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 fiances 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



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 Heloise. 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



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, matinee 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 aesthetic 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-a-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-a-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



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 fiance'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 Caesar 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



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 naievely 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.