The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1869-12-03
FIRST LOVE.

1t is one of the oldest points of differ
ence between man and woman that wo.
man has no first love. The long alphabet
of her affections is without any distinct
end or beginning; she mounts by insen-
sible graduations from dolls and kittens
and pet brothers, to the zenith of pas
sion, to descend by the same insensible
graduation from the zenith of passion
through pet brothers to tabby-cats.
There is no such event as a first kiss
forms in boys life to mark for woman
the transition from girlhood to the sud
den maturity of passion; she has been
kissing and purriDg and fondling and
pettiBg from her cradle, and she will
pet and fondle and purr and kiss to her
grave. Love, in the technical sense OF
the word, is with her little more than
an intensifying of her ordinary life.
There is no new picture, but the colors
are for the while little heightened and
the tone raised. Presently the vividness
of color will fade again, and the cool
gray lower the tone, and the passion of
life will have died away. But there
will be no definite movement at which
one could fairly say that love came or
went. A girl who is not whispering in
lovers ear will always say frankly
enough that she never knew what it was
not to be in love.
There is one obvious deduction which
she forgets to draw-that there never
can be a time when she can know what
it is to be in love. Here and there. of
course, woman may be colder, or later
in development, or more self-conscious,
and may divide by more rigidly marked
lines the phases of her life. But even
then, if she be woman at all, she can
have no first love. Feeling, with woman,
has no past, as it has no future. Every
phase of her life begins with an act of
oblivion. Every love is first love. 81
never loved any one before" is said, and
said truly, to a dozen loving ears in sue
cession. "The first thing-I should like
to meet with in Paradise" said Lady
Wortley Montagu, "wOuld be the river
Letbe-the stream of Forgetfulness."
But woman finds a little rivulet of
Lethe at every stage of her hearts
career. If she remembers the past at
all, it is to offer it up as burnt sacrifice
to the deity of the present. When
Cleopatra talked about Caesar to Mark
Anthony, she passed, no doubt, her fin
gers through her lovers hair, and won
dered how she could have ever dotted on
such bald .pated fellow as the Dictator.
Had he succeeded in charming Octavins,
she would have wondered equally at
her infatuation for such ne'er- do-well
as Anthony. And so it is no wonder
that a woman's first love, oven if she
realizes it at all, goes down in the
general wreck Of the past. But in mans
life it is revolution. 1t is, in fact, the
one thing that makes him man.
The world of boyhood is strictly a
world of boys. Sisters, aunts, cousins,
mothers, are mixed up in the general
crowd of barbarians that stand without
the playground. There are few warm
er or more poetic affections than the
chivalrous friendship of school-fellows;
there is no more truer or more genuine
worship than a boys worship of the
hero of the scrimmage or the cricket
field. 1t is fine world in itself, but it
is a wonderfully narrow and restricted
world. Not a girl may peep over the
pailings. Girls can't jump, or flag out,
or swarm upa tree; they have nothing
to talk about as boys talk; they never
heard of that glorious swipe of Old
Browns; they are awful milk seps; they
cry and tell mamma" they are afraid
OF a governess and of a COW. 1t is i'm.
possible to conceive q creature more ut.
teriy contemplate in boys eyes than
girl OF his Own age usually is. Thon
In some fatal moment comes the reyolu-
tion. The barrier Of contempt goes
down with a crash. The boy-world
disappears. Brown, that god of the
playground, is cast to the owls and to
the bats. There is sudden GOODNESS in
the friendship that was to last from the
school to the grave. Paper chases and
the annual match with the cold fellow
cease to be the highest object of human
interest. There is less excitement than
there was last year when great cheer
welcomes the news that Mugby has get
the Ireland.
The boys life has become muddled
and confused. The old existence is
steering of, and the new comes shyly,
ftfully. 1t Is only by sort of compul-
sion that he will own that he is making
all this fuss about a girl. For the
moment he rebels against the spell of
that one little face, the witchery of that
one little hand, he fingers on the Dor
der oil THIS new country, from whence
there IS no return to the old playing
helds. Hois shy, strange to this world
OF woman, and woman's talk and wo-
mans ground, tumbles over foot. stools,
and tangles itself in colored woods. The
sturdiest arm that ever welded hat
trembles at the touch of the tiny finger,
The voice that rang out like trum9et:
among the tumult of foot ball, bushes.
and trembles and falters in saying half
q dozen commonplace words. The old
sense of mastery is gone. He knows
that every chit in the nursery has found
ont his secret, and is laughing over it.
de bushes, and boys blush is a hot,
painful thing, when the sisterly heads
oeRa together, and he hears them whis.
pering what fool he is. Yes, he is a
fool that is one thing which no feels
quite certain about, There is only one
other thing which he feels even more
certain about-that he is in love, and
LQat love has mo, of