The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1891-07-17

and much laden mar plod up The door
steps in a rain. Her friend saw him, too,
and shrieking, sob, there's my honey
pot.' she rushed into the hall and went
through the exercises mentioned above;
but in the midst Of her EXPLANATIONS
came another voice, low and growly in
its tones, yet quite audible in the parlor;
Love me a lot, don't you, Bessie?'
ooh, yes, yes, yes my own, own dear
est love. And you love your Bessie, don't
you, darlingT'
Eyes; but if she didn't love me quite
somuch, perhaps l shouldlov her more"
was the reply; whereat Bessie laughed
as at a good joke.
Of course the man was a brute to say
such a thing; but, Oh, dear me, how
many men think it, and don't say it
Men are predatory animals, loving to
hunt, to pursue. to capture, and to hold
by main force, and the moment the
prey ceases to resist. the interest of the
conquest is over. All the hunters of big
game tell us that the only chance OF
safety for the victim of a lion, tiger,
bear, or other beast of prey, is to remain
perfectly passive and inert beneath his
claws; the least resistance rouses his en-
ergies, and he soon enforces a quiet never
to be disturbed. The same instinct in
q modified form is to be traced in the
lord of creation; he only pursues while
the dear creature runs away, and dis
dams a victim that is only too glad to re-
main in his grasp.
Any man constantly assured that his
wife lives, moves, breathes and has hel
being solely in him; that she has a fund
of caresses and honeyed words always at
high water mark and eager for an out
let, becomes first calmly confident, then
careless, and at the last bored and sur
feited by sweets for which he never is
allowed to get up an appetite by fasting.
l once travelled in company with a
somewhat cynical, but very delightful
man, who, as we neared the shores of
our native land, remarked:
Il wish the first t~Wenty-four hours
after my arrival were well over! 1t is
SO hard TO come up to the expected mark
Of enthusiastic Affection
And yet this man had wooed his wife
with the ardor and perseverance of a
hero of romance. The trouble was that,
whereas she had been a coy and coquet-
fish maiden, she was q very demonstra-
tive wife. and had choked out her hus-
bands affection with a perennial food of
her own.
But often enough the establishment
comes from the other side, and results
from a perverted idea of marital obliga-
tons.
a man who is paying his addresses to
a young girl, or even to an older woman,
holds himself under constant restraint
in all conversation bordering upon SUBJ
jects unfit for an innocent and delicate
minded woman's ears. The stories, the
jests, the songs, the conundrums which
alleviate the tolls of the Office, the count
ing reom, the lunch counter, the club,
the bachelor dinner or the little supper,
are most vigorously ruled out from the
conversation with which the mar enter
tains his betrothed CT any other respect
able woman. But the betrothed becomes
the wife, and all in a minute the new
made husband ~emancipates his tongue
from all reserves, throws aside all care
as to whether what he has to say is fit
for the ears of a carefully educated girl,
brings home the story, the jest, the o II
versation that only last week he would
have felt it an insult to repeat in her
presence, astonishes, shocks, repels her
in all her finer nature, and excuses him
self, if she demonstrates, by saying:
"You know we're all one person now,
so l needn't mind what l say"
But the girl is the same girl from
whom all coarseness or indelicacy has
been carefully kept, and she has never
realized that such matters could be
spoken of, far less that they are the
habitual conversation Of a large class of
men, including her own especial man.
Probably, poor little soul, she has ideal
lied this mar into one of those herOs de
roman never met with outside of TO-
nan or a young. girls imagination;
she has fancied that he is SO much bet
ter, wiser and stronger than she; that
her II great effort must be to keep up
with him. to climb to his level. They
~marry-his pursuit is over, and he throws
aside the fine costume of the chase, puts
on his soiled workaday clothes, lights
his pipe, and throwing himself upon the
couch with his heels higher than his
head, amuses his wife with two or three
Of the new stories and delicate jests
with which sthe fellows" greeted his re-
turn among them. She, during this, his
first day Of absence from her, has been
arranging the little souvenirs they have
brought home from the wedding jour
ney, putting away his clothes in the
chiffonier, not without some shy bushes
and smiles that such matters should now
become her recognized duty, and in look
ing out two or three poems she means to
read to him this evening.
Just fancy the disbursement! Just
fancy how the hero de Oman becomes a
fading phantom; how the feet of clay all
at once become more conspicuous than
the head Of gold; how she feels insulted
and frightened and bewildered, and then
blaInes herself that she should feel so,
and tries to believe that she is a poor, ig-
norant little fool, and that whatever her
husband thinks right to say to her must
be right.
And so begins in that woInan's heart a
conflict which mere often than not end
by the destruction Of all that was bes.
and finest in her love. She may neye.
say it even TO herself, but she knows il
her inmost heart that her ideal is shat
tered; that the being she fancied a demi