The Charleston daily news. [volume] (Charleston, S.C.) 1865-1873, 1869-10-07
10 ooe,,otraSi,t the halfincrednlity of

for what is coquetr5 But the halfincredulity of
a girl unable to believe in her own happiness,
eager to convince herself by any experience o.
the new strength and attraction that she has
gained? After-life brings deeper, intenser
passion, but never sensations so vivid, so
rapid, so exquistely contrasted, never so in
voluntary. A girl lies passive in the very
dreaminess Of Joy as emotion after emotion
sweeps over her, faith and jealousy and bitter
ness and delight, like the wind sweeping, over
Eolian chords and wakening music as Wlld anu
wavwai;i as the music in her heart Wnat
other moment of iite gives her those grands
ennuis entremeles de jIse' thatthe old French
poetess sung about
Quand je pense aYCiiir plus de doaleu',
Sans pensez ie me trouve hors he i.Sine;
puts ouand je crois ma Jole etre certaine'
Fl etre au haut de mon desire heur,
n me remet en- mon premier maineur'
Men spend a great deal too much time, says
a great philosopher over love. we snare MI;
Mll,s opinion. though probably Mr.. Mill would
hardly share our grounds for it.. we don't
grudSe moment given to a mans First Love,
because man believes IN IN II. Ire m0reaG :; qua M
possible"-replied Tertullian to the objector to
his faith; and it is gain to humanity that at
the very outset of life one should meet and be-
leye in thing so impossible as first love.
We are saved at any rate from the dreary
gospel Of Mr.. Buckle, from regarding our
selves as machines, and tabulating our lives
in averages. So, too, there are days, early
days in a mans course, when, sitting alone
and looking on asunset, he feels like grain
of sand at the mercy Of winds that blow
whence and whittier he knows not. First love
at any rate saves us out Of thoughts like these
by quickening in us pulses OF pain ana plea
sure that will beat on, drive tne Wlnas
as they list. How much, too, OF the reverehce' l'
refinement
acter. springs out of those days OF distant,
hushed worship, ofall-surrendering, ail-darlng
faith A mere girl, like mere daisy, rOuses
within us thoughts too deep for tears: Ihat
first touch of passion gives beauty OF lts own
to the temper of q man, as IL gives IL 10 tne
face of a woman. Who has not noticed the
strange, sweet change that softens the abrupt
gesture, and gives music to the hasty speech,
in the hOyden when loves finger first touches
her? When Pygnalion's etatue-bride quick
ened into human life, she must have felt, one
fancies, an ipexpressible Joy in the sense Of the
rapt.rre her beauty had created, and could sus-
tain.s 1t is this new sense-this consciousness
that, as she simply lives and moves, her grace
and power is going out of her to gladden. at
least one heart of man's-that luickens girls
face out ofthe hardness and lmmobilty OF earlier
wears, From mere physical, immoblle form,
It becomes life and spirit, sensitive to every
wave of thought, feeling, reflection. Inc very
wonder of the new world she looks out upon,
Us interest, its awe, mirror themselves IN
the quick alternations of enthusiasm, of ter
ror, Of tenderness. 1t is quite as well to get
q little beauty into the world, quite as well to
preserve little poetry in man, and while first
love does this, we don't mean to surrender 1t
to Mr.. Mill. But we freely give up TO him It's
successors. The mere conventional repetition
of the real thing, when its first fervor Of faith
has fed, the repetition ol the old love -litanies
by lips that have learnt the irony Of them. the
mechanical performance of the ritual that has
become sham, this is-we agree with Mr.
Mill-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 twinge Of compunction,
and certain pleasure in the consciousness
that he is now at any rate secure till forty. AS
for women, till they are quickened by the apos..
tleship of the champions of their rights"
they will probably 60 on thinking these little
farces the pleasantest things in life. After all,
they are not more ridiculous than the general
tenor of their existence, and woman has at
any rate more time to waste than man.