The Monticellonian., 1917-11-02

I clondbufst comes. And the sudden sul try atmosphere. and that strange hush with the air of the room surcaarged with electricity may all have come l in T moment with not the slightest real ] justification. 1t is the self-torure of love.
 To morbid jealousy eivjIity, Just of the ordinary type, becomes filtration; i indifference, disguised feelings; good ] spirits, conscience masking q wrong silence, thinking Of some one else-;dI i Is translated by the cipher code os i iealausg. Jealousy always plays with l louded dice-the cast Is always fore ordained. Jealousy does not require cause, 1t is satisfied with an onpor- l tuaity. II may be inspired by what one i does OF does not do. what one thought or did not think, what one said or did not say; it may be what one might have. could have or should have done or said or left undone. Jealousy con jugates in all moods and tenses.
 To this morbid jealousy explanations mean qothing but aggravation or change bf base of attack. The most taetfully delivered explanation is often deXterously caught, and with a whsk of the vocabulary is quickly trans formed into a foaming whipped-cream conviction on some other phase, while the innocent sufferer, in a daZed way. wonders how 1t was done. Vesuvius, in it's eruptions, is slow, snail-like in- activity compared with the explosions of this Jealousy. Unlike cigar smoking, jealousy is not one-seX speciality. This morbid jealousy is always unrea- soning and unreasonable. It's misin- depreciation of word, Il motion or a glance may throw into eclipse the loyal unseltish devotion of life, and the one who suffers innocently in this tempest must bow the head in heipiessness, realizing that words of protest would count no more than attempting to lead tornado to change it's itinerary.
 Jealousy stiles faith, which is the soul of love. It is emotional suicide. It is peculiar form of fear which seeks constantly to discover what it does not want to find. Jealousy is
 
 quires faith to keep faith, trust to re- tain trust. love to cherish love.
 Jealousy blights spontaneity and the free expression of ones thought; one soon consigns one subject after an- other to the quarantine of the un- spoken. One involuntarily sterlizes ones conversation, emitting simple lit- 
 themselves but which experience has shown carry storm-signals, so that one involHntarily picks ones way carefully in talking, like a person getting up at night i'll Il dark, sprinkled room. How Cupid must moan when he finds married people grown tactful and polite with each other. The delight full free interchange of thought can exist only as love and trust nuke Blue beard chambers of interdicted subjects unnecessary and impossible in eonyer- Sation. We should guard carefully against closing up any room of con fidence in the mind and heart of one we love.
 There is pathos in this morbid jeal- ousy, for innocence of the object of the feeling can prevent 1t. It is like one of those concave or convex mirrors that distort whatever passes before them. This unreasonable jealousy is hard on two people-the subject and the object. Its presence in the home means problem for two. For one it means the overcoming of morbid sus- picion and the other somehow to keep the sacred flame of love burning despite the suspicion. There is always a benumbing, paralyzing sense of help lessness and of hopelessness in resting under cruel. unjust charge more awful when it is made by one who should be most ready of all the world to he convinced of the innocence of the accused.
 Jealousy is disease that can be cured only by the subject, not by any one else in all the world. No mat ter how gentle, kind, forbearing, for. giving and forgetting the object of it may be. this in itself will not cure the attacks. The subject whose heart is thus swayed by fierce gales of jealousy must first awaken to the folly of it, the injustice of it. must be conscious of the trail of bitterness and unhap- piness it brings to both, must realize the cruel continued assault on the tol. erance. love, loyalty and patience ot the other, and when the next attack comes. seek by strength of will, by force of character, by conSecrated self control and by every help of highes, wisdom to kill the feeling.
 Jealousy must be fought as one would battle against pestilenee that threatens the safety of town or county. It Is not sufficient conquest merely to hold back the expressions of the jealousy; the continuous re pression simply defers tue explosion and makes the next outbreak more dis astrous. Jealousy must be killed in the thought. In the mind, the battle ground of the soul. must the fight of eXtermination be waged. In the thought must the jealousy be neutral ized by faith, conquered by justice, and transformed by trustful love into a restful abiding confidence that only absolute proof and certainty of just cause can ever reawaken.
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