The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1900-12-02

ment of the mind. she dies incontiuent-
~. A great many ignorant. embrace
religion when the domestic life meets
shipwTeck; for in the mystlclsms or
faith almost every emotion OF tns
heart can find nOuriShment. But, in
short. the whole life of woman is love
of one sort or another, and If she be
debarred altogether from every form
of love her life instantly ceases, just
as a flame ceases when oxygen IS
withdrawn.
Now. suppose a woman possessing
fine. observant faculty, ready sympathy
with human beings and imagination
which is the single faculty of men ana
women in which are combined the
mental and emotional elements-sup-
pose her to devote herself, whether by
accident of circumstance or any other
cause to the work of fiction writing.
She turns all her affections into TINS
channel, and her life thenceforward IS
passed among the creations of her own
fancy or imagination-a plastic world,
with which she can do what she pleases
subject only to her subjective percep-
ton of what is truth. She can make
a pair of lovers and carry them
through all their good and bad eX-
periences to the end. And she thinks
that she could make one OF a pair OF
lovers herself Sometimes she puts the
matter to the test, and then what hap
pens? Let Sappho, George Sanu,
George Eliot and scores more or less
like them answer.
II is that habit of the creative imagi-
nation that spells the real romance she
who can draw the ideal lover so charm
ingly cannot for that very reason ma
him in flesh and blood He does not re
sDond satisfactorily to her analysis.
Moreover. as soon as she has engaged
herself 10 him Imagination begins to
weave its web about their future. she
carri .a- IF and him through their
Who'll career, ana then, WheH
she c. ... .. prospects Of going
through ... again in actuality,
she .recoi}s.-.s-z.Ing that to do SO would
be to invite anti-climax and disappoint-
ment And let her give heed to this in
tuition. and not defy it. as George Eliot
and others have done. For the truth is
that she IS married already to her i'm
agiuation and its products. and from
that bond it is now too late to with
draw IF she tries to withdraw from II
and turn the current of her affections
towards husband and children. she viii
fail. for she cannot, as a man can,
make herself over new or carry IN
two lives side by side. She cannot for
sake her art and become wife and
mother, nor can she continue her arr
at the expense Of her witehood ana
motherhood. but she has spoiled both
of them. In neither viii she find salts
faction or any longer achieve good re-
suits. That which was her blessing
the creative imaginative powerful
become her curse, depriving all her
flowers of perfume and her honey OF
sweetness. She is like the child in the
old story. who. having once been ed
mitted to fairyIand. could never thence
forth be happy in the common world,
but was forever seeking what was lost
forever. The easy freedom and whimsi-
cal loneliness of that enchanted realm
is not TO be looked for or hoped for
here; and i'll fares it with those who
draw back from it with other expecta-
tfons Not that the real world is not
beuter than tie imaginative one; it is
better and deeper, and more blessed
BY infinite degrees; but if a woman has
made her choice of the imaginative she
must needs abide by 1t or lose both
That is the law
Only. as I said it is the exception
which proves the rule; AID possibly you
who read Ills may be the exception.