The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1903-01-02
LETTERS FROM A SELF-MADE
WOMAN TO HER DAUGHTER
From Mrs Thornton Peern Daughter Adeods
By HELEN ROW. AND.

From Mrs. ThorptC

My Dear Girl: And so there are two
of them! Why didn't you tell me that
| before? It would have saved me lots
of anxiety. A girl who can be Gin
tensely' in two men is not in the least
danger from neither.
Bobby" you say, has a good figure,
| an excellent appetite, a bank account
and a past" How nice! Mr.. Loving
ton, on the other hand, is a model He
doesn't smoke, he is not interested in
the type feminine (meaning women
with butter coIored hair), and he vows
you are the very first woman he ever
loved, and all that sort of thing. I am
anxious, my dear. Has he tempera-
ment or indigestion. They are equally
trying after marriage; and they gem
orally go along with the type of man
who has never had a past" 1t has
been my unfortunate experience to find
out that a man who has had no sort
of past before he is thirty years old
generally has a most exciting and an
unexpected kind of future. A future"
my child, is very much worse than
past" A man who has sown a rea-
sonable crop of wild oats and cut it
down is very much more satisfactory
as a husband than one who still has
the field bare for a good post-matri-
monial harvest.
+ There are just three types of men
present and the man with a future. If
you are looking for an angel, you must
go among women to find such. But to
the average woman an angel is about
as interesting as an unbreakable doll
to the investigating child. There is a
clever little newspaper joke which tells
of a little girl who wanted to know
whether she should play with angels
all day long if she went to heaven.
"Why, yes, my DEAR" her foolish
mother assured her.
''But, mamma" protested the young
ster, eff I am very, very good and play
with the angels all morning, do you
think God would give me a nice little
devil to play with in the afternoon?"
That child, Adelaide, was girl
child, with the beautiful frailty of a
woman in her delicious little SOUL Most
women lead such a good, colorleSS eX-
istence on their diet of bread and
milk in the morning time of life, that
they long for a little devil and little
wine during their afternoon of matri-
mony What they want in a husband
is an antidote, something with ex-
perience and the halo of worldiness
about him, who will make things ex-
citing for them. And generally they
get it. The first thing a woman says to
man, latter the engagement ring has
been slipped on her finger and she feels
that she owns him, is: Now tell me
all about Yourself" What she wants
him to tell her is a nice, long, fascinat-
ing fairy tale, as full of spice and
actresses and college eScapadeS and
unfortunate affairs" as he can cram
it
What you must find out about Bob
by my dear, is whether or not he has
a present. I distinctly do not recon-
mend the man with present" OF all
three types he is the most fatal to a
womans happiness. Because if a man
is playing with some other girls he is
very. very likely to be playing with
you. And he is sleeping his soul in
wine and vice and folly, he is not fit to
touch the hem of the white garment
which every good woman wears. But
a man of this kind is not really dan
gerous to a clever, wide-awake girl,
after all. She is apt to see the color of
his soul and to be shocked and repell-
ed by it before she gets too near to him
to be pulled away. 1t isn't the vice
itself, but the experience, which is at
tractive. When a woman really knows
that a man. is a cad he becomes as
uninteresting to her as does hash to
the cook who knows what has been put
in it, 1t is the mystery about
the man, as about the hash, that makes
him palatable. A man with present
is like hash that is just being made,
GnIlT6lY 100 ODNlOuS- DdL a 11Acl1A with
a past is like the nice, little brown
hash cakes quite done, well seasoned
and served on a Sevres plate, all dress
ed up in pretty little green stuff.
Neither hash cakes nor men with pasts
are particularly unwholesome-
Find out the nature of Bobby's past.
One always wants to know what is in
the hash cakes. Don't look for the
details. A knowledge of details, in
either hash cakes or pasts, is apt to
spoil ones appetite. You don't know
ANYTHING about the scraps of meat nor
the particular women in the case, but
YOU do want to know the nature of his
wild oats, just as you want to know
whether you are eating chicken or
ham croquettes. A woman may have
preferences in pasts as in pates.
/ once knew girl who married a
man of the world. She was nice,
mousy little thing and you never would
have suspected her of longing for any
thing but bread and milk and a con-
ventional pat on the head all her life.
But I noticed a few months after the
wedding that she was growing thin
and getting pathetic little droop
about the corner of her mouth men-
Timed if tn her and recommended a