Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1889-02-18
THE WIDOWS.
A Aerited Tribute to the Power of the
Captivating Reflects.
She Knows So Wen When to Sigh and When
to Pout and When to
Feed.
New Orleans picayune.


Time was when the sweet debutante
had things her own way. Men had eyes
for nothing but the pink and white love-
illness of girlhood, and all hearts went
down before the ingenue, but times have
changed, and to-day the widow Is pre-
emineBtly the queen of society.
One has only to look at New York for
confirmation of this. Who receives there
the attention bestowed on Mrs. Hicks
Lord or Mrs. Frank Leslie? And WASH t
it the widow HammerslY who won the
duke with all his titles away from the
unmarried women who were willing to
barter away their millions for coronet?
II is undeniable that widows are the
autocrats of society, and men flock about
them wherever they go. No one has
ever denied their Vaccinations, and We'll
ler's advice TO his son, if he wished to
avoid matrimony, to ''bevare of yid-
ders,' has been quoted thousands of
times. In many ways the widow has the
advantage of her younger sisters. She
has the benefit of a larger knowl-
edge and experience of the world, her
arts and coquetries are perfected, not in
the experimental and undeveloped state
OF the debutantes; and above all, she
has the inestimable advantage of know
ing men with the accurate and intimate
knowledge gained by association with one
who was probably a fair representative
OF his sex
She knows how to give delicious little
dinners that make the most hardened
bachelor think indulgently of the mar
riage state. She knows that man likes
his ease, and does not insist on his dane
ing perpetual attendance on her. She
81 Il {a1lr n1ANtrS
balls and theaters and new german
figures. She follows rather his lead to
his own ground, and listens with subtitle
1attery in eyes and face while he des-
cants on his favorite hobby. A young girl
is always self-centered, absorbed in her
own affairs, her dresses, her parties-it
is only grace and art that teaches
woman to sink her own personality in the
presence of the person with whom she is
talking.
Perhaps one of the chief claims of
widows is their understanding of the fine
art Of sympathy. The sympathy of a
young girl who has known nothing but
joy is crude and unsatisfying affair the
very husks on which no love could feed,
but the sympathy of a widow tenderly,
daintily expressed with a gentle melan-
choly that shows that she too has suffered
u
OF the minor chord IN a piece of music
that sets the pulses throbbing. Having
mourned for man, she knows how most
effectively to mourn with one.
She is fascinating whether she is gay
and dashing, and like one of Thackeray's
heroines sis forty years old and has
heard everything there is to be told, - or
whether she is of the demure, affection
ate type whose clinging helplessness is SO
much like the vine torn from its support
that some man is irresistibly compelled
TO offer himself as a substitute for the
missing prop.
1t may be she is the religious widow
who visits the pastor for spiritual con-
ISOLATION, and at whose meekly bowed
head the rector, on a Sunday aims all
his best rhetoric, or the rich "patron of
art widow who sees a mute, inglo-
rious Milton in every penny bard, and a
Raphael in every sign painter. 1t
makes little difference in which class it
has pleased heaven to place her, she is
always and universally bewitching.
1t is a little strange considering the
important part widows play in society
that the novelists, who claim to be the
photographers Of society, do not oftener
chose her for the heroine of their stories.
Amelie Rives, who is wise woman in |
day, makes the heroine of her story a
widow; the widow in ''Indlan Summer
is not only one of the best characters |
Howells ever drew, but makes the young |
girl look pale and colorless beside her, |
and Dickens pays his tribute to the wild |
ow 9 charms by making his men fly from
the destinations they know they are pow
erless to resist. This is, after all, the |
browning tribute to the powers of the |
widow.
smole .eseo1 of Nortb Carolina,, Pine