The age-herald., 1901-02-03

mysteries, so also we as humanity have the purely human mysteries, and this much is one of lifes sweetest possessions: it Is our soft illusions, dear deceits, if you will, which give to most of us the radiant pilots of the purple twilight that makes for the darkness threatening many day as we live and hunger and thirst for joys that may never be material, but which are ours whilst we rest upon the blessed isles of the fanciful sea. Thus we float to raptur- ous music upon rlls and rivers, lakes and oceans, and visit splendid lands of beauty; we idle and we dream and we long to love and love to long and owe no other duty We build our palaces beautiful and people them with the angels of our heaven, and when care heaviest presses we fly to this castle illusory as to blessed haven, content between the blows of i'll fortune or the thrusts of undeserved things to be hidden behind the thin veil of our dear deceits; the magic of the minds mystery rescuins us from the sordidness and selfshness of the worlds repulsive and souless realism as observed in mans inhumanity to man!
 Cherish your illusions, my beloved. Your own is your oYp and yours the best,in all the worldl Stand to it, fight for it, live for it, die with it. Your wife, your sweetheart, good brother man. she Is the fairest wo- man, dearest maid the sun shines upon the world around. You may have welded her ten years ago, twenty, forty, or longer, you who are welded, and you know deep down in your heart that she is more beau- tiful, is sweeter, better more loving and IAr-r than ever she was before, than she was even in that purple twilight long ago when you and she stood at the gate hand in hand, soul unto soul gladly yielding, and each of you knew for the first time that you were bound one to the other, that you were your own, and you sought the bright est star in darkling sky and called it of her and vowed unwavering costancy, the while all space seemed to ring with the trans cendant melody of the music that burst in your hearts!
 Long years with their train of ills and blessed burdens of motherhood may have marked and whitened her loving face and whitened the hair that you loved in it's silken softness of maidenhood, and her hands, those faithful hands that have stroked and soothed and fondled you thousand times, may be not so soft as they were when you gave her the first flower or ring to wear long ago; but, God bless you, man, you don't know these things, couldn't wouldn't know them and should some iconoclast come your way and tell you they existed you'd make him wish himself the other side of the mountain!
 As for you, master young lover, you would thrash into hospital any fellow who should seek to impress upon you that your own little sweetheart Is not the daintiest, tidiest. sweetest little creature to whom tho flowers ever bent or the birds ever sung since birds began to sing in the paradise of mans creation. You don't care what others may think, if they hold their tongues of unappreciative criticism, for your own is your own, brave lad, is the loveliest and tenderest of all the maidens sent into the world to love and be loved to bless men and to save them. to paint glory upon the shadows and to lend lustre to the sun beams, to teach new songs to old hearts and old faith to new aouls, to skip and