The Charleston daily news. [volume] (Charleston, S.C.) 1865-1873, 1869-10-07
FIRsTAoTE,
from the Saturday Review,l

from the Saturday Review,]
1t is one of the oldest points of difference
between man and woman that woman has 40
first love The long alphabet Of her affections
Is without any distinct end or beginning; sne
mounts by insensible gradations from dolls and
kittens and pet brothers to the zenith OF pas.
sion, to descend by the same 1nsenslDie gra-
dauons from the zenith of passion through pet
brothers to tabby cats. There Is no such event
as a first kiss forms In q boys life to mark for
woman. the transition. from girlhood to the
sudden maturity of passion; she has been Kiss
ing and purring and fOndling and pettlng lrolI
her cradle, and she will pet and fondie anu
purr' and kiss to her grave. Love, IN sIe
technical sense of the word, is with her little
more than an intensifying of her ordinary hfe
There is no new picture, but the colors are tor
the while little heightened and the tone
raised. Presently the vividness- Of color will
fade again, and the cool grays lower the tone,
and the passion Of life will have died away
But there will be no definite moment at which
one could fairly say that love came or went
a girl who Is not Whispering In lovers ear
win always say frankly enough that she never
knew what 1t was not to be in love-. There IS
one obvious deduction which she forgets to
draw, that there never can oe tlme When
she can know what it is to be IN love. Here
and there, OF course, woman may be coider,
or LATER In deyelopment or more self-conscious,
and may divide by more rigidly marked nnes
the phases of her life. But even then, If she
be a woman at all, she can have no 1rst love-
Feeling, with woman, has no past, as IL mas no
future. Every phase OF her. life begins with
an act of oblivion. Every love is frst love:
81 never loved any one before" Is said, and
said truly, to dozen loving ears In succession.
ipThe first thing should like to meet with IN
Paradise, (" said Lady Wortley Montagu, would
be the river Lethe, the stream OF forgetful-
ness" But woman finds little rivulet OF
Lethe at every stage of her hearts career.
If she remembers the past at all, 1t is to offer
it up as burnt sacrifice to the deity OF the
present. When Cleopatra talked about Cesar
to Mark Antony, she passed, no douot heT
fingers through her lovers hair and wondered
how she could ever have dotted on such
bald-pated fellow as the dictator. HAD sne
succeeded in charming Octavlus, sne would
such ne'er-do-well as Antony. And so it is
no wonder that woman's first love, even If
she realizes 1t at all, goes down In this gene
raj wreck of the past. But in mans life 1t Is a
revolution. 1t is in fact the one thing that
makes him man. The world OF boyhood is
strictly a world Of boys. Sisters, cousins,
aunts, mothers,s are mixed up In the. general
crowd Of barbarians that stand without the
/. play ground. There are few warmer or more
poetic affections than the chivalrous friendship
of schoolfellows; there is no truer or more
genuine worship than boys worship OF the
hero of the scrimmage or the cricket-held. IL
is fine world In itself, but It is wonderfully
peep over the palings. Girls can't jump, or
Tag out, or swarm up a tree; they have moth
ing to talk about as boys talk; they never
heard of that glorious swipe OF Old Browns;
they are awful milk-sops; they cry and "tell
mammal they are afraid of a governess and
of cow. It is impossible to conceive crea-
ture more utterly contemplate in boys eyes
than Girl Of his own age usually Is. Then IN
some fatal moment comes the revolution. The
barrier of contempt goes down with crash.
The boy=world disappears. Brown, that goa
or the playground, Is cast to the OWLS ana 70
the bats. There Is g sudden GOODNESS IN tne
friendship that was to last ffom school 10 the
Grave. Paper-chases and the annual match
with the told fellows" cease to be the highest
objects of human interest. There Is less eX-
icitement than there was last year when q
great cheer welcomes the news that Mugoy
has got the Ireland. The boys life has become
:muddled and confused. The old existence is
sheering off, and the new comes shyly, fitfully.
It is only Dy q sort of compulsiOn that he will
own that he Is making all this ''fuss" about a
girl. For the moment he rebels against the
spelI of that one little face the witchery Of
that one little hand. He fingers on the bor-
der of this new country from whence there Is
strange to this world of. woman, and woman's
talk and woman's ways. The surest, steadiest
foot ON the cricket-ground tumbleS over foot
stools, and tangles Itself In colored wools. The
strdiest arm that ever welded bat trembles
at the touch of q tiny finger. The voice that
rang out like trumpet among the t9mult OF
football bushes and trembles and falters IN
SAYING half dozen commonplace words. The
old sense of mastery Is gone. He knows that
every chit in the nursery has found out his
secret, and Is laughing over 1t. He bushes,
and q boys blush Is hot, painful thing, when
IL hn0nc
them whispering what fool he Is. Yes, he is
q fool-that Is one thing he feels quite certain
shout. There Is only one other thing ne feels
even more certain abOut-that he Is In love,
and that love has made him man.
We are not, Of course, going to trench on
the field Of poets and moral preachers, or to
expound, like Sir Barnes Newcome, the phil
osOphy or the affections, or to demonstrate
with Miss Faithful and Mrs. Fawcett the great
oflcel which First Love fulfls in the economy
- man. The onlv remark we have to make is
the St very obvious one which moral preachers
NAV be pardoned for forgetting, tnat 1t Is on
the whole wonderfully pleasant thing. IL
one enters it through Pargatory, 1t Is none the
less o Paradise ct which one arrives, an Eaen
with its tree of knowledge and Its tree OF LIE.
There is none Of the distrust, the irony, tne
practical second thoughts; no calculations
about wedding-rings and marriage settlements.
In its BEGINNING love still hovers in a sort of
.debatable land between the real and the unreal,
with good deal Of the fun and make-beheye
of boyhood and girlhood about 1t yet. There Is
the old school-trick of "secrets, Of mystery"
whispering in corners, stolen glances,
dropped gloves, little letters deposited In crafty
hidfng-places. There Is the carrying out
of the new ritual OF love as love-novels give 1t
to us. the stealing photographs and the kissing
:, locks Of hair, and the writing love-poems with
a[certain weakness in their rhyme, and the
watching the light In our mistress window. 1t
+, is wonderful with what rigorous exactitude,
with what o grave seriousness we carry out
our part Ia the pleasant little COMEDY. But IL Is
no comedy to us while we figure In 1t. 1t Is the
revelation Of o new world, a. world OF ngnt
and Joy, a world, too, Of wonder and enchant-
Iaent and mystery "Tout est mystere dams
Pamour,n we sing with old Fontaine, ''ses
feches, son carqu0is, son fambeau, son en-
hnce,. and Of these mysteries we are admit
ted as wershippers. 1t Is hard not to feel a
I. little futter Of pride at being not quite what
other people are, not quite what we ourselves
were month ago. What would others un-
derstand of this new love-language that we
talk I? What Of our spasmodic little chatter,
broken with passionate CALCULATIONS that have
no relation to any subject that could be dis
cussed In earth or heaven, interrupted by ST.
lences more eloquent than words What OF
those delicious caprices that follow on the
sense ofpower, those bright little quarrels That
only exist in the faith that severance Is impos-
Eible? What Of this new love OF letter-writtng
In fingers that once hated a pen We exult In
the thought that st. Valentines Day taxes the