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

IT is one OF the oldest points Of difference
lrst love The long alphabet @ of % her afrectIons I ms
Is without any distinct end or beginning; she
mounts by inscnsiblc gradations from dolls and
Kittens dnd pet brothers to the zenith of pas
sion, to descend by the same inscnsible gra-
dations from the zenith of passion through pet
brothers to tabby cats. There Is no such event
as first kiss forms In boys life to mark for
woman the transition from .glrlhood to the
sudden maturity Of passion; she has been Kiss
ing and purring and fondling anttpettfng from
her cradle, and she will pet and fondlc and
purr and kiss to her grave. Love, in the
more than an intensifylng of her ordinary life.
There is no new picture, but the colors are for
the while little heightened and the tone
raised. Presently the vivldncss of color will
and the passion Of life will lave died away.
But there will be NO definite moment at which
one could fairly say that love came OF went.
A girl who is not whispering In lovers ear
Will always say frankly enough that SHE never
knew what 1t was not to be In love. There is
one obvious deduction which she forgets 10
draw, that there never can be q time when
she can know what 1t Is to be in love. Here
and there, Of course, woman may be colder,
or later In development, or more selfconsclous,
and may divide by more rigidly marked lines
the phases of her life. But even then, If she
be a;woman nan, at a she can have no first love.
future. Every phase OF her life begins with
nm act Of oblivion. Every love is first love.
II never loved any one BEFORE" Is said, and
.'The first thing should like to meet with in
Parndise," said Lady Wortlcy Montag,,, ''woud
be the river Lethe, the stream Of forgetful-
ness" esn But woman finds a little rlvulet of
II she remembers the past Mt all, 1t Is 10 offer
1t up as burnt sacrifice to the deity of the
present. When cleopatra talked about Caesar
fingers through her lovers hair and wondered
how she could ever have dotted on such a
bald-patcd fellow as the dictator. Had she
succeeded In charming Octavius, she would
such ne'er,do-well as Antony. And SO it is
no wonder that O woman's first love, even If
she realizes It at all, goes down in this gene
ral wreck OF the past. But In mans life 1t is
makes him man. The world of boyhood is
strictly q world OF boys. Sisters, cousins,
aunts, mothers, arc mixed up In the general
crowd of barbarians that stand without the
poetic affections than the chlvalrous friendship
OF schoolfellows; there Is no trucr or more
genuine worship than boys worship of the
~ nero OF the serimmage or the cricket-deld. 1t
narrow and restricted world. Not girl may
peep over the palings. Girls can't lump, or
Tag out, or swarm up tree; they have moth
hng % Of ah hat about as BOYS s,e taxi they
they are awful milk-sops; they cry and '.tell
mamma;" they arc 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 fata moment comes the revolution. The
barrier Of contempt goes down with crash
me ~ e. boy.world disappears. Brown, that god
OF the playground, Is cast to the owls and to
the bats. There is q sudden coolness in the
friendship TINT was to Inst from school to the
grave. Paper-chases and the annual match
with the sold fellows" cease to be the highest"
objects of human interest. There is less ex.
citement than there was last year when q
great cheer welcomes the news that M,oby
has gSt tho ireland The boys life has become
eheering of, and the new comes shyly, fitfully
1t is only by q sort of compulslon Chat he will
own TINT he Is making all this "fuss" about q
girl; For the moment lie rebels against the
spell Of that one little filcc, the wItchery of
that one little hand. He fingers on the bor-
der Of this new country from whence there Is
no return to the Oil playing-felds. He is shy,
strange to this world of woman, and woman's
foot on the crickct-gronnd tumbles over foot
stools, and tangles itself In colOred wools. The
sturdiest arm that ever welded bat tremblcs
ring out like a trumpet among the tsmnit @ ,,f Of
football bushes and tremblcs 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 boys blush Is O hot, painful thing, when
the sisterly heads bend together aud he hears
them whispering what fool he is. Yes, he is
about. There is only one other thing he feels
even more certain about-that he Is in love,
and that love has made him man.
We arc not of course, going to trench on
expound, like Sir Barnes Ncwcome, the phil
osoplIy OF the affections, or to demonstrate
with Miss Faithful and Mrs. Fawcett the great
office which First Love fullls In the economy
Of man. The only remark we have to make is
the very obvious one which moral preachers
may be pardoned for forgetting, TINT it is on
the whole o wonderfully pleasant thing. If
one enters It through Purgatory, 1t is none the
with Its tree OF knowledge and It's tree of life.
There is none OF The distrust, the irony, the
low-pitched expectations Of after affection; no
practical second thoughts; no calculations
about wedding rings and marriage settlements.
In It's beginning love still hovers in sort of
debatable land between the real and the unreal
with good deal Of the fun and make-belieye
Of boyhood and girlhood about It yet. There is
the old sohoOl1ck Of sscrets Of
dropped gloves. little letters deposited In crafty
hiding-places. There is the carrying out
OF the new ritual Of love as love-novels give It
70 % the stealing photoP5aphs and the Kissing
certain weakness in their rhyme, and the
watching the light In our mistress' window. It
Is wonderful with what q rigorous exacHtude,
with what o grave seriousness we carry out
ouA paw IL tuc pittt6auI uLti0 comedy. But tt iB
mo comedy to US while we figure in It. It is the
revelation OF a new world, world Of light
and Joy, world, too, Of wonder and enehant-
ment and mystery. "rout est mystere dams
ramour,7 we sing. with old Fontaine, ''ses
feches, son carquois, son fambeau, son en-
fance, }" and OF these mysteries we are admit
ted as worshippers. It is hard not to feel a
little fiutter ofpride at being not quite what
other people are, not quite what we ourselves
we're month ago. What would others un-
derBtand OF this new loye-lanpl,a0a that we
talk What of. our, spasmodlo little chatter.
broken With passionate calculations that have
no relation to any subject that. could be dis
Guessed In earth or, heaven, interrupted by si.
lences more eloquent than words - what OF
those delicious caprces that follow On the
sense Of power, those bright little quarfels that
only exist In the faith that severance is impos-
Eible What Of this new love ofletter-writing
In fingers that once hated q pen We exult In
the thought that st. Valentines Day taxes the
energies Of the postofice more than any other
day In the year. We laugh to think OF q great
government department In d hutter because
pnt txur nd hox,