The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-09-27

A woman asks: Do you have to think people perfect in trder to love them?"
 Heavens, mol If love required per- lection, none of us would either love or be loved.
 Love isn't blind. It has X-ray eyes that see our every defect, but 1t sees them not as blemishes, but as some quaint characteristic that makes us dearer. The very essence of love consists in some one knowing us for exactly what We are, and loving as still.
 It pleases woman to think that the man who loves her thinks her a raving beauty; that he thinks her figure a perfect 96; that he is blind to the fact that she gets her com plexion at the drug store, and that he never suspects that her perma- nent wave Is the result of art and not the gift of God. She also likes to delude herself by believing that he thinks she has an angelic disposition, and, Is altogether too good and fine for this wicked world.
 Undoubtedly, in the days of court ship, her lover perjured himself like gentleman and told her all these things that she was longing to hear. But the man knows at the time that he Is lying, and the woman would know 1t, too, If she would permit her self to face the truth for a moment. For she Is perfectly we'll aware that no man with sense enough to be per mitted abroad without keeper could have such a delusion about her
 No man, for even passing glance. thinks a plain woman beautiful, nor dull one brilliant, nor a fat one thin. nor does. he mistake red meek and patient Griselda.
 He doesn't love her for something she isn't, but for the thing she is. He sees the snub nose and the hay colored hair; he knows that she Isn't going to set the world on fire, and that many a time he is going to have to walk on eggs to keep from riling her.
 But, all the same, there Is some thing in her plain face that makes a greater hit with him than any liv- ing picture; something that soothes him in her unexciting babble; some thing that makes him feel he'd rather fight with her than live in peace with another woman.
 That's the love of a man for a woman. Something that says: With all thy faults l love thee still"
 And it's the same way with women, Probably no woman would ever get a husband If she didn't make some man think that she thought him Gen. eral Pershing and Otis Skinner and Rudolph Valentino and MT. Rocke- feller and Solomon, all rolled into one, and that she couldn't find a fault in his whole makeup if she hunted TOT 1t with a microscope.
 But that's press-agent stuff. That's campaign literature. There isn't man living clever enough and subtle enough to fool girl-baby while she is still in the cradle about what he is. Every woman has got the number of every man she has known far an hour, down to the last figure. and she knows him better than he will ever know himself.
 Do you think that the bride who swears at the altar to take man for better or worse believes that 1t Is all better and no verse In hers! Not much. DO you think she thinks that some little, sawed-off, egotisti- cal chap, who talks too much about himself, Is a tall, modest, reserved hero? Not at all. She just doesn't care about how he looks to others because he looks good to her. and he can't bore her talking about him. self because he's the one subject in the world she's most interested in. And that's that.
 We don't demand perfection in those we love-. we uOnl really want it If you will look about you, you will gee that 1t is not the good who are most loved 1t is the poor, blum dering sinners. It's the prodigals that we are always getting out the brass band and staying the fatted calf for, not the austere saints.
 And perhaps the reason for this Is that we have no kinship. no fellow ship with the faultless. We need forgiveness so often ourselves that we love best those who are in our own class, and who also have a fell to change from a pig to a boy again. here Is the Wishing Ring! Take 1t and do unselfish things with 1t, then you will be happyP So l wished to help you for 1t was I who helped the witches out of the sticky tar"
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