A Woman of the World Part 25

Some witty creature has said, "A little widow is a dangerous thing."

It might be added, "A gra.s.s widow whets the appet.i.tes of bovines".

You will find yourself at a loss to choose when an escort is needed, so many and persistent will be the applicants for the position.

After having pa.s.sed through the black waters of an unhappy marriage, this sudden freedom and return to the privileges of girlhood will be liable to affect you like the glare of sunlight after confinement in a dark room.

You will be blinded for a time. It would be well for you to walk slowly, and to use a cane of common sense, and even to feel your way with the outstretched hands of discretion, until you become accustomed to the light.

To fall and scar yourself now, would be a disaster.

It is a curious fact that a woman who has been unhappy with one man usually finds many others ready to give her the opportunity for a repet.i.tion of her experience. And it is equally curious that one unhappy marriage frequently leads to another.

A disastrous rencontre with Hymen seems to destroy a woman's finer intuitions. If you feel that you must marry again, go slowly, and wait until the bruised tendrils of your heart have healed and are rooted in healthy soil. Do not let them twine about any sort of a dead tree or frail reed. Run no chance of a second sorrow.

One divorce always contains elements of tragedy. A second becomes a farce.

You tell me that you and your former husband entertain the kindest feeling for each other. You have seen him and talked with him on several occasions, and you regard him as a friend. You say all love and sentiment perished long before your separation, and that to continue as his wife was to die a thousand deaths daily.

You tell me that your own higher development demanded this separation. I know such situations do exist in the world of men and women, and that to submit to them is a crime. Yet I also know that this idea of "development" is used often as a cloak for all sorts of selfish impulses and moods.

Many men and women to-day seem to forget that certain other objects besides happiness enter into self-development.

It is not only the pilot who deserts the s.h.i.+p and swims ash.o.r.e who saves his life. The one who keeps his hand on the wheel, and his eye on the lighthouse, he, too, sometimes saves his own life, as well as saves the s.h.i.+p.

But since to jump overboard was the only way to save your own life, now that you are ash.o.r.e, and dry, and comfortable, your first consideration should be to avoid falling into mires and pits as you go along.

Though romance died out of your marriage, do not let it die out of your heart. It is commendable that you feel no bitterness or resentment toward your husband. But do not carry your kindly feelings toward him to the extent of frequent a.s.sociation and comrades.h.i.+p.

Outside of criminal situations, life offers no more ghastly and unpleasant picture than that of dead pa.s.sion galvanized into a semblance of friends.h.i.+p, and going about the world devoid of the strong elements of either sentiment.

There is something radically wrong with a woman's ideals when she does not feel an instinctive unwillingness to be thrown with the man from whom she has been divorced.

There is something akin to degeneracy in the man or woman who can contemplate without shrinking the intimate encounter of legally parted husbands or wives.

The softening of the human brain is a terrible malady.

Quite as terrible is the hardening of the human heart.

The loss of happiness is deemed a tragedy. But far greater is the tragedy when the illusive charm of romance departs, and love and marriage are reduced to the commonplace. Unless you find the man who carries your whole nature by storm, and who makes you feel that life without him will be insupportable, do not be led again to the altar of marriage.

Life has many avenues for a bright and charming woman which lead to satisfaction and peace, if not to happiness.

If you desire to be a picturesque figure in the world, remember that the divorced woman who never marries again is far more so than she who has taken the names of two living men.

And remember how much there is in life to do for other people, how much there is to achieve, and how much there is to enjoy, for the woman who has eyes wherewith to see, and ears with which to hear.

Life is a privilege, even to the unhappy. It allows them the opportunity to display the great qualities which G.o.d implanted in every soul, and to give the world higher examples of character.

He who leaves such an example to the world earns happiness for eternity.

To Miss Jessie Harcourt

_Regarding Her Marriage with a Poor Young Man_

And so there is trouble in the house of Harcourt, my dear Jessie. You want to marry your intellectual young lover, who has only his pen between him and poverty, and your cruel father, who owns the town, says it is an act of madness on your part, and of presumption on his.

And you are thinking of going to the nearest clergyman and defying parental authority.

You have even looked at rooms where you believe you and Ernest could be ideally happy. And you want me to act as matron-of-honour at that very informal little wedding.

Now, my dear girl, before you take this important step, give the matter careful study.

Your impulses are beautiful, and your ideal natural and lovely. G.o.d intended men and women to choose their mates in this very way, with no consideration of a worldly nature to mar their happiness.

But civilized young ladies are a far call from G.o.d's primitive woman.

You have lived for twenty-three years in the lap of modern luxury. Your father prides himself upon the fact that, although your mother died when you were very young, he has carefully s.h.i.+elded you from everything which could cast a shadow upon your name or nature. Your lover is fascinated with your absolute purity and innocence. Yet he does not realize that a young woman who has so long "sat in the lap of Luxury," is unfit to be a poor man's wife.

Some girl who might know much more than you of the dark and vulgar side of life, would make him a better companion if he could love her enough to ask her hand in marriage.

The girl who has received the addresses of this fascinating old fellow "Luxury," never quite forgets him, or ceases to bemoan him if she throws him over for a poor man.

To _look_ at two rooms and a bath is one thing, to _live_ in them another, after having all your life occupied a suite which a queen might envy, with retinues of servitors at call.

You tell me you could die for your lover.

But can you bathe from a wash-bowl and pitcher, and can you take your meals at cheap restaurants, and make coffee and toast on an oil-stove or a chafing-dish?

Can you wear cheap clothing and ride in trolleys, and economize on laundry bills to prove your love for this man?

You never have known one single hards.h.i.+p in your life; you never have faced poverty, or even experienced the ordinary economies of well-to-do people.

You are an only daughter of wealth--_American wealth_. That sentence conveys a world of meaning. _It means that you are spoiled for anything but comfort in this life_.

For a few weeks you might believe yourself in a fairy-land of romance if you married your lover and went to live in the two rooms. But at the end of that period you would begin to realize that you were in a very actual land of poverty and discomfort.

Discomfort is relative. Those rooms to the shop-girl who had toiled for years, and lived in a fourth-flight-back tenement, would represent luxury. To you, after a few months, they would mean absolute penury.

You would begin to miss your beautiful home, and your maids, and your carriages. Your husband would know you were missing them, and he would be miserable. Unless your father came to your rescue, your dream of romantic love would end in a nightmare of regret and sorrow.

Your father knows you,--the creature of refined tastes and luxurious habits that he has made you,--and your lover does not. Neither do you know yourself.

It requires a woman in ten thousand, one possessed of absolute heroism, like the old martyrs who sang at the stake while dying, to do what you contemplate, and to be happy in the doing.