Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-10-13
Little Talks by
Beatrice FdTfar

There are a great many ways of
work-that is lead to staying in
love. Some don't. And since all
waste is foolish. even tragic, why
not try to avoid emotional waste?
Nothing can be more useless,
more devastating, than unhappy
love. The wear and tear of caring
madly for some one and then find
ing that it wasn't deeply as we'll and
that it hasn't any lasting qualities
affects different folks differently,
but it affects them all unpleasantly,
to say the least.
! Cynicism, shame, chagrin, bitter
ness, instability, insincerity, frivol-
| ity-a long list of weaknesses are
! likely to come along and attack the
| folks who manage their love affairs
SO ill that they get to thinking that
love itself is an ill-favored and
tragic thing and the worst curse
able inheritance.
\ great deal of this might be
avoided. Knowing that the after
math of a love affair that works
out wrong, why shouldn't we be
practical enough to strive for love
| that is right and SO works out
right?
How can you tell?
Remember the old saying, you
can't always sometimes tell" Well,
it's like that. But, at least, one can
remove some of the elements of
chance and avoid the worst pitfalls.
Let's put little Dan Cupid on the
witness stand and see if he won't
have to tell us which are his poi
soned arrows.
There's love at first sight" +"
Johnny goes to a dance and meets
a girl in rose pink in the moonlight.
She can follow all his most difficult
| fox-trot steps, and she's a breath
less listener to his tales of how he
won the hundred-yard dash his
senior year in high school.
You can't found much permanent
happiness on a mutual taste for
fox-trotting and interest in tales of
athletic prowess. But Johnny and
! his rose pink lady don't stop to con-
slider that until they have been en-
gagged two weeks and find rainy
| evenings dragging on their hands
| after they've told each other a few
L
They've nothing vital in common.
| But in sharing the biological pull of
a mutual attraction they didn't stop
to find that out until it was almost
| too late.
| Another Kind
! There's the love of long habit
Friendship drifts along until every
one thinks it's more than friendship
and then to oblige the public two
people undertake to turn bread and
butter (nice wholesome bread and
butter, too) into chocolate cake
! (and chocolate cake of the soggiest
and least digestible).
There's metimes that
| comes along disguised so prettily
that it looks like the Original
something just as good"
There's propinquity. II must love
some one and it might as well be
you" says youth.
There's loneliness. Every one
else is mated and why shouldn't
be-" asks shyness.
There's pride. I'm not going to
have every one think I'm too un-
attractive to appeal to any one,'
says bitterness.
There's the old spirit of wanting
what you can't have. The COM
bative spirit. the spirit that won't
| take a dare. 1t chases after the
unattainable, and If by chance ii
reverses the verdict and makes that
unattainable attainable, it stops
wanting just as soon as 1t can
possess.
| That's one of the most prevalent,
most mischievous, most utterly per-
nicious ways of falling in love with
the absolute certainty of falling out
| again. And it's very human, being
all tied up with such admirable
things as ambition and pride in
achievement.
| But to want what you want-un-
til you get it, and then to hurt
! someone else by brutal Indifference
to the obligation to him which you
voluntarily assumed, is little short
of criminal.
A slow but sure" isn't bad rule
in any game.
But in the pursuit of love which
shall be true love and so lasting
| love, SLOW but sure" is about the
best rule I've ever heard.
If love wants to work out into
its normal expression: marriage of
the ideal sort, it must be composed
of many elements.
The feeling you have for the per-
son you think you love may turn
out to be friendship or attraction
or infatuation or interest, but you
can't build a life partnership on
any of them.
Give your love the third degree
and turn in an honest indictment,
before you put one of loves imper-
senators in a position to pass an
unhappy judgment on you.
|
Doctor Lately Out Of