The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-03-10
WOMEN AS COMPANIONS.
BY J. ii. BROWNE.

1t would seem sometimes as if men avoided women, when not fervidly in love with them. Is it only kindled imagination and tumultuous blood that render them attractive, and hold the two for the time, together? Is it in mans tranquil hours, in his perfect sanity, that woman loses her chief al- lurement? Is she least loved while loveliest? Do the senses override mind and spirit, and do these pail when those are satisfied?
 It is notorious that boys, who ap- pear barbarous because natural, act ively dislike girls, and cannot be coaxed into their company. They cherish no more respect than they hold affection for them. Although they consider them totally inferior, they feel no pity for them, merely undis- guised contempt.
 A tiny creature of four or five, if called a girl-boy, will flush with an- ger and strike his defamer. It is a mortal affront that masculine baby hood resents. To see a girl some- times trying to win the good will of group of half-grown boys, to any one of whom she is queen, is posi- lively touching. She may appeal to them for the poor privilege of shar- ing their society with an eloquence and tenderness that might move a hy- ena; but they will drive her rudely away with a brutality that marks their age and sex.
 Most men furtivelyJ laugh and gird at those who are addicted to feminine society who find solid satisfaction in it; who are courageous enough to avow their appreciation of its bene- fits. They are wont to speak of them in the disdainful way that urchins speak of girl-boys; to deride them as effeminate, weak minded, danglers after petticoats, Miss Nancy ish. One of their severest epithets, applied to husbands, is henpecked, which is cas- fly said and more easily believed. Men who are not strong have a terror of the adjective, and actually cover before it. They are often so afraid of meriting the approach that they go to the opposite extreme and become bru- tai, which probably impresses them as far manlier. Dread of ridicule has frequently prevented amiable but weak men from establishing compan- ionship with their wives, who were really companionable.
 Far more husbands than bachelors are members of clubs, and those are the regular frequenters. Some of them, having lovely wives and de- lightful homes, are to be seen nightly in the reading rooms, bar-rooms, giving the impression that they are inharmo- niously welded. But they are not. They are representative; they fail, or think they fail to find companionship within their own walls, and look for 1t in what is ordinarily to cultured, refined mind the dul1est, dreariest place in civilization. The fact that they take refuge in club denotes how deeply bored they must be to them- selves.
 Sentimental bachelors, seeing them there, say "How can they prefer this to that? I should be SO different in the same circumstances" But, were the situation reversed, they would show the same strange taste. They might be fond, they might become en- amored of the neglected wife; but re- action would occur in due time, and render companionship impossible. Men cannot understand why it should be so in the case of others, but it is clear enough in their own.
 There would seem to be some justi- fication for the biting phrases current at the clubs:
 "After four or five years, a mans wife is the dullest company in the world"
 "To be in love with woman is the nearest approach to happiness, and to be out of love with her whom you once loved is supreme misery"
 "Any woman may be interesting, so long as she is not ones wife,"
 "The fascinating woman always be- longs to another man. If you get her, her fascination takes wings."
 "A man ot the world is at home everywhere except in his own home.n
 "The honeymoon is thus called be- cause 1t is 60 sweet compared with the bitter months that follow"
 Matrimonial happiness Is always to be found in the mind of the man who has not married"