<h2 style="color: red;">Widowers and Widows</h2>
<p>Next to burglars, mice, and green worms,
every normal girl fears a widow. Courtships
have been upset and expected proposals
have vanished into thin air, simply because a
widow has come into the game. There is
only one thing to do in such a case; retreat
gracefully, and leave the field to her.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Charm</div>
<p>A widow's degree of blandishment is conservatively
estimated at twenty-five spinster
power. At almost every session of spinsters,
the question comes up for discussion. It is
difficult to see just where the charm lies.</p>
<p>A widow has, of course, a superior knowledge
of ways and means. She has fully
learned the value of silence, of food, and of
judicious flattery. But these accomplishments
may be acquired by the observing spinster
who gives due attention to the subject.</p>
<p>The mystery lies deeper than is first suspected.
It is possible that the knowledge of
her own limitations has something to do with<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></SPAN></span>
it. A girl who has been flattered, adored,
placed upon a pedestal and worshipped, naturally
comes to the conclusion that she belongs
there. She issues her commands from that
height and conveys to man various delicate
reminders of his servility.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Pedestal
Idea</div>
<p>When the same girl is married and by due
operation of natural law becomes a widow,
she doubtless has come to a better understanding
of the pedestal idea. Hence she does not
attempt the impossible, and satisfies herself
with working those miracles which are comparatively
simple.</p>
<p>A widow has all of the freedom of a girl,
combined with the liberty of a married woman.
She has the secure social position of a
matron without the drawback of a husband.
She is nearer absolute independence than other
women are ever known to be.</p>
<p>Where a girl is strong and self-reliant, a
widow is helpless and confiding. She can
never carry her own parcels, put on her own
overshoes, or button her own gloves. A
widow's shoe laces have never been known
to stay tied for any length of time, unless she
has shapeless ankles and expansive feet.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>A widow's telegrams must always be taken
to the office by some man. Time-tables are
beyond her understanding and she never
knows about trains. It frequently takes three
or four men to launch a widow upon a two-hundred-mile
journey, while a girl can start
across the continent with considerably less
commotion.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The Inference</div>
<p>The inference is, of course, that she has
been accustomed to these delicate attentions—that
the dear departed has always done such
things. The pretty way in which she asks
favours carries out the delusion. He would
be a brute, indeed, who could refuse the little
service for which she pleads.</p>
<p>The dear departed, naturally, was delighted
to do these things, or he would not have done
them—such being the way of the married
man. Consequently, the lady was very tenderly
loved—and men follow each other like
sheep in matters of the heart.</p>
<p>The attraction a widower has for a girl is
in inverse proportion to a widow's influence
over a man. It is true that the second wife
is usually better treated than the first, and that
the new occupant of a man's heart reaps the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_186" id="Page_186"></SPAN></span>
benefit of her predecessor's training. But it
is not until spinsterhood is fully confirmed by
grey hair and the family Bible that a girl begins
to look with favour upon the army of
the detached.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The Food
of her
Soul</div>
<p>It seems to her that all the romance is necessarily
gone—and it is romance upon which
her soul feeds. There can be none of that
dear delight in the first home building, which
is the most beautiful part of marriage to
a girl. Her pretty concern about draperies
and colours is all an old story to the man.
She may even have to buy her kitchen ware
all alone, and it is considered the nicest thing
in the world to have a man along when pots
and pans are bought.</p>
<p>If widowers and widows would only mate
with each other, instead of trespassing upon
the hunting grounds of the unmarried! It is
an exceptional case in which the bereaved are
not mutually wary. They seem to prefer the
unfair advantage gained by having all the experience
on one side.</p>
<p>The normal man proposes with ease and
carelessness, but the ceremony is second nature
to a widower. If he meets a girl he likes, he<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_187" id="Page_187"></SPAN></span>
proceeds at once to business and is slow indeed
for his kind if he does not offer his hand
and heart within a week.</p>
<p>A clever man once wrote a story, describing
the coming of a girl to a widower's house.
With care and forethought, the dying wife had
left a letter for her successor, which the man
fearlessly gave her before she had taken off her
hat, because, as the story-teller naïevely adds,
"she was twenty-eight and very sane."</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">A Nice
Letter</div>
<p>This letter proved to be various admonitions
to the bride and earnest hopes that she might
make her husband happy. It was all very
pretty and it was surely a nice letter, but no
woman could fail to see that it was an exquisite
revenge upon the man who had been rash
enough to install another in the place of the
dead.</p>
<p>There was not a line which was not kind, nor
a word which did not contain a hidden sting.
