The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-10-15

people are, not quite what we ourselves were
month ago. What would others understand
of this new love-language that we talk2 What
of our spasmodic little clatter, broken with
passionate CALCULATIONS that have no relation
to any subject that could be discussed in earth
or heaven, interrupted by silences more elo-
quent than words? What of those delicious
caprices that follow on the sense of power,
those bright little quarrels that only exist in
the faith that severance is impossible? What
of this new love of letter-writing in fingers
that once hated q pen? We exult IN the
thought that St. Valentines day
taxes the energies of the Post
Office more than any other day In
the year. We laugh to think of great gov
ernment department in tlutter because Love
says ''write, and we have written. What of
this new delight in solitude, in incoming
about, as we used TO call it in our unregene-
rate days? Surely it is something that love
conquers boredom, that one is never alone
when one can peep at a locket, or spell over
again those sweetest and most crossed Of let
ters, or debate whether the object of ones
passion looked best in n blue dress or brown.
But all these are the mere outer accidents of
life, and it is life itself that is so changed.
What fresh boisterous breeze of life and
liberty comes sweeping down on the tranquil
little soul whose deepest Joys and sorrows
have been over her lessons and her doll All
the youth in her veins quickens at the touch.
She is hoyden, q scrapegrace in a moment;
the governess shrugs her shoulders mamma
begins to think of her coming out" Then
there is the sudden revulsion, the delicious
inequalities and inconsistencies of period of
transition, the shyness and stiffness, the
silence, the reVerie Then at bound there
is the return on pure girlhood, the defiant
revolt, the rebellion against this absorption in
another. Odj ct oDl0, it is the close neigh
borhood of the two that gives each its charm
She is a tlirt, coquette; for what is couquetry
but the half -incredulity of a girl unable to
believe in her own happiness, eager to con-
vince herself by any experience of the new
strength and attraction she has gained
After life brings deeper, intenser passion, but
never sensations SO vivid, so rapid, so ex-
uuisitely contrasted. never so involuntary. a
girl lies passive in the very dreaminess of joy
as emotion after emotion sweeps over her,
faith and jealousy and bitterness and delight,
like the wind sweeping over Hollan chords
and Weakening music as wild and as wayward
as the music in her heart What other
moment of life gives her those ''gr0nds
eanats elltrenaLees dc .j05e' that the old French
poetess sung about
"Ouand lie pensc ayoir plus de doulcur,
Sans penser je ine trouve hors de peine;
Puis quand lie crois ma joe etre certaine
Et etre au haut d. mon desire hGur,
II me remet en- mon premier malheur."
Men spend great deal too much time, says
q great philosopher. over love. We share Mr..
Mills opinion, though probably Mr.. Mill
would hardly share our grounds for it. We
don't grudge moment given to mans first
love. because man believes in it, "Credo
ouia impossible" believe Just because it
is impossible" le"-replied Tertullian to the OBJ
iector to his faith; and it is gain to hui
Il H.. e
should meet and believe in a thing
saved at any rate from the dreary
gospel of MIR. Buckle, from regarding
ourselves as machines, and tabulating our
lives in averages. So too there are days,
early days in mans course, when, sitting
alone and looking on sunset, he feels like
grain Of sand at the mercy of winds that blow
whence and whittier ne knows not First love
at any rate saves us out of thoughts like these
by quickening in us pulses of pain and plea
sure that will beat on, drive the winds as they
list. How much too Of the reverence, the
the grace and refinement Of charac-
ter, springs out of those days of distant,
hushed worship, of all-surendering, all-dar-
ing faith? A mere girl, like mere daisy,
rouses within us thoughts too deep for tears.
That first touch of passion gives beauty of
its own to the temper of man, as it gives it
to the face Of woman. Who has
not noted the strange, sweet change
that softens the abrupt gesture and gives
music to the hasty speech, in the hoyden
when loves finger irst touches her? When
Pygmalion's statue bride quickened into
human life, she must have felt, one fancies,
an inexpressible Joy in the sense Of the rap
ture her beauty had created, and could sus-
tain. 1t is this new s3nse-this consciousness
that, as she simply lives and moves, her grace
and power is going ont of her to gladden. at
least one heart of man's-that quickens a
girls face out of the hardness and immo-
bility of earlier years. From nsere physical
immobile form, it becomes life and spirit,
sensitive to every wave of thought, feeling
reflection. The very wonder of the new
world she looks ont pon, its interest, its awe,
mirror themselves IL the quick alterations Of
enthusiasm, of terror, of tenderness. 1t is
quite as well to get a little beauty into the
world, quite as well 10 preserve little poetry
in man, and while first love does this we don't
mean to surrender it to Mr.. Mill. But we
freely give up to him its successors. The
mere conventional repetition of the real
thing, when its first iervor of faith has fed,
the repetition of the old love-litanies by lips
that have learned the irony of them, the
mechanical performance of the ritual that has
become q sham, this is-we agree with Mr..
Nill-a sheer waste of human time. When
man has got safely over thirty, and looks
back on the number of these performances,
their extreme dreariness, and the time
they have cost him, he feels a twinge of
compunction, and a certain pleasure in the
consciousness that he is now at any rate
secure till forty. As for women, till they are