeat--hunger and thirst can be forgotten. Wherever Destiny may point
the way, they are to fare together--he and she.
Somewhere, in a world whose only shame is its uncleanliness, they two
are to make a home and keep the little space around them wholly clean.
Somewhere, they two will show the world that the old ideals are not
lost; that a man and a woman may still live together in supreme and
lasting content. Somewhere, too, they will teach anew the old lesson,
that it is unyielding Honour at the core of things that keeps them sound
and sweet.
There is nothing in all life so beautiful as that first dream of Home; a
place where there is balm for the tortured soul, new courage for the
wavering soul, rest for the tired soul, and stronger trust for the soul
caught in the snares of doubt and disbelief--a place where one may be
wholly and joyfully one's self, where one's mistakes are never faults,
where pardon ever anticipates the asking, where love follows swiftly
upon understanding and understanding upon love.
[Sidenote: The Sceptre of the King]
"To Love and Understand!" He who holds the sceptre of the king may rule
right royally. There is solace for the tired traveller within the
cloister of that other heart, and the pitiful chains which some call
marriage would rust and decay at the entrance to that holy place.
The spotless peace within the inner chamber is his alone. There his
motives are never questioned, nor his words distorted beyond their
meaning, and his daily purposes are ever read aright.
The dream is forever centred upon the coming of The Prince. Sometimes,
with the grim irony of Fate, he is seen when both are bound--and there
are some who deem a heartache too great a price to pay for the
revelation. Now and then, after many years, he comes to claim his own.
[Sidenote: The Grey Angel and the Prince]
And sometimes, too, when one has long waited and prayed for his coming;
when the sight has grown dim with watching and the frosty rime of winter
has softly touched the dark hair, the Grey Angel takes pity and closes
the tired eyes.
The lavender and the dead rose-leaves breathe a hushed fragrance from
the heaps of long-stored linen; the cricket and the tiny clock keep up
their cheery song, because they do not know their gentle mistress can no
longer hear. The slanting sunbeams of afternoon mark out a delicate
tracery upon the floor, and the shadow of the rose-geranium in the
window is silhouetted upon the opposite wall. And then, into the quiet
house, steals something which seems like an infinite calm.
[Sidenote: The Exquisite Peace]
But the dainty little lady who lies fast asleep, with the sun resting
caressingly upon her, has gained, in that mystical moment, both
understanding and love. For there comes an exquisite peace upon her--as
though she had found The Prince.
THE END.
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