It would be enough to make one shudder all
one's life—this hand of welcome extended
from the grave. Yet everything continued
happily—perhaps because a man wrote the
story.</p>
<p>A woman demands not only all of a man's<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_188" id="Page_188"></SPAN></span>
life, but all of his thoughts after she is dead.
The grave may hide much, but not that particular
quality in woman's nature. If it is
common to leave letters for succeeding wives,
it is done with sinister purpose.</p>
<p>Romance is usually considered an attribute
of youth, and possibly the years bring views
of marriage which are impossible to the
younger generation. No girl, in her wildest
moments, ever dreams of marrying a widower
with three or four children, yet, when she is
well on in her thirties, with her heart still unsatisfied,
she often does that very thing, and
happily at that.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The Hidden
Heartache</div>
<p>Still, there must be a hidden heartache, for
woman, with her love of love, is unable to
understand the series of distinct and unrelated
episodes which make up the love of a man.
It is hard to take the crumbs another woman
has left, especially if a goodly portion of a
man's heart is suspected to lie in the grave.</p>
<p>It is harder still, if helpless children are
daily to look into her face, with eyes which
are neither hers nor his, and the supreme
crucifixion in the life of a woman whose
ideals have not changed, is to go into a home<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></SPAN></span>
which has been made by the hands of a dead
and dearly loved wife.</p>
<p>To a woman, material things are always
heavily laden with memories. There is not a
single article of furniture which has not its
own individuality. She cannot consider a
piece of embroidery apart from the dead hands
that made it, nor a chair without some association
with its previous occupants.</p>
<p>Sometimes the rooms are heavily laden with
portraits which are to confront her from day
to day with the taunting presence. She is
obliged to tell callers that the crayon upon the
opposite wall is "the first Mrs. ——." There
are also pictures of the first wife's dead children,
and here and there the inevitable photograph,
of years gone by, of bride and groom
in wedding garments—the man sitting down,
of course, while his wife stands behind him,
as a servant might, with her hand upon his
chair.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Day by
Day</div>
<p>Day by day, those eyes are fixed upon her
in stern judgment. Her failings and her conscious
virtues are forever before that other
woman. Her tears and her laughter are alike
subjected to that remorseless scrutiny.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_190" id="Page_190"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">A Sheeted
Spectre</div>
<p>Does she dare to forget and be happy?
The other woman looks down upon her like
a sheeted spectre conveying a solemn warning.
"You may die," those pictured lips
seem to say, "and some other will take your
place, as you have taken mine." When the
tactlessness, bad temper, or general mulishness
of man wrings unwilling tears from her
eyes, there is no sympathy to be gained from
that impalpable presence. "You should not
have married him," the picture seems to say,
or; "He treated me the same way, and I
died."</p>
<p>She is not to be blamed if she fancies that
her husband also feels the presence of the
other. As she pours his coffee in the morning
and he looks upon her with the fond
glance which men bestow upon women
about to give them food, she may easily imagine
that he sees the other in her place.
Even the clasp of her hand or the touch of
her lips may bring a longing for that other,
hidden in the far-off grave.</p>
<p>Broadly speaking, widowers make better
husbands than widows do wives. The presence
of the dead wife may be a taunting<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_191" id="Page_191"></SPAN></span>
memory, but seldom more. It is not often
that she is spoken of, unless it is to praise her
cooking. If she made incomparable biscuits
and her coffee was fit to be the nectar of the
gods, there are apt to be frequent and tactless
comparisons, until painful experience teaches
the sinner that this will not do.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">"A Shining
Mark"</div>
<p>On the contrary, a widow's second husband
is often the most sincere mourner of her first.
As time goes on, he realises keenly what a
doleful day it was for him when that other
died. "Death loves a shining mark," and
that first husband was always such a paragon
of perfection that it seems like an inadvertence
because he was permitted to glorify this
sodden sphere at all. She keeps, in heart at
least, and often by outward observance, the
anniversaries of her former engagement and
marriage. The love letters of the dead are
put away with her jewels and bits of real lace.</p>
<p>Small defections are commented upon and
odious parallels drawn. Her home is seen to
be miserably inadequate beside the one she
once had. Her supply of pin money is
painfully small, judged by the standard which
has hitherto been her guide. Callers are<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_192" id="Page_192"></SPAN></span>
entertained with anecdotes of "my first husband,"
and her dinner table is graced with the
same stories that famous raconteur was wont
to tell.</p>
<p>If her present husband pays her a compliment,
he is reminded that his predecessor was
accustomed to say the same thing. The relatives
of the first wife are gently made aware
that their acquaintance is not desired. His
manner of life is carefully renovated and his
old friendships put away with moth balls and
camphor, never to see the light again.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The Best
Advertisement</div>
<p>Yet the best possible advertisement of matrimony
is the rapidity with which the bereaved
seek new mates. There is no more
delicate compliment to a first marriage than a
second alliance, even when divorce, rather
than death, has been the separating agency.
