The news scimitar. (Memphis, Tenn.) 1907-1926, 1920-05-10

~
Sometimes you come upon her pic
ture in an old album and you look at
u curiously: How pretty and fresh the
face is! How serene and untroubled!
how rustingly the eyes look out upon
the world! What bloom Of rose was
In those cheeks! What gold was tan
gled in that hair! How 1.-THE and slim,
as a willow wand, that girlish figure!
IL is like the portrait Of one long
dead and half forgotten, and as YOU
mirror, and see yourself stout and
'grizzle headed, with tired eyes and
with lines of care and suffering on your
face, you can scarcely believe that you
were ever she.
Sometimes the girl you left behind
you comes and sits beside your bed in
the silent watches of the night. and
you marvel at how gay and light-heart-
ed she is. Laughter ripples forever
over over ~ her lips. and her heart sings with
this Is the best N2f all possible worlds,
and that her patiAis going to be strewn
with roses with never a thorn among
them, and that the sun is always going
to shine for her.
1t has been years and years since
you really laughed or thrilled to the
ecstacy of being. The path you have
trodden has been hard and stony. with
few flowers blooming along its arid way
and your sky has had so many more
learned to be fearfully. forever expect
ing storms.
But as an ecno of the girls gay
laughter fits back to you, you are filled
with furious anger against those who
robbed her of her joyousness, who
Stifled the song in her heart, and who
blotted out the sunshine from her
And as you look into the eyes of the
girl you left behind you, you see that
they are filled with dreams-the beau
fN,I Il Il z.sSI
that always end, like the fairy tale,
with And so they were married and
lived happily ever afterward."
She dreamed of a lover as handsome
as a prince, and as noble as Sir Gala
had who would find her and claim her
for his own, and that they would go
through the world with his strong arm
about her, protecting her from every
hardship, and their souls one, in
rapture of perfect companionship.
You smile cynically at the girls Wis
ion of married life, from which the last
tattered rag of romance has been torn
for you so long ago. Your prince has
grown fat and bay Widowed. Your
Sir Galahad rows with you over the
bills, and doles out your car fare to
you. It has been ages since he gave
you a kiss that was not a duty kiss,
favored with ham and eggs, and you
nothing you could do or say would
raise one tenth of the thrill in his
breast that a two-point rise in stocks
docs.
But you could weep with pity for
swept away so soon. They might have
left her her illusions. They might
have let her hide the sordidness OF
every day living even from her own
eyes with her cloak of romance, but
no one took the trouble to do it. They
walked her from her dream, and life
became ashes and dust and cinders in
her teeth.
high, and she had ideals that reached
10 the stars. She trusted life and was
unafraid. She believed in humanity
and ached to be of service to it. Her
faith and love was a religion.
1t sears your soul to remember how
the years and experience took from the
girl her beliefs, one by one, and
changed her into the suspicious, syni-
cal selfish, wording you have become.
fear. Ingratitude made her distrust
full. She saw love turn traitor to the
breast that warmed it into life; Hard
experience taught her that only the
selfish and self-seeking can hold their
when she had learned this lesson that
the girls face lost forever the soft
look 1t wore in the picture.
Oftenest when we meet again the girl
we left behind us we ask her Wistfully
where it was, along the years, that she
lost the high intentions with which she
so confidently started out. She was
going to do great things. She was go
ing to write a book, or compose mu-
sic, or interpret a play that would be
an inspiration to humanity.
When she married she was not going
to sink into the rut of small domestic
interests that other women fall into
but she was going to live broad, free
life full of intellectual and artistic in
terests. She was going to be a wife
who would keep her husband keyed up
to the best that was in him. mother
who would develop her children into
supermen and superwOmen, a house
keeper whose home was run without
jar or friction, as II by magic
Alas for the good intentions of our
girlhood, The book is unwritten. the
song unsung. We are poor, weak err
ring wives and mothers just as our
neighbors are, veXed over the servant
problem and wrestling inefficiently with
the high cost of living, and we smile
as we remember the egotism of our
youthful plans.
Sometimes she comforts us, some
times she saddens us, this girl we left
behind us, whom we glimpse some
times in a passing memory or in a
rare, tender look in. our husbands
eyes.
Copyright, 1920, by the Wheeler Syn
dictate, Inc.