Atlanta Georgian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, 1912-08-09
The Love Age 81 Sc Sc

\ MAN wants to know what is the
a love age in woman, and whether
girl of sixteen is capablesof en-
tertaintng a deep and unchanging af-
lection.
This is a hard question to answer,
for the love age in woman depends to
a great degree on race and climatic
conditions. In the tropics, where wom-
en- mature early and age early, they
also love early. but among people Of
colder cline and blood sentiment is the
flower of late spring,
Certainly in this latitude we should
not take any fourteen year-old Juliet
seriously, and any sensible mamma who
caught her daughter of that age hang
ing over the baniSters whispering down
sizzling love speeches to some moon
struck Romeo would turn the forward
little mink across her knee and give her
a good spanking. That would be about
the sort of love philtering that she
would get. and ninety nine times out of
a hundred it would work complete
and lasting cure.
OF course, every girl of sixteen be-
lieveS herself capable of the grand pas
-
pable of singing in grand opera, or ele-
waiting the stage, or, as one young miss
naively told me the other day she in
tended to DO, Of writing a great novel
that would change the nature of and
upiift every human being that read 1t.
But, IN reality. she is as little Capa BILE
Of doing the one as the other.
Possibly she may have within her a
great voice, or a great talent, or a great
Oh TO hut &c M, 1r,F r,fy,
developed, a promise and not a finished
performances
To q girl of sixteen her mind and
heart are as unknown 3 territory to her
as Darkest Africa. She has not vet
taken the measure of her own needs or
her own potentialities. She has no idea
Of what she will demand of a man.
She is utterly. totally ignorant of her
self and OF life and the curse of her
ignorance is that she does not know
that she doesn't know, but believes her
self to be all wise.
She plays with love as with a new
and delightful toy, not knowing that it
Is a thing that older people approach
with fear and trembling. She is en-
Chanted with new emotions, with the
gratified vanity of being BATTERED and
made love to, and she is so facile in
Imagination that she can throw the
rosy mantle OF romance ilat she mas
woven over anything in trousers that
pays court to Her.
This is why Very young girls elOpa
with their fathers chauffeurs. or marry
their dry-as- dust music masters. o.
commit some other folly in the name Of
love before they have found out what
love really Is.
But whether the man that girl fails
in love with when she Is sixteen viii
continue to fire her fancy when she is
- or % is just as much an uncertainty
las whether she will continue to have
passion for strawberry jam and chew
ing gum after she gets out of the school
room. There are some women who
never get beyond the bread-and butter
stage of existence but most women do.
and there is nothing to which those
no have developed a taste for caviar
look back with such amusement and
shuddering horror as to the man with
whom they fanCied themselves in love
when they were sixteen.
Certainly the man who marries the
girl Of sixteen takes a long snot a hap
pincsS, for he has 10 take chances on
her changing ideals as she grows from