Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1919-04-15
LOVE AND FEAR
By DR.. Frank Crane

Love and fear are not opposites. In fact
they are pretty much the same thing.
You do not love everything you fear, but
you little afraid CT every one you love
Love itself is SCATTERING thing. 1t al
ways comes over the heart like a thunder
storm. 1t does not enter easily, gently and
as matter of course.
1t is the eternal stranger We never get
over our wonder at it. Always the lovers
dismayed question is, "How did you ever
come to love me?"
Love has nothing to do with logic it is
not the child of reason, it belongs not to the
order of things at all. 1t is the amazing
miracle.
Love always carries with it tho air of ad-
venture. 1t is a dizzy exploit. THERE'S in
it always a feeling of danger. Lovers are al
ways afraid.
And strangeness. Walter Pate1 speaks
somewhere of the air of strangeness that
characterizes the work of Michelangelo, and
asserts that every creation of genius has
something of this air, as of the Towering
aloe.
Every man some tine in his life rises to
the point of genius, experiences divine in
breathing, becomes superman. 1t is at the
moment when he falls in love. Thu the aloe
flowers. Then the unbelievable happens.
Then he steps out of the commonplace and
becomes for moment hero.
But such exa1tation is a peak of life, and
upon it's unusual height his head is dizzy So
he is afraid.
Love to a woman me ans even more. 1t is
not an event. 1t is net an episode. 1t is a
t:Lmpet ell from destiny that sounds
through all her soul and summons her with
the call of the rac..
All the past arises and crowds upon her.
10 fIt1rn a q VOin6S n
the unborn ring in her ears.
So she is afraid. AS the soldier is afraid
hen he grasps his musket to go TITO battle.
AS the captain is afraid when he steers hia
ship out into the mists of the unknown.
Therefore do not be impatient with love.
Do not chafe at it's inconvenience. Do not
attempt to bride it with common sense. For
it is wholly uncommon
1t is pegasus, not a plough horse. It is
awkward, stumbling. incoherent, blind, be-
cause it is not of this earth. 1t is a divine
stranger.
Love and fear int. minge, just as the
roots of love and modCsty are the same, for
these roots go down to the shrinking quick
of life, to those 1epths that are all feeling
and lie far beneath surface intelligence.
And do not wonder j. love brings suffering.
SWinburne has accurately shown the nat
ure Of the great par; dox Of love in his
Thalassius:
owe fearful, even the heart of love afraid,
With the great anguish of it's great delight.
Copyright, 1919, by Frank Crane)
One night--or morning, rather-Mr
Brown returned just as dawn was breaking.
what time is it," called his sleepy
spouse.
ga quarter to II, my dear" replied Mr.
Brown.
His wife turned on light and looked at
all alarm clock that stood near her bed. 1t
showed twenty minutes past 4.
She took her husband to task, where
upon he put on his coat and hat and started
out in a dignified manner.
where are you going?" she asked.
81 am going away" he replied, "away,
never to return, When things have come
to such a pass in this house that you. the
wife of my bosom. will .ather believe an or
binary tin, half-dollar alarm clo|k instead
of your loving husband, it is time left for
parts unknown!