The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-09-08
The Sweetheart and the Wife-The Honey
mann

ledge how to use IL.
The Sweetheart and the Wife-The Honey
moon.
Listen to The savage words Of the Saturday
ReuleaD, as it discusses "Man and his Disen- |
chanter." 1t tays:-
He certainly has put his foot in it, and yet it
seems incredible that month can have done 1t |
all. There Is q strange irony in the contrast |
between the honeymoon OF his fancy and the |
honeymoon OF fact. There has been very little
of the expected alienation of caresses and
into hs 'So sPoed eh SS % msSy
months OF compulsory good behavior, OF un-
checkered sunshine, 1t is an immense luxury
to her TO find herself free to live her natural
little life OF pouting and petting. And SO she
brings to the paradise OF expected bliss the
frowns and the sulks of the nursery. She
takes out her freedom in thousand
capliCes and tempers and whlms. But, after all,
hope isn't killed in an hour. and it is possible
to be patient. The real difficulty is to be enter
tanning. The one thirst of the young bride is
for amusement, and she has no notion of
amusing herself. If she yawns, if she feels
sleepy and bored she looks on the breakdown
OF the vague anticipatons with which she mar
ried as an Injustice and a wrong. 1t is amusing
to see the spouse of this ideal creature wend his
way to the lending library after a week of
idealism, and the relief with which he carries
home a novel. But the novels are last seasons
novels, and life is soon as dreary as before.
How often IN those nights OF expectation has he
framed to himself imaginary talks over the
fire, talk brighter and ,wlttier than that of the
friuds he forsakes! But conversation Is difficult
In the case OF q refined creature who is as iguo-
Iant as a Hottentot. He begins with the new
MiltOnic poem, and finds she has never looked
into paradise LOST He plunges into the
Reform Bill, but she knows nothing of
politics, and has never read leading article in
her life. He tries music, and she kiudes a
little at the thought OF hearing Nilsson again
next season, at least II there Is royal princess
in the house. The she tries her hand in turn,
and floods him with the cead chat of town, and
oceans OF family tattle. He finds himself shut
up for weeks with a creature who takes inte-
rest in nothing but Uncle Crosspatch's temper,
and the scandal about Lady x. Little by little
in that fatal honeymoon the absolute pettiness,
the dense dullness of woman's life breaks on the
disenchanted devotee. His deity is without oc-
cupation, without thought, without resource He
has faint faith left in her finer sensIoility, in
her poetic nature, he fetches his Tennyson from
the carpet-bag, and writes In MernOr1dn on a
critic who pronounces it pretty" He still
takes her love OF caresses as a sign of an atfec-
tion passing the love OF men, and he unfolds
to her his hope that year or two more may
give him chance OF retreat into the country
and quiet llte Of conjugai happiness. The
confession startles the blighted being into
real interest at last. She has not escaped from
the dullness of the nursery to plunge into the
dullness of home. She amuses herself vito
her spouse's indifference to all that makes lite
worth the living. But then men are such odd
cIeatures-so Quixotlc, 80 impractical, so
mantically blind to the actual necessities of
lite 1t is this idleness this boredom of the
ianciful The dear, odd creature must be got
back to town, to his business, to his books and
the honeymoon must end. 1t Is time, IN fact,
that it did end, for boredom has done its work,
and the dsenchan ment of man is complete.
One sees dimly, as the honeymoon ends, what
an immense advantage this poetic being has
ness of her previous study of the position. In
the presence of his confused dreams her pracl.
cal well-arranged plan of life gives her lead
that she means to keep. She is reasonable, of
N N oh
jections arc based on plsn not absolutely roman
tic and absurd. But the hard, coarse, masculine
creature refuses to reason, and buries himself in
the Times. Reasoning, calculating, planning
this was the very life from which he had fled to
fling himself into the arms of his ideal. He
is mystifed, puzzled, indignant His dim
conceptions of imaginative woman float sadly
away, but they leave. him no formula
to which he can reduce this hard cynical
being who has taken her place at his freslde.
Woman on the other hand, is far from being
puzzled or mysti6ed. 1t is part of her faith
that she thoroughly understands her husband.
TIE is a traditional theory of spouses that one
feminine generation hands down to another, and
into this theory he is simply fitted. While he
was fnging away his last cigar and confessing
his worldliness and unworthiness, she was
taking from mamma aseries of practical instruc-
tions in the great art OF managing husband.
The art is somewhat like the Egyptian art Of
medicine; it is purely traditional aud it assumes
certain absolute identity in the patients, which
the patients. obstinately deny. But woman
~
1t every problem of domestic life. She knows
the exact temper in which her spouse had
better be induced to go to the Club; she knows
the peculiar mood in which he had better be
let alone. The same frivolous creature who lay
sulking on sofa because the honeymoon
was dull, wastes the patience and skill OF a
diplomatist In wheedling her husband out of his
season on the moors. Her lie is full of difficult
questions, which nothing but tact and time can
solace--questions like the great question Of
husbands friends, or the greater question of
husbands'dinners. The exact proportion Ia which
his old acquaintances may be encouraged to
relieve him OF The sense OF boredom at home with
out detaching 1t absolutely from him, the precise
bounds within which his taste for good dinner
may be satisfied without deriment to that
little bill at the millineI's-these are the
problems which the poetic nature is turning over
as she bids farewell TO the honeymoon. The
poor irCn pot has no particular fear now of the
possible consequences OF collision with the
fine porcelain. He finds himself floating which.
ever way he is guided-wheedled, managed, the
husband, as women tell him, OF an admirable
wife. He does his weary round of work, pump
ing up the means for carrying out her admlra-
BILE projects OF social existence, But the
dreams, the romance, the poetry, the sent'-
ment-"where," as the song rpns-"Where is
last winters snow" He thinks sometimes of
other things that turned 10 dust with the ashes
Of that last cigar. Is there anything more
poetic than woman? Is there anJ thing more
prosaic than man?