The Spokane press. [volume] (Spokane, Wash.) 1902-1939, 1909-09-27
BY DOROTHY DALE.

Every woman and most men who
read this bit of sentiment just
come out of Wisconsin will smile a
little-indulgently. Then they'll
stop minute to think-of, well, to
think of the things that everybody
thinks of sometimes, even though
they'd scorn to show It,
The story was dated at Nunah,
wis. 1t read:
1.-The wedding on the spot where
they met when the groom saved
the life of the bride will eliminate
| the romance of Charles Gehruty of
this city and Amy Johnson of Salt
Lake City.
The two were guests at the
same hotel in the earthquake dis
trict of San Francisco. The man
heard the woman scream as the
hotel walls fell and fire crept near
He rescued her and her letter of
! thanks when she learned his name
led to the second meeting"
You'll Smile If
You're Not Scoffer.
| Now, don't you find yourself smil-
ing and lingering a little? If you
don't, you belong to the scoffers,
and there's no hope for them.
OF course this man and woman
do what would be practically i'm
possible for the majority. The fact
that they go to the Golden Gate,
where they first looked into each
others eyes, to say those Il wills"
is carrying sentiment farther than
most could afford to. But the dis
lance covered or the romance of
! the place are not the important
things in this case. The fine thing
about it is that they were willing
to let their feelings manage the
affair at all.
| There is only one thing in this
brilliant, struggling age of prog
ress sadder than the way people
marry. That is the way people do
| after they are married.
Marriage NoW-eah,
It's Cold, a Mockery.
Everything is patterned on the
business world. Its hurry and
brusqueness is stamped even on
the wedding ceremony. Most Of the
| marriages now, statistics say, are
made in places no nearer heaven
than the dull back offices of the
nearest church or Justices office.
Then, after the schedule time ce-
emory, what? Too often just an
endless scheme of schedule time
kisses and work and worry and de-
privation and loss of liberty, with
never a little spontaneous gift or
pretty compliment or impulsive ca
ress thrown in to cheer and
brighten the way. And as if this
were not enough, another set of
schedule time set of misunderstand-
ings and disputes and explanations
crop out till finally explanations no
longer explain.
And all for the want of a daily
expression of the sentiment that
was there at the start. If it wasn't
there, there should have been no
start.
When man looks at a woman
and sees only beauty where others
see fault of line or colOring, she is 1
beautiful. And when a woman looks
at a man and sees strength and
fineness where others see only ag-
gressiveness and dandyism, he is
strong. The right sentiment has
made each what the other saw.
For sentiment, after all, is the
blessed pair of magic spectacles
colored deep a beautiful rose with
the first flush Of love. Those who
look through them see things rose
colored where others see only COM
mon gray. And what looks rose is
rose.
But that doesn't mean the sickly
sentimentality attacked by the scor-
fers.
One of them wrote some lines
about the pen and ink devotion of
the Italian poet Petrarch for Laura,
a woman of his time, which he in
tended to be Illuminating. They
were.
This is what he wrote.
You Can't Write
Love; You Must Live IL.
Think you if Laura had been Pet
rarch's wife
He would have written sonnets to
her all his life?"
or course he wouldn't have. And
no one would have been better
pleased than Laura herself, at the
omission.
Love can't be written. 1t has to
be lived. It's the living Of it that
gives rise to that perfect under
standing that has no need of ex-
plantations and back talk
The love that throbs cheek
'gainst cheek is too big to be
mapped out. and carpentered into a
IA line ballad. It's silence tells a
story more eloquent than all of the
words written or spoken could
ever do.
1t says: know things have
gone awry. I know there were mis-