The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1889-11-06

b. already of sensitive. gentle and
'a3her soft texture. this first love is
ii..ely to make him actually idiotic for
time. He becomes such a simple
ton that his friends feel that he must
be taken in hand. The wisest of them
undertake to discipline him. to induce
him to restrain his gush and show
some triAe of discretion. but entirely
in vain. l know a man, now of great
note in the land. who carried her let
tiers in his breast pocket till it looked
like huge Wen over his heart But
the worst was he would pull them out
and read them to any sort of acquaint-
ance. Ten to one he would visit
some one not a familiar for no other
purpose but to tell the charms of his
inamorata, and to read her letters. He
was superb scholar. and bright
every way; but on this topic he was
the laughing-stock OF the town. The
whole thing went to pieces with a
crash, for what girls love can en-
dure such sillinessp He survived the
disaster without impaired brains,
which is more than sometimes occurs.
/ never knew man to be love-cracked
with second or third flame; but the
end OF frst-love disappointment is
always serious, and sometimes disas-
trous. 1t may lead only to a death of
sentiment and susceptibility to wom-
ans affection, or it may dislocate the
intellectual powers, or the moral
But not too much can be said of the
evil of entering wedlock without the
discipline Of a first love. Men have
sometimes done this, and they are al
ways untamed. hard and severe. A
man with keen, critical intellect can
never be satisfied with an ordinary
mate. He will do by her as he does
by Smiths last essay-will pick out
her faults and see all her blemishes
and failures. The poor woman is only
a magazine article, that he picks to
pieces instinctiveiy. He has never
had a first love teach him to trans
form people and things, to give the
rose-color to dullness and to tone
down the MONDAY glare of work-life.
He can not endure such bad habits as
he will be sure to find In the best Of
wives. Then if he have an imperious
disposition and an iron will, the con-
sequences are injustice and misery.
On the other hand, man of peculiar
ly sensitive, loving disposition is sure
to look for first love in his married
life. He has longing for that ideal
which he never created audaciously
out of hand, and boldly declared he
had found, and then worshiped. A
woman may be thankful she is not her
husbands first love, but that he had
one that, having worshiped, he
learned after all was one of our COM
mon humanity. and that goddesses
are not in corsets.
I need not ask you If you remem-
Der your own first love. You could
not love her now-Of course not. She
is possibly dowdy OF the worst sort,
married to a coarse fellow that you
marveled she could tie herself to, and
yet you see now it was all right; or
she is simple, plain. matter-of-fact
wife of a matter-of-fact husband, and
the farthest possible remove from
any thing ethereal. How you ever
came to see angels wings on her is
your puzzle. But she served you ad-
mirably. A first love you must have,
or ought to have, and she was really
avery judicious angel. She did not tlirt,
nor did she help you to be extravaganza
in your fancies. When the spell was
off she became a good friend, and has
been such ever since. There is, how
ever, quite chance that your first
love has never returned your letters
and you have never returned hers,
and that you both need to think over
the warm sunrise of your life's loves,
and that it helps you in your welded
state. Your wife is not jealous, or
ought not to be. If she is sensible,
she will be thankful that some one
came before her to open her Jimmie S
soul and teach him the amenities of
love; she has him now all the mere to
herself, and all the more of him there
is to have. She would be in a sad
predicament il he had never had q
first love before herself.
So you see that first love holds q
place wholly distinct and quite unique.
1t is not love in the sense of any other
love known. 1t is not logical or COM
mon-sensical Itdoes not show per-
sons in their true light; indeed, is
sure of false coloring and extrava-
gance. 1t is development of imma-
t,irity. Its part Of human evolu-
ton. Welded love is the wedding or
welding of two who have been carried
beyond the period when they can be
carried away from reason. I..
That would make an interesting his
tory if one could read the loves of
the fifty most rounded, strongest char
acters in history; but not the first
loves, for those would be almost the
same story retold. They rarely get
into mans biography, or are re-
ferred to in his autobiography. He
tries to let them drop out of sight.
He counts only those later grapplings
Of his heart after one whom he desires