The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1870-06-02
ra-qu First Love.

between man and woman that woman has no!
first love. The long alphabet of her affections
is without any distinct end or beginning; she
mounts by insensible gradations from dolls and
kittens and pet brothers to the zenith of pas
sion, to descend by the same insensible grada-
lions from the zenith of passion through pet
Brothers to tabby cats. There is no such event
as a first kiss forms in boys life to mark for
woman the Transition from girlhood to the sud
den maturity of passion she has been kissing,
and purrilg, and fondling, and petting from her
cradle, and she whl pet, and fondle, and kiss to
her grave. Love, in the technical sense of the
werd, isswith her little more than an intensity
ing of her ordinary life: There is no new pic
ture; but the colors are for the while little
heightened and the tone raised. Presently the
Tiyidnesss 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 def
mite moment at.which one could fairly say that
love came or went, A girl who is not whisper
ing in lovers ear, will always say frankly
enough that she never knew what it was not to
be ia-leTe- There is one obvious deduction
which she forgets to draw, thatthere never can
be time when. she can know what it is to be
In. love. Here and there, of course, woman,
maybe colder, or later in development, or more
self conscious, and may divide by more rigidly
marked lines the phases of her life. But even
dlen, If she be woman at all, she can have no
first love. Feeling, with woman, has no past,
as it has no future Every phase of her life
begins with an act of oblivion. Every love is
q first tloye. aInever loved any one before, is
Sui, and said truly, to dozen loving ears in
succession The first thing should like to
meet With in Paradise" said Lady Wortley
Montague. "would be the river Lethe, the
stream of Forgetfnlness" But woman finds
little riyulet of Lethe at. every stage of her
hearts career. If she remembers the past at
ali, it IS to offer it up as burnt sacrifice to the
deity of the present. When Cleopatra talked
about Cesar to Marx Antony, she passed, no
doubt, her fingers through her lovers hair, and
wondered how she-could have ever dotted on
such a bald-pated fellow as the Dictator. Had
she succeeded in charming Octavius she would
haze wondered equally at her infatuation for
such ne,er-do-well as Antony. And so it is
no wonder that woman's first love, even If she
realizes. it at all, goes down in this general
wreck of the past. But in mans life it is a
revolution It is in fact the one thing that
makes him q man. The world of boyhood is
strictly q world of boys. Sisters, cousins, aunts
mothers, are mixed up in the general crowd of
barbarians that stand without the playground.
There are few warmer or more poetic affections
than the chivalrous friendship of .school-fel-
lows there is no truer or genuine worship than
q boys worship of the hero of the scrimmage
or the cricket field. 1t is fine world in itself,
but it is wonderfully narrow and restricted
world Not a girl may peep over the palings.
Girls can't jump, or, fag out, or swarm up
tree; they have nothing to talk about as boys
talk; they never heard of that glorious swipe
of Old Browns, they are awful milk-sops, they
cry and atelf mamma" they are afraid Of a
governess and of cow 1t is impossible to
conceive feature more utterly contemplate in
a boys eyes than g girl of his own age usually
is. Then in some fatal moment comes the
revolution. The barrier of contempt goes
goes down with a crash. The boy-world disap-
pears. Brown, that god of the playground, Is
cast to the owls and to the bats. There IS a
sudden GOODNESS in the friendship that was to
last from school to the grave. The boys life
has become muddle and confused. The old ex-
istence is sheering of, and the new comes shyly,
he will own that he is making all this "fuss"
about a girl For the moment he rebels against
the spell of that one little face the witchery of
that one little hand. He fingers on the border
of this new country from whence there is no
return to the old playing-felds. He is shy,
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
sturdfest arm that ever welded bat trembles at
the touch of the tiny finger. The voice that
rang out like trumpet among the tumult of the
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 nursey has found out his Sc
cret, and is laughing over it. He bushes, and
a boys blush is a hot painful thing, when the
sisterly heads bend together and he hears them
whispering what a fool he is. Yes, he is fool
about. There is only one other thing which he
feels even more certain ahout-that he is in
love, and that love has made him man.
Saturday Reuiew.
WHAT 1NTEMPERANCE DoES.-Intempe
oa o,,t, down Youth ,-,ror roopbond