The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1869-05-09


than q lonely branch, stretching out COM
fortress and bare into the bleak wide world.
She, too, is almost sure to get what she
wants, with the advantage of being volun-
ttarily chosen and not unwillingly submitted
| to. This is the kind of woman who is
always mildly but thoroughly; happy in her
married life; unless indeed ther husband
should be brute, which Heaven forefend
She lives in peace and bland contentment
while thefates permit, and when he dies she
buries him decently and laments him deco
rousiy; but she thinks it folly to spend her
life in yooping by the side of his cold grave,
when her tears can do no good to either of
them. Rather she thinks it proof of her
love for him, and the evidence of how true
was her happiness, that she should elect to
give him q successor. Her blessed expe-
rience in the past has made her trustfui in
the future; and because she has found one
man faithful she thinks that all are Abdiels
AS rule, this type of woman does find men
pleasant, and by her own nature insures
domestic happiness. She is always tenderly
and never passionately, in love, even with
the husband she has loved the best; she
gives In to no excesses to the right or the
lett; her temperament is of that serene
moonlight kind which does not fatigue
others nor wear out its possessor; without
ambition, or the power to fling herself into
any absorbing occu patton, she lives only to
please and be plea sel at home; and if she is
not wife, wearing Ger light letters loving
~, and proud that he is fettered, she is
nothing. AS some women are born mothers
and others are born nuns, SO is the Wadman
woman born wife, and shines in no other
character or capacity. But in this she ez-
GELS; and knowing this, she sticks to her
role how frequently soever the interlocutor
may be changed.
There are widows, however, who have no
| thought or desire for remaining ANYTHING
but widows-w..o have gained the worth of
the world in their condition. "Jeune, ,iche
| ct reure-Quel bonheur!!" says the French
wife, cycling mon mari askance Can the
most exacting woman ask for more? And
truly such one is III the most enviable po-
sltion possibly to a woman, supposing al
ways that she has not lost in her husband
the man she loved. If she has lost only the
man who sat by right at the same hearth
with herself-perhaps the man who quarrel
ed with her across the ashes-she has lost
her burden. and has gained her release
The cross of matrimony lies heavy on many
n woman who never takes the world into
her confidence, and who bears in absolute
silence what she has not the power to cast
from her. Perhaps her husband has been
a man of note, man of learning, of ele-
vated station, q political or philan thropic
power. She alone knew the fretfulness. the
petty tyranny, the miserable smallness at
home of the man of large repute, whom his
generation conspired to honor, and whose
public life was mark for the future to date
BY When he died, the press wrote his ell
logy and his elegy; but his widow, when
she put on her weeds, sang softly in her
own heart a pecan to the great King of
Freedom, and whispered to herself Laula-
mus, with sigh of unutterable relief To
such woman widowhood has no senti-
mental regrets. She has come into posses
sion OF the goods for which, perhaps, she
sold herself; she is young enough yet to en-
Joy to project q future; she has the free
choice of maid, and the free action of II
matron, as no other woman has. She NAV
be courted, and she need not be chaperoned
nory yet forced to accept Experience has
mellowed and enriched her; for though the
asperltles OF her former condition were
sharp while they lasted, they had not time
permanently to roughen or embitter her
Then the sense of relief gladdens, while the
sense OF propriety subdues her; and the deli
cate mixture of outside melancholy, tenn
pered with internal warmth, is wonderfully
enticlng. Few men know how to resist
that gentle sadness which does not preclude
the sweetest sympathy with pleasure in
which she may not join-with happiness
which is, alas! denied her. 1t gives an air
OF such profound unselfshness; it asks so
mutely, so bewitchingly, for consolation
Even hard man is moved at the sight of q
pretty widow in the funeral black of her
first grief, sitting apart with n patient smile
and eyes cast meekly down, MS one not Of
the world though in it. Her loss is too re-
cent to admit of any thought of reparation;
and yet what man does not think of that
time of reparation? and if she is more than
usually charming in person, and we'll dow
ered IN purse, what man does not think of
himself as the best repairer she could take?
Then. as time goes on, and she glides grace
fully into the era of mitigated grief, how
beautiful is her whole manner how tasteful
her attire! The most exquisite colors of the
ram rant kind look crarish los;do To-, l.;.I.z