A divorced man has more power to charm
than a widower, because there is always the
supposition that he was not understood and
that his life's happiness is still to come.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Forgetting</div>
<p>Forgetting is the finest art of life and is to
be desired more than memory, even though
Mnemosyne stands close by Lethe and with
her dewy finger-tips soothes away all pain.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_193" id="Page_193"></SPAN></span>
The lowest life remembers; to the highest
only is it given to forget.</p>
<p>Yet, when the last word is said, this is the
dread and the pity of death. It is not "the
breathless darkness and the narrow house,"
but the certain knowledge that one's place
can almost instantly be filled. The lips that
quiver with sobs will some day smile again,
eyes dimmed by long weeping will dance with
laughter, hearts that once ached bitterly will
some day swell and overflow with a new love.</p>
<p>This knowledge lies heavily upon a woman's
soul and saddens, though often imperceptibly,
the happiest marriage. All her toil
and striving may some day be for naught.
The fruits of her industry and thrift may some
day gleam in jewels upon the white throat of
another woman. Silks and laces which she
could not have will add to the beauty of the
possible woman who will ascend her vacant
throne.</p>
<p>Sometimes a woman remains faithful to a
memory, and sometimes, though rarely, a
man may do the same. There is only one
relation in life which may not be formed
again—that between a mother and her child.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_194" id="Page_194"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The Child
Upon Her
Breast</div>
<p>The little one may have lived but a few
days, yet, if it has once lain upon her breast,
she has something Death may never hope to
destroy. Other children, equally dear, may
grow to stalwart manhood and gracious womanhood,
but that face rises to immortality
in a world of endless change.</p>
<p>No single cry, no weak clasp of baby
fingers is ever forgotten. Through all the
years, unchanging, and taking on new beauty
with every fleeting day, the little face is still
before her. And thus in a way Death brings
her a blessing, for when the others have
grown she has it still—the child upon her
breast.</p>
<p>Love's best gifts are not to be taken away.
Tender memories must always be inwoven
with the sad, and the sympathy and unselfishness
which great loves ever bring are left to
make sweet the nature of one who is chastened
by sorrow. Grief itself never stings;
it is the accusing conscience which turns the
dagger remorselessly in the heart.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Our unsuspected
Kindness</div>
<p>Life, after all, is a masquerade. We fear to
show our tenderness and our love. We
habitually hide our best feelings, lest we be<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></SPAN></span>
judged weak and emotional, and unfit for the
age in which it is our privilege to move.
Sometimes it needs Death to show us ourselves
and to teach our friends our deep and
unsuspected kindness.</p>
<p>The woman who hungers throughout her
marriage for the daily expression of her husband's
love, often looks longingly towards
the day to come, when hot tears will fall
upon her upturned face and that for which
she has vainly thirsted will be laid upon her
silent lips. But swiftly upon the vision comes
the thought, that even so, it would be of
short duration; that the newly awakened
love would soon be the portion of someone
else.</p>
<p>It would be a beautiful world, indeed, if
we were not at such pains to hide our real
selves—if all our kindly thoughts were spoken
and all our generous deeds were done. No
one of us would think of Death as our best
friend, if we were not all so bitterly unkind.
Yet we put into white fingers the roses for
which the living might have pleaded in vain,
and too often, with streaming eyes, we ask
pardon of the dead.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_196" id="Page_196"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Atonement</div>
<p>Atonement is not to be made thus. A
costly monument in a public square is tardy
appreciation of a genius whose generation refused
him bread. A man's tears upon a woman's
hands are not enough, when all her
life she has prayed for his love.</p>
<p>There is no law so unrelenting as that of
compensation. Gravitation itself may be more
successfully defied. It is the one thing which
is absolutely just and which is universal in its
action, though sometimes as slow as the majestic
forces which change rock to dust.</p>
<p>We cannot have more joy than we give—nor
more pain. The eternal balance swings
true. The capacity for enjoyment and the
capacity for suffering are one and the same.
He who lives out of reach of sorrow has sacrificed
his possible ecstasy. "He has seen only
half the universe who has not been shown the
House of Pain."</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Emerson's
"Compensation"</div>
<p>"And yet the compensations of calamity
are made apparent to the understanding also
after long intervals of time. A fever, a
mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of
friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss and
unpayable. But the sure years reveal the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_197" id="Page_197"></SPAN></span>
deep remedial force that underlies all facts.
