The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1893-02-12
GOOD ST. VALENTINE.
Is Love a Practical Reality or a
Pleasing Fiction
OPINIONS ~ NOTED AUTHORS
Hrs. Lyna Li1toD, John Strange
Winter and r. Qunlsr Couch
and His Sister Testify.

OF the desperate reality of the passion of
love there 10 no doubt; of the intrinsic
value of the thing beloved there may be
many. The passion for which men and
women have died stands like tower four
square to all the winds of heaven; but
how far that tower has been self-created
by fancy. and how much is effectively
real, who 10 the wise man that can deter
miner What is love? We know nothing
OF its source. Sense and sex cannot wholly
explain its mystery. else wonld there be
no friendship left among us: and elective
affinity is but dainty carving on the
chancel stalls. The loneliness which
makes that special person the veritable
rose of the world to Us exists but in our
imagination. 1t is no rose that we
adore-Only at the best q bedeguar. of
which the origin Is disagreeable little in
sect. We believe in the exquisite harmony
OF those atoms which have arranged them
selves to form the thing We love. And We
marry our human ideal. expecting the un-
broken continuance of that harmony.
But the discord comes; colors clash;
the jar ring note spoils the chord; the idol
once accepted as of gold and precious
stones proves to be only common clay,
thinly gilt. The diamonds are paste; the
pearls are beads of glass filled with shin
ing fishes scales. and the love which we
thought would be q practical reality for
life is nothing but a pleasing fiction. good
for its day, and now dead and done with.
The lover sees nothing as it is. Life il
distorted between jealousy and admira-
ton, and the plain teaching of common
sense is as little understood as the condi-
tons of the fourth dimension, or the
poetic aspirations of the Simian tongue.
The adored is not . real person: the
happiness anticipated is not practical nor
practicable. Both are on all-fours with
the substantially of q cloud and
the serviceabie roadway Of rain
bow; Custom, familiarity. daily
habits are the sole tests by which the re-
atty Of the thing beloved can be tried
sequent validity of love. Before these
tests are applied the whole affair is as .
fairy dream born of the perfume and the
mystery Of night. With the clear cold
breath Of morning the dream vanishes, but
what is left? The sigh of the vanishing
god Ia tear on the cheek of Psyche ?-the
iOathing of the man who finds Melusine q
peaceful joy of the child who dreams of
angels and wakes in its mothers arms?-
OF those who. sleeping on the ocean, wake
to 6nd themselves safe in port?
Mrs. LYNN LINTON.
Love may be classed under several
heads. The first. the great, the unattain-
able, the one-sided and the worn out.
They are all real. What can be more real
than the perhaps not very practical pas
sion which first makes young hearts achef
What agony 1t is to her when he dances
three times running with that horrid,
stuck-up London girl with her fashionable
jargon, her dangerous movements, just
turn or two. and then stop for as many
minutes First love ID not often last love.
He thinks her unreasonable to mind those
dances, yet when . great love comes into
her life, making her think of him
as "just q boy" he suffers all,
or nearly all, the pangs Of
great passion. Unavailing pain!
She has cast the die of her lite, and past
loves are shadows compared with the alb
sorbing power that now grips her heart
like q wise. Much may happen to the
great love, but it is very real. A great
love may merge into matrimony. and life
may run on oiled wheels, and Darby and
Joan may pass through the world, loving
faithfully and without DEPRESSION to the
end. Or something may come between,
and the great love may become the unat-
tainabie! 1t will not be the less real for
that.
The unattainable has more in it of
pathos than despair. Romance sweetens
It. and the romance never dies. The ten
derness OF "what might have been" gives
balm to many a suffering soul. The wife
may be unhappy, neglected. heartsick;
she may even loathe him whose name she
bears, but she is often upholden by the
thought that he would have been wholly
different. A husband may know that he
has married the wrong woman, yet he
bears what is, because he cannot have her
who would have made life all sunshine.
Few pity the one-sided love. helpless,
hopeless ard without justification as it is;
yet it is very real to the lonely soul. The
worn-out love is the very essence Of sad
nessl It is heart-breaking to watch tho
efforts Of foolish heart to keep q love
dying or already dead, to SEQ love, which
would once have made paradise, poured
out at the feet of one who is only bored
and not even touched by it. Nothing is 50
JOHN STRANGE WINTER
Love . pleasing fiction" forsooth;
would that it were 1t is . very real game,
and the rules thereof are practical.
know 1t, for verify myself have suffered.
Let it not be understood, however. that it
is as practical, resi- lover" that have
suffered. Not at all. 1t is that this order
Of beings walks abroad, and l am not of
it, and meet it, and am panied, and I
feel sorry. Could love be but pleasing
fiction, how comfortable to sit aside and
contemplate it--a trihe to talk of. dainty
to daily with. a JOY to the juvenescent.
blessing to the book writer. yet never an
inconvenience. But il is q practical real
ity, and 1t has great effects. Why. have
seen good, healthy people brought
to a shadow by it and churned into SO
many pounds of incompetent irritability;
so exacting about tribes, so fdgety
about catching the mail, and so careless
Of the health of the uninteresting major
ity. There was one man / knew down in
q village. and he tell in love with pretty
girl-they mostly do tha.-but she would
have nothing to say to him; and after
every rejected proposal he went straight
home ana made tbree-legged stool (he
was a CARPENTER by trade. or perhaps 1t
might have affected him differently( He
was what one might call en imPortunate
man, for he proposed nineteen times in
ali, and nineteen three-iegged stools stood
as silent witnesses OF his importantly. lie
changed houses after the twelfth. for he
found sad Joy in contemplating his
handiwork as he sat at his meals. and mis-
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