The Savannah morning news., 1904-08-21
THE SEVEN AMBITIONS
OF WOMAN.

A woman's longing for career ie
either a manifestation of abnormal
vanity, pinching poverty or domestic
misery. The natural woman cares lit
tie for fame, or philanthropy, and when
she starts out on a still hunt for the
laurel wreath, or undertakes to reform
the sins of the world, you may depend
upon it that there is a pebble in her
shoe somewhere and that she is try
ing TO distract her thoughts from her
sufferings by outside diversions.
Generally speaking, therefore, the in
terests of a girl who has a good home
and good father able and willing to
give her frills and frivols. concerns
themselves with matters of the affec-
ton. She wants to be loved. She OK
poets to make love her career in life,
and she starts out with these seven
ambitions:
First. To be loved madly and ro-
mantically.
Second. To be the only one.
Third. To be loved.
Fourth. To marry her ideal.
Fifth. To get married.
Sixth. To be a perfect wife.
Seventh. TO get along in reasonable
peace.
It's rather sliding scale, but most
things in life are.
When a girl first begins to think of
love her standards are those of the
novel and the stage, and she wants to
be Wooed in sizzling language by a
lover who will clutch her to his manly
breast in way that will loosen her
back hair. This is a time when good
little girls who do not mean any harm
IN the world, answer advertisements in
the papers. and have clandestine ap-
polntments with men their parents
never heard Of. and then they write
letters that their fathers have to pay
out good money to get back sometimes.
They are simply hypnotized-dru
ooped on romance, and like Lydia
Languish, are ready to marry anybody
who will elope with them.
While this frenzy lasts, a girl will
pass by worthy. honest hearted
young fellow, who really loves her and
would pay her bills for her the balance
of her life without complaining, but
who halts and stumbles and threatens
TO choke on his Adams apple in his
love making, for any kind of a pictur-
esque wretch with a glib tongue. This
is the time when she thinks love is
enough, and that it would be simply
sweet to starve with a man who pas
sionately adored her, but wouldn't
work for her, or to live in a garnet with
an unappreciated genius and be his
inspiration. Nothing short of a man
threatening t. commit suicide if she
won't return his affection goes with
her, and it fills her with bitter scorn
to observe that after she has refused
q sutton he gees on eating three meals
day, and apparently enjoying good
health. Fortunately most girls have
sensible mothers who see them safely
through this crisis of their existence,
and they live to marry some man who
is short on poetic language, but long on
faithful affection, and who pops the
question across beefsteak and onions
at q restaurant by saying: Say Sal
lie, I'll furnish the grub for life if you'll
come and sit opposite me. What Go
you say? Is ii a bargain?"
BY the end of her first season the
girl has generally abandoned her first
ambition to be madly. POLITICALLY and
Economically loved She's begun to
get a little acquainted with the world
as it really exists, and she has found
out that romance is a blanket that
covers a multitude of vulgarities. 1t
more to meet a drummer in the park.
or get letters that are addressed to
a false name. 1t seems downright COM
mon, and indiscreet, and servant-girl
ish. She has also ascertained that
whatever other charms and fascina-
tions the average man has, making
picturesque love is not one of his ac
eomplishments. No Englishman or
American can do it. They aren't built
that way. They can be earnest enough.
and forceful enough, but they can't get
down on their knees without feeling
idiotic, and looking the part.
In consequence of all these draw
backs the girl revises her ambitions.
She doesn't care so much for the mere
words of love, but she yearns to be the
Only One. She wants to feel that up
to the time a man met her his heart
was an impregnable fortress that
women had stormed in vain. or that he
had gone through life hopelessly seek
ing an ideal creature until by chance
he discovered her. She isn't heartless,
or unkind, or unsympathetic, but it af-
ferds her exquisite rapture to believe
that should she say mo" that his life
hencefOrth would be dust and ashes,
and that he would never love again.
This curious vanity of women, in
wanting TO think that they are the
only ones who could inspire affection
IN a man, is so well recognized that
men generally head off the inevitable
question: Did you ever love before?"
by starting out with the mendacious
assertion that the girl they are court
ing is the first one. My dear child,
don't believe 1t if the man is over
eighteen, and it doesn't make any diff
ference anyway. Love isn't like a gar
ment. 1t isn't made over to At each
Individual. 1t is always new and fresh.
The quality that attracted a man in
his first love, and the quality that holds
him in his last, may be entirely differ
ent, for love is progressive. and the
calf love of the boy is no more to be
compared TO the deep passion of the
man of forty than water is to wine.
Only debutantes, it may be said. be.
lieve a man when he tells them h
never loved before, and by the time
a girl reaches her second or third sea
son. she isn't so particular about be
ing the first. She has found out tina
love isn't so common, or so easy {,
get that one can be too fastidious abou
Il. and so her ambition becomes ;
chastened one. She only wants to VIII
some faithful heart. TO be loved truly
and honestly. and loyalty. She's will
ing 10 cut out the romance and TIL
passionate wooing, and even to &C
NaNt fadcrfnC -, tEa Ia.