Arizona republican., 1891-05-17


 with her little brothers! How attentive and dutiful to her mother! How bright and patient under her big brothers teasing! How quick to see that papa is tired and give him his slippers, his news paper, his favorite seat. With what filial piety she listens to her maiden aunt's thrice told tales, and finds grandmam- mas spectacles.
 It is not all deceit, of course. She feels happy, and the world has long since amended the old proverb into "Be happy and you'll be good," and, fully conscious that critical eyes and ears follow her every action, she takes pleasure in mak- ing it an admirable one.
 But if this new departure comes from no deeper motive; if, in fact, it is only one of the deceits of love, it is worse than useless, for there is nothing more murderous to love than the knowledge that it has been obtained by false pre- lenses.
 If, courtship over and marriage estab- ished, the bride gradually drops all the amiable and ready observances that so pleased her lover; if nipping and peev- ish temper succeeds to the sweet patience he has admired; if she is careless and negligent toward her parents, now that there is nothing more to gain from them; if she shows herself selfish and indo- lent and unsympathetic toward himself, she may be sure that his disillusionment will be all the more rapid and thorough because he had been led to believe in other things.
 No, if girl begins by deceiving her lover as to her own character she had better resolve, in the interest of her own comfort, to keep up the deceit for life, and never let him find out that any other course is possible to her. She may, in fact, very wisely adapt to her own career the advice, "If you are going to tell lie tell good one, and then stick to it."
 And I have seen cases where this course has been so successfully pursued that the husband and the former friends of his wife remained at variance for life as to her character; one looked upon the golden, and the other upon, let us say, the (German) silver of the shield, and neither could believe that the other saw straight.
 do not think men, even when in love, make such wholesale pretence of a "change of heart" as this. In the first place, they seldom think their own faults are objectionable, and in the next they have q lordly fashion of expecting the women to accept them, faults and all.
 "How your coat always smells of to- bacco smoke!" says she, making little mOue as she withdraws from close con- tact with said coat.
 "Oh, no, it doesn't; went up in the smoking room at the club, but the wind has blown it all away-you don't smell it," replies he, which statement can hardly be called deceit, but is often ac- cepted by the weaker vessel as satisfac- tory.
 No, mems deceits of love are more generally with regard to the shady cor ners of their lives, past or present. Prob ably no woman ever accepted mans love without at once demanding con fession as to his ever having proffered love to any other woman, etc.
 Now there are very few men, very few indeed, who both can and will an- swer these questions truthfully. Some times there are tender memories which he shrinks from offering to his new love, as one might toss bail to kitten. Sometimes he has loved where he could not offer marriage, and honor demands that the whole affair shall remain secret, even from the wife of his later life Sometimes there are dark and disgrace full secrets which it would be suicide to reveal, and sometimes, one is ashamed to confess, man deliberately plans to carry on two lives, with one of which the innocent girl he asks to marry him has no concern.
 In whichever of these channels the truth may run, it is pretty certain that it will not come to the surface in reply to the tender inquiries of the fair one, and it is only very young or very credulous woman who will believe, though he swear it, that her lover has never kissed other lips than hers, or whispered love to other ears. Nor, to my mind, is it altogether desirable that it should be true; the nature of man is versatile, and his appetite is omniverous; his teeth are adapted for the tearing of lamb as well as for the mashing of straw berries and cherries. If heha never tasted the one or the other, be sure his instinct will impel him to do so first or last, and it is better that it should have been before we knew him than after we have con- mitted our own hearts to his keeping.
 But if this omniverous appetite has i been fully tested, and if the strawber- ries appeal to the palate more highly than the stronger meats, there is a cer- tain amount of probability of constancy in the last direction so long as the deli cate fruit retains it's sweet and alluring flavor. But how foolish of the human strawberry to insist upon those grinders saying they had never crushed meat, or those incisors that they had never cut into an apple or banana!
 A man cannot be sincere as to his past experiences if he is no better than the average man, and to insist upon his be- ing so is to drive him into labyrinth of deceit, where to be sure he is generally quite content to dwell. But this deceit is utterly unjustifiable and unpardona- ble when it concerns not only the past but the present and the proposed future.
 A man, like woman, may, under the influence of real love, assume char. acter which has never hitherto been his; he may resolve sincerely to close the gates of those dark ways wherein he has