Year: 1877

and sclentlhc ignorance people Delleved
in strange spells and magic charms as
the only means by which TO account
for certain mental phenomena other
wise inexplicable. 1t was glamour; all
delusion and enchantment; powerful
spell working on one side, and hopeless
subjugation, because of entire fascina-
ton ON the other; else how could it
have been done? How could Titania
have loved Bottom had not her eyes
been blinded with a magic herb? And
were not the Thessalian witches fam
Gus for their power long before our
own poor old women took tn riding on
broOmsticks, nOurishing families, enter
tanning doubtful visitors, now as black
cats and now as screech owls, and cast
ing spells generally over homestead and
byre, beast and man? These concrete
and comprehensive explanations for
mysterious things have always been ac-
ceptable to lazy thinkers who do not
care to search into difficult matter in
vOlving trouble; as well as those whose
characters are founded on ultimates,
and who must therefore have reasons
for all things and be able to ferret out
to the minutest particular how it was
that the cork got into the bottle and the
apple into the dumpling.


STRANGE ATTACHMENTS.


Now, however, magic and witchcraft,
with material filters and abracadabraic
spells are out of date, and we are driven
into wonder. not to say conjecture,
when we see certain attachments and
associations between two people who
seem to be the very antitheses of each
other, and without one point of contact
where they may be in harmony and
union. What can be the charm which
that loud, vulgar mannish woman pos
sesses for that soft and gentle creature
who gives up her family and her money,
her peace and her liberty, that she may
minister to this uncomfortable tyrant,
who, in our eyes at least, accepts all
and gives back nothing: Where is the
power of fascination in person who
has neither physical beauty to delight
the eye, nor grace of manner to please
the taste, nor yet grandeur of character
10 elevate the mind and give the sense
of moral dignity and noble mind 10
those whom she influences and with
whom she is associated? 1t is glamour.
We can call it nothing else, and we can
scarcely say more. There is no radical
explanation to be given; so we must
perforce fall back on the irrational, and
for want of accurate knowledge drift
into the safety of vague superstition.
Sometimes in going through the world
we fall in with two women of this kind
one who commands and the other who
obeys; one who accepts and the ether
who gives; one who receives all hom-
age, care, tenderness, love, as her right
of tribute, tax in no wise to be rem
dered back in kind, and the other who
sacrifices her very life that her friends
slightest wish may be fulfilled and her
least caprices obeyed. The more un-
amiable of the two is always the one
most worshipped; the sweeter and more
lovewOrthy the one sacrificed and hu-
inflated. Yet the sacrifice is voluntary;
and the slave has herself forged the
chains which bind her. Still, the ques-
ton remains unanswered-What is the
charm which makes these chains so
dear, the servitude so loved: What is
the spell which binds sweetness to peev-
ishness, feminine delicacy to hybrid
coarseness, unselfishness to domination
ami self-denying love to rampant ego
tism: Who knows? There are mys-
teries in sea and sky which no man has
yet fathomed; but greater than them all
is the mystery of human love, and why
one ungainly soul is priced, and an
other, beautiful and precious, is dis
carded,


IN MARRIED LIFE.


What friendship is in its degree, so
is marriage to still more striking ex-
tent. We sometimes see the sweetest
and dearest little woman married to a
bluff, burly, and cross-grained fellow,
who goes through life like perpetual
thunder cloud, from which the slightest
shock brings angry splutterings, sullen
murmurs and fiery outbursts, destruct-
i've of all peace and comfort. Yet Ii
tania worships her rough-skinned treas
ure; ne is her gentle joy TO her, and
she finds her happiness in wreathing
garlands for his long cared head, and
i'm idealizing him-dull ass As he is
till she has made him into a god by
whom all men might take pattern.
Her sister, married to Hyperion, as good
as he is beautiful, and as clever as he is
good, finds her lot in life hard one,
and thinks every wife is to be envied
where she is only to be pitled. She
talks feelingly of the dreadful punish
ment which falls on women who make
the one great mistake of their lives, and
wakes eloquent on the sin of parents in
suffering their daughters to marry be-
fore they know their own minds or
those of the men whom they take for
better or for worse. Her eyes fill up
with tears when she speaks of Titania's
happiness, and how good and kind, for
all his rough exterior, is that lOng-eared
Bottom of hers, who shows his rough
side to the world, but keeps only his
down and velvet for home. And then
she sighs and looks out into the distance
as one whose heart is full of sadness
and whose tongue might say bitter
things if she would; but she will not.
If unhappy, she is loyal; if unappre-
ciated and not fairly dealt with she un-
derstands the holy retieence of martyr
dom; and though her marriage has
been mistake, she will not make the
world the confidant of her griefs.
Nevertheless, she gives the same world
clearly to understand that she is un-
happy and has been taken in, and that
man for man Hyperion does not come
near to Bottom, and that Titania is to
be congratulated while she is only to be
eommiserated This is glamour i'm an