The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1893-03-08
WHEN A WOMAN LOVES.
What One Man Thinks He Knows Aboui
the Infinite and Unknowable.

When a woman loves severely she
begins to be unlovable. For she be-
gins to be unreasonable, and, for her
great loves sake, to do her best te
make miserable the all too fortunate
winner of her affections. She insists
upon accusing him of virtues which he
knows are not included in his char
acter, and taxing him with failings of
which he is just as completely inno-
cent, and with that intelerable itera-
tion which is supposed by woman 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 sus-
picions, and her consequent lamenta-
tions, out of the secure highway of
connubial affection into the hazardous
bypaths that lead past other mems or
chards 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 at
tempts reasonable discussion of the
misunderstandings-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
bedevilled swine of Gadara, he rushes
violently down steep place into the
sea. She has no wicked intentions
whatever. On the contrary, her in
tentions 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 90 it." Which is
a poor excuse; yet true enough. So
gardeners by frequent little pinehing
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 offence 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, alternately tickled and irri-
tated by the grains of sand which the
Chinese drop into them, will grow to
forget their natures altogether.
No woman can be quite so misera-
able as she who loves only one man at
time, for the time she loves him, and
being unable to absorb all her own un-
happiness, 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 in
nocence into artifce, and from artifice
into revolt; and SO in the sad end of it
she can say, "I knew / was right all
the time" Does the discovery break
her hearth Not 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 collection, as it were. of neigh
borly sympathies- again, some
body else. Such women, in the ex-
tremity of their affection for him, will
throw vitriol in a mans face; will
poison him with papers-murder
him. So it is not good for a woman t.
love severely; neither good for him
nor for her. The sensible man, when
he sees it coming, will put up the hur-
ricane shutters, back engines, skin the
wheels, throw salt in the fire-do any
thing, in fact, that will meet the
emergency, slacken speed or reduce
the temperature. Unless he be sala-
mander. AS to which, by the way,
! the ancients were divided in opinion
some averring that he ate the fire up,
the rest that he was so cold that he
put the fire out.
The moral of all which is, that if you
thinks a woman is going to love you toe
much, break it off at once and ex
change into a West India regiment
If you wish to love, and be loved, in
perfect happiness. never question eacl
others fidelity. So mutual honor will
become sacrament in your heart o
hearts. London World.