Done With.

Auckland Star, Volume XV, Issue 3757, 26 August 1882, Page 3 (Supplement)

Done With.

" Very intimate once. Yes!—" &c. Well, you could as little holp beiDg intimate once as you could help the coolness— perhaps even the aversion—now. People are drawn together by .community of tastef, pursuits, interests, dispositions. .People change, but they don't always change together.

Felix adored his aunt, -hut then Felix was seventeen and his aunt was livo-and-thirty. Possibly to the end Felix will have a kindly feeling for his aunt; but perhaps ho will end by loathing her, for that beautiful blonde is now much overblown and over fifty. Instead of abdicating gracefully, or playing a still interesting role as experienced adviser and friend, she has failed lo compreheud his tastes—his disposition to marry, for instance. She lias given Felix's fiancee to understand that she knows more than she sa ye, alt hough she says, in fact, more than she knows. When she meets her quondam adorer, sho says with a bitter sigh. "Alii Felix, onco you were so dill'erent!" "So were you," says he sharply. Crying is no use. Tiic tears of fifteen are delicious, but who cares for the tears of Bfty? Aunt Jemima may go upstairs and write " Done with," iv her diary, as far as Felix is concerned.

And why not, Jomima ? Do you expect to reign forever? You will rcigu'just so long us your power lasts, and that will only endure so long as your look?, or your money, or your position, or your character, or your talent, or whatever else your power is founded on, lasts. The mistake women make is to fonjet the sourcen of their attraction. Kays the pretty scheming Amadeny who is over 35, to herself : " Harry is ns devoted to bis friend Joseph, uiid oven to that old Mrs Evergreen, as ever, but he never comes to see mo ; he always said ho was devoted to my husband, and everything about our house once ; he makes excuses now when I want him to sing at my parties, and ho positively refused to join me at the Royal Academy the other day." Amadea cannot see that she had been just a shade too thick with Harry, and that there was really uqthing in her but a pretty face, a chattering tongue, and a very superficial intelligence. She hail no power to Keep him; and, in fact (a word every woman dreads), Harry is Ural of her. But he will go and sit for hours, and often, with Aspasia, who is no longer young, but whose conversation is delightful, and who improves so much on uearo' acquaintance thut she has never lost a friend, male or female, who was worth retaining. There ia no art at all in boms very intimate with people; but tho art of retiring gracefully from the position when, for various rea-. sons, it may become untenable, is a very great art, and it is very little understood; " but it will amply repay attention," as Ateumus Ward used to say of his worst jokes.

I knew Joues well at college. Jones is a fool, but I was young, and 1 did not sec it then. lam not a fool, but at college I thought I was inferior to Jones, and Jones was older than I was, and patronised me ; and I looked up to Jones then, iind we need to spond our " Longs " together—ay ! and our cush too !—at lea«t Jones spent, mine. When I met Jones after six yours' absence during which I had travelled and entered ono of the liberal professions (so called be cause, a* a rule, people in those professions give their service for nothing), I was disappointed in Jones. He had entered his father's office, and was all day behind a desk, signing his name to documents prop.ircd by his elder brother, who had brains, nnd made tho money. "When Jones came the " Well, o'd fellow, I suppose you've been making the usual mull of it!" over me, I resented it inwardly. Of course, I laughed, but what righthad Jones, a miserable merchant's clerk, to speak to mo like that? I had travelled, written a book, was received in the best hoiifea j my wit was admired; I was on the high road to succeed, and make a name. Joues. bored me. In six years be had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. In a word I had developed, Jones had stood still. Now, why can't Jones sec tbis! Why is he sulky when I meet him at the club on Saturday? Let us be friends, but let us not be intimate. We can't; we have nothing left in common—except, I regret to say, my nmbreila uccasionally. I should like Jones to feel that I don't want to cut him, but if he won't—sooner than bo worried by his inuendoes about my grand friends and his own silly imaginary anecdotes about his intimacy with Lord This or Sir Flunkey That, and his intolerable attempts to talk to me about art and letters-why. I sltall cut him, for I have "clone with " Jonc*.

Women arc often more intelligent in these matters—though sometimes they are very j great fools, too, Still, they know very well, as a rule, when their eharmsare on tho wane ; they a'so know when their charms depend upon what do<s not wane—character, talent, grace of nature, tact, sympathy. Selia heroically lets off Hector without a quarrel—she ia nothing to him, nor he to her Tho other night I heard a hue lady in a fin crowded drawing-room say, sotto voee, to a fashionable dandy who went by with a charming young girl on his arm, as she heiself leaned on tho arm of her own cavalier, '' Each has one* turn and no more." She gave a quick glance at the young girl, and the dandy, who had probably once been her "devoted," twirled his moustache and gave a little forced laugh and a yery hollow little "Fie, fi- |" with what was meant to be one of the old, killing: looks, no doubt, and botli were soon lost in the " mazy dance !" These two, I thought, have "done with" each other, but they recognise the first canon of people in the great world—"no cuts." To cut people you have been known to .be intimate with is worse than a crime—it is a blunder.

I admire the way the oldhnnds meet, and fie oddest thing is that as time goes on a certain now pathos may even steal into their superannuated relations " Yes, we know one another! We know exactly what we a--e, what we have been, and why we arc no longer so. The years have taken the bitterness out o£ it, pride between us has been long dea-1, pique hardly survives, and jealousy is an unknown quantity. Let us meet and salute. Perhaps by-and-bye, when many of tno younger ones are dead or married, we too may want an old friend I" Ah ! look in the first volume of Tennyson's poems There, by the river it vra<* picked, that littln forget-me-not, thirty years ago. He placed it in her bosom ; you took it out of her bosom—without leave. Her hu-band is dead-they never wero very happy. At one time, some twenty years ag", you thought yon h»d qui?e "done with'" her. You think differently —nnw knock a the door and send up rour name. Youloncly.unhappyold fellow! You have no reason to fear. She will be "at lw«e" t-> you, although you certainly treated her badly at the time. These women ! what depths of sympathy, patience, nhd divine for«iveness there is in them after all. "Done with?" Yes, long ago. But now, not quite I -!