The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1906-07-13
TIE LOVE OF WOMAN.

Inc pest ana puresI and sweetest
thing on earth is woman's love.
1t is like the nectar from the honey
cups of heavens choicest flowers,
sweet as the kisses of angels that
warm our lips in dream, pure as the
thoughts of infants ere their wee feet
press the thorny ways of sin, tender
as the petal of the fairest flower that
shine and shower has ever nursed to
bud and bloom. Born in the sacred
confines of Eden 1T has survived the
unnumbered centuries, a queen that
ruled and rules mankind, and SO gen.
tie has been her power, so mystic and
SO charming her rule that we have
never and will never feel an impulse
to break away from the sweet and
tender influence of her sway.
Woman's lovei 1t is as free as
the fresh pure air we breathe, yet
as priceless as the jeweled diadem
of queen. 1t is the one thing on
earth that is closely kin to heaven,
and the life that has not felt it's bless
| ing is like tramp, hungry and thirsty,
lost in the waste of scorching and
barren desert without even the prom
Use of an oasis at the end of the great
wanderings beyond. Without it life
would be as an endless night bereft
of the suggestion of dawn.
The hovel is it's home and the
palace is its habitation. Where it is
needed most it grows the hardest and
blooms the strongest. 1t has richer
store of blessings for the peasant
than it has of cheer for the prince.
Money cannot buy it and all the ele-
ments of earth cannot take it away. 1t
finds pardon for the gravest errors
and sees virtues commendable in fol-
lies of the grossest kind. 1t finds COM
fort and cheer in the byways of desti-
tuition and hope and promise in the
lowering of the darkest clouds of de-
spair. When the door to every avenue
of hope seems close in our faces it's
woman's love, clothed in its gown of
purity, that steps out in the darkness,
diadem of light encircling it's brow,
and waves scepter that illumines
with peculiar radiance the darkened
way. We follow it as the wise men
followed the bright star of the east
and are ourselves led, step by step,
to the spot where rests the babe of
life's cherished ambition.
| 1t is woman's love that fingers by
the bedside of a drunken brute, wild
in the grasp of delirium, rubs his fe-
vered and besotted brow and whispers
words of soothing and comfort in his
ear when justice would demand that
he be pitched into the street to wal
low in the gutter with hogs.
1t is woman's love that suffers pri-
walton and starvation, enduring and
forgiving all for the sake of a worth
less brute, through courtesy named
man.
1t is woman's love that clings loyal
to a man when all the world has
turned him down and marked him as
a social outcast.
1t is woman's love that makes her
lay awake at night and listen with
anxious ear for the Homecoming of
a hayward and reckless son, or
prompts her to exchange her last crust
of bread to satisfy his unholy desire.
It is woman's love that can raise
the lowest creature made after the
image of God to the highest and loft
lest pinnacle of manhood
What, then, are the meets and
bounds of woman's love? 1t is broad
as the universe, deep as the sea, last
ing as eternity.
The poet has beautifully and truth
fully said: Love is of mans life a |
thing apart, it's woman's whole exist
ence." Without love woman's life is a |
thing without purpose, substance or
form, an aimless and useless exist
ence. A frail leaf adrift on the broad
ocean waves, tossed hither and yon by
every counter wind that comes and
goes.
What would the world be without a
woman's love. Can the mind con-
ceive, is there pen of fancy to paint
1t, could an artists brush give con-
.ception of it? No never-Ba Barlow Rec
ord