The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1869-08-21

presence of some obiecss which 60 be,
stov these bountiful traasares. Hha be-
comes afflicted with q plethora Of kind;
nea5, and must expend eorno OF THE in
Ecreasing affection on some one. ~ you,s
her affianced lover, are such fool tas 10
go away and leave vacuum behind you
do you think she will not, prompted BY
nature, I'LL it up? With 30 much love-.
she must have some one TO love; and !she
cannot find proper outlet for her emo
tions on scented paper. Worse than all,
if you quarrel when you are thus absent,
you compel her to seek the affection OF
some one as solace for your cruelty.
Besides this immediate danger, there are
hundred contingencies interfering with
the chances of her remaining constant
the hints of friends, the misunderstand-
ings OF correspondence, the attraction of
new faces. II she is led into marrying
some one else. the poor thing is not to
blame. She is only q woman. And these
temporary circumstances may not have
altered her old love bit. You cannot
tell what has influenced her to take such
q step; in time, when reflection and me-
mory come to her aid, she may deeply
regret it, and think very fondly of him
whom she onced loved"
This is the final step preparatory to
the construction of sad lovers heaven.
The rejected one Immediately proceeds
to assure himself that, in the far future,
when the fogs and mists of the neither
world shall have been dissipatcd, she
and he will once more come together, on
the old terms, with the old love still un-
broken. Then there will be no harsh
voices of intermeddling relatives, no ig-
nominious squabbles, but perfect mu-
tnal understanding, consistent with tho
serene atmosphere of the new universe
This IS the future to which the disap-
pointed lover, be he passionate poet, q
melancholy sculptor, q meditative mer-
chant, inevitably looks-the beautiful
golden future that lies just outside the
grey horizon Of his life, whittier he is
never done straining wistful eyes.
He forgets only one thing-what is to
become Of his rival? We presume that
he dies too. He has had as great love
for this particular woman; he, too, has
looked forward to the calm sunshine of
settled love after the cold mists of life
and the sharp frost of death shall have
been passed. The heaven of sad lovers
provides for the full fruition of all love
that has only partially blossomed here.
But it does not furnish duplicates of the
women loved on earth; and so, when
both lovers reach that happy sphere,
how are they both to be satisfied? It
would be very hard, indeed, if man
who married woman on earth, and
loved her devotedly, were forced on en-
tering this other sphere, to give her up,
simply to satisfy the longings of some
other one who had also loved her on
earth. Nay, the problem is more COM
plex. There ore some women, as we
have said, who are faithfully and truly
loved by three or four men. When all
these get into the heaven of sad lovers,
what is she to do? The lover who in
dulges in these musings never takes ac-
count of this ugly stumbling block.
Each Of the three or four lovers looks
upon his particular love as the love which
the coming heaven must necessarily ac-
complish. He it is who has been so dis
gracefully ill.used upon earth. AS he
constructs his anthropomorphic heaven
for himself, he surely must have the
benefit of it. But then he constructs it
upon principle which is universal in its
application, and must, therefore, include
all his rivals. If this future court Of
equity, in which the rights and wrongs
OF faithful love are to be rlghteously set
tied, is to be a court of justice at all, it
will not shut out claimants who have
equal rights to be heard.
So far from this future sphere of con-
ISOLATION answering the ends proposed, it
would increase and aggravate the wrongs
complained of here below. In this pre-
sent life, when the awkward social CO.
nundrum occurs, of two men loving one
woman, an always possible solution of it
is for one of the men to go and force
himself to fall in love with somebody
else. Let him, at least, marry woman
whom he admires and respects, and the
kindly ties of marriage will be found to
have q wonderful effect in inducing love.
Or he may do what the compassionate
heroine invariably asks him, at the end
of the second act or the second volume,
to do; he may "strive to forget his un-
fortunate passion" in taking to tiger
hunting, billiard playing, or roe-deer
shooting. Anything, in short, is better
for him than to go on nursing his woes,
and rendering himself nuisance to his
acquaintances. But in this heaven of
the sad lover there is no option. The
whole place has been "got up" as it