The death of a dear friend, wife, brother,
lover, which seemed nothing but privation,
somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide
or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions
in our way of life, terminating an epoch
of infancy or youth which was waiting to be
closed, breaks up a wonted occupation or a
household or style of living, and allows the
formation of new ones more friendly to the
growth of character. It permits or constrains
the formation of new acquaintances, and the reception
of new influences that prove of the
first importance to the next years; and the
man or woman who would have remained a
sunny garden flower, with no room for its
roots and too much sunshine for its head, by
the falling of the walls and the neglect of the
gardener is made the banian of the forest,
yielding shade and fruit to wide neighbourhoods
of men."</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Upon the
Upland
Ways</div>
<p>That life alone is worth the living which
sets itself upon the upland ways. To steel
one's self against joy to be spared the inevitable
hurt, is not life. We are afraid of
love, because the might and terror of it has<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_198" id="Page_198"></SPAN></span>
sometimes brought despair. We are afraid
of belief, because our trust has been betrayed.
We are afraid of death, because we have seen
forgetfulness.</p>
<p>We should not fear that someone might
take our place in the heart that loves us best—if
we were only loved enough. The same
love is never given twice; it differs in quality
if not in degree, and when once made one's
own, is never to be lost.</p>
<p>There are some natures whose happiness is
a matter of persons and things; some to
love and some to be loved; the daily needs
amply satisfied, and that is enough for content.</p>
<p>There are others with whom persons and
things do not suffice, whose love is vital, elemental,
and indestructible. It has no beginning
and no end; it simply is. With this
the Grey Angel has no power; the grave is
robbed of its victory and death of its sting.</p>
<p>"Love never denied Death and Death will
not deny Love." When the bond is of that
finer sort which does not rely upon presence
for its permanence, there is little bereavement
to be felt. For mutely, like a guardian angel,
that other may live with us still; not as<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_199" id="Page_199"></SPAN></span>
a shadowy presence, but rather as a dear
reality.</p>
<p>That little mound of earth upon the distant
hill, over which the sun and stars pass in
endless sequence, and where the quiet is
unbroken through the change of spring to
autumn, and the change of autumn to spring,
has not the power to destroy love, but rather
to make it more sure.</p>
<p>The one who sleeps is forever beyond the
reach of doubt and misunderstanding. Separation,
estrangement, and bitterness, which
are sometimes concealed in the cup that Life
and Love have given, are forever taken out
by Death, who is never cruel and who is
often kind.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Wanderer's
Rest</div>
<p>We tread upon earth and revile it, forgetting
that at last it hides our defects and that
through it our dead hearts climb to blossom
in violets and rue. Death is the Wanderer's
Rest, where there is no questioning, but the
same healing sleep for all. In that divine
peace, there is no room for regret, since the
earthly loves are sure of immortality.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">While the
Dream
Seemed
True</div>
<p>As much as is vital will live on, unchanging,
changeless, and taking on new sweet<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_200" id="Page_200"></SPAN></span>ness
with the years. That which is not
wholly given, which is ours only for a little
time, will fade as surely as the roses in the
marble hands. Death has saved many a heartache,
by coming while the dream still seemed
true.</p>
<p>In a single passage, Emerson has voiced
the undying beauty and the everlasting truth
which lie beneath the perplexities of life.</p>
<p>"Oh, believe as thou livest, that every
sound which is spoken over the round world,
which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on
thine ear. Every proverb, every book, every
byword which belongs to thee for aid or comfort,
shall surely come home, through open or
winding passages. Every friend, whom not
thy fantastic will, but the great and tender
heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee in his
embrace. And this, because the heart in thee
is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall,
not an intersection is there anywhere in nature,
but one blood rolls uninterruptedly an
endless circulation through all men, as the
water of the globe is all one sea, and, truly
seen, its tide is one."</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The Everlasting
Love</div>
<p>Sometimes, into two hearts great enough to<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_201" id="Page_201"></SPAN></span>
hold it, and into two souls where it may forever
abide, there comes the Everlasting Love.
It is elemental, like fire and the sea, with
the depth and splendour of the surge and
the glory of the flame. It makes the world a
vast cathedral, in which they two may worship,
and where, even in the darkness, there
is the peace which passeth all understanding,
because it is of God.</p>
<p>When the time of parting comes, for there
is always that turning in the road, the sadness
is not so great because one must go on alone.
Life grows beautiful after a time and even
wholly sweet, when a man and a woman
have so lived and loved and worked together,
that death is not good-bye, but rather—"auf
wiedersehen."<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_203" id="Page_203"></SPAN></span><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</SPAN></span></p>
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