Wichita eagle., 1889-10-10
THE WIDOWS CHARMS.
She IL Today the Queen of Society 81
Knows Just How to Fascinate.

She Is Today the Queen of Society and
Knows Just How to Fascinate.
Time was when the sweet debuntante had
things her own way. Men had eyes for moth
ing but the pink and white loneliness Of girl
hood, and all hearts went down before the
ingenue, but times have changed, and today
the widow is pre-eminently the queen OF So
ciety.
One has only to look at New York for con-
firmation of this. Who receives there the
attention bestowed on Mrs. Hicks Lord or
Mrs. Frank Lesliee And wasn't it the widow
Hamersley VINO won the duke with all his
titles away from the unmarried women who
were willing to barter away their millions
for coronet?
1t is undeniable that widows are the auto
wherever they go. No one has ever denied
their destinations, and Weller's advice to his
son, if he wished to avoid matrimony, to "be-
ware of vidders, has been quoted thousands
of times. In many ways the widow has the
advantage Of her younger sisters She has
benefit Of larger knowledge and experience
of the world, her arts and coquetries are per-
fected, not in the experimental and undevel-
oped state Of the debutantes; and, above al,
she has the inestimable advantage of know
ing men with the accurate and intimate
knowledge gained by association with one
who was probably fair representative Of
his sex.
She knows how to give delicious little din
raers that make the most hardened bachelor
think indulgently Of the marriage state. She
knows that man likes his ease, and does not
insist on his dancing perpetual attendance on
her. She does not insist on a mans talking
about balls and theatres and new german fig
ures She follows rather his lead to his own
ground, and listens with subtle flattery in
eyes and face while he descants on his favor
lite hobby. A young girl is always self CEN
tered, absorbed in her own affairs, her
dresses, her parties-it is only grace and art
that teaches woman to sink her own per-
sonality 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 SYM
pathy. The sympathy of a young girl who
has known nothing but joy is a crude. and un-
satisfying affair, the very husks on which no
love could feed, but the sympathy of a widow,
tenderly, daintily expressed with a gentle
melancholy that shows that she, too, has suf-
fered-it is like the soft shadows in a picture,
or the minor chord in 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 hero
ines, sis 40 years old, and has heard every
thing there is to be told" or whether she Is Of
70
helplessness is so much like the vine torn from
its support that some man Is irresistibly COM
PEELED to offer himself as substitute for the
missing prop.
1t maybe she is thereligious widow who
visits the pastor for spiritual consolation, and
at whose meckly bowed head the rector, on q
Sunday, aims all his best rhetoric, or the rich
patron Of art" widow who sees mute, in
glorious Milton in every penny bard, and a
Raphael in every sign painter. 1t makes lit
tie difference in which class it has pleased
Heaven to place her, she is always and uni
versally bewitching.
1t Is little strange, considering the i'm
portant part widows play in society, that the
novelists, who claim to be the photographers
of society, do not oftener choose her for the
heroine of their stories Amelie Rives, WHO'S
a wise woman in her day, makes the heroine
of her story widow; the widow in "Indian
Summer" is not only one of the best charac-
tiers Howells ever drew, but makes the young
girl look pale and colorless beside her, and
Dickens pays his tribute to the widows
charms by making bis men fly from the fasci-
nations the, know they are powerless to resist
This Is, after all, the crowning tribute to the
powers Of the widow Orleans fcayune