Democratic messenger., 1893-03-04
WHEN A WOMAN LOVES.
What One Man Thinks lie Knows About
the Infinite and Cnknowable.

the Infinite aud Cnknowable.
When a woman loves severely, she be-
gins to be unlovable. for she begins to
be unreasonable and for her great loves
sake To do her best to make miserable
the all too fortunate winner of her affec-
tions. She insists upon accusing him of
virtues which he knows are not included
in his character and taxing him with
failings of which he is inst as completely
innocent and with that intolerable itera-
ton which is supposed by women to be
some sort of argument
The result is that the man begins in
time to believe that he is good where he
is not and To turn bad simply because
she says he is so already. He may be as
faithful as mullet (''for chaste love the
mullet hath no peer") but she will worry
him by the assiduity of her suspicious
and her consequent lamentations ont of
the secure highway of connubial affec-
tion into the hazardous bypaths that
lead past other mems orchards to the
Tom Tiddler's Ground of the Divorce
Court" Simply because she loves him
so-and she pleads no other excuse when
on occasion he attempts reasonable dis
cussion of their Misunderstanding
she will make his bad seem good to him
and make his good become bad till the
seven take possession of him, and like
one of the bedeviled swine of Gadara
he rushes violently down a steep place
into the sea.
She has no wicked intentions what
ever. On the contrary. her intentions
are all detestably good. And when the
man rakes his mind for some reason for
his own misdemeanors he can remember
nothing better than that "she drove him
to it," which is n poor excuse. yet true
enough. So ogardeners by frequent little
pinchings abort the upright growth of
trees into lateral obliquities.
There are very many men so deplor-
ably human that to keep on accusing
them of an offense is sufficient to make
them commit it. They will in time live
down TO any moral standard that may
be fixed for them by women, the women
who love them. and. like the oysters, al
ternately tickled and irritated by the
grains of sand which the Chinese drop
into them, will grow to forget their
natures altogether.
No woman can be quite so miserable as
she who loves only one man mt a time.
For the time she loves him, and being un-
able to absorb all her own unhappiness
she persists in offering him half of it.
Because she is so insanely jealous of his
time and his society she will. ''for the
sweet love she had of him." waste the
one and try to engross the other until
she torments him from innocence into
artifice. and from artifice into revolt.
and so in the sad end of it she can say.
II knew was right all the time" Does
the discovery break her heart? Not a
bit OF it, Women who love at this high
pressure do not break their hearts. They
start-after pause to repair damages
and to make a collection. as it were. of
neighborly sympathics - loving again
somebody else.
Such women. in the extremity of their
affection for him, will throw vitriol in
a mans face. will poison him with fly
papers-murder him. So it is not good
for woman to love severely-neither
good for him nor for her. The sensible
man. when he sees it coming, will put
up the hurricane shutters. back engines.
skid the wheels. throw salt in the fire
do anything. IN fact. that will meet the
emergency. slacken speed or reduce the
temperature. World.