DREAM HUSBANDS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3133, 4 September 1922, Page 2

DREAM HUSBANDS.

(By Mary Boazman). "I have never yet met the man. 1 would marry," . Mabel declared With scornful conviction. . "My dear, are you sure he exists f "I couldn't describe what he's like, but he's quite, quite different from any of tho men around here." - Mabel is not the only girl to play with the fancy of a dream husband, who is a compound of the heroes or her favorite books and plays. Handsome, eloquent, and possessed of the mysterious Byronic charm that girls adore, she imagines him coming to woo he/with an ardor that will beat down all her defences at once. At the first meeting of their eyes both will understand that their destiny means them to bo together. Never does it enter her head that she may not recognise the dream hero when she sees him, or that his attentions may not ho given to her - . ./ i i • i By this imagine in her brain she, judges unconsciously, and much to their disadvantage, all the men of her circle. She turns up her supercilious nose at Charles, because, according to Her notions, ho is a mere "moneygrubber," and she forgets- how necessary money-grubbing is to the maintenance of wife and homo; at Phil, because of his devotion to games; at Jim, because he has not a polished manner; at Ralph, because he is undersized and insignificant in appearance. Nor does she consider the immense advantage the men she read of have over tho men she encounters at parties, because she is allowed to look into their hearts and thoughts while their less heroic attributes are ignored by their authors. But women in real life have to lovo men although they eat onions, or laugh boisterously, or turn bald, or have any other fault that Mabel cannot endure. She never realises that if she met her prince ho would, probably be engaged in some unprincely avocation, and there would be nothing in his conversation to reveal the depths within. In quiet hours, she constructs many ardent scenes between her and her dream lover. She rehearses what he will say and what she will answer. In woodland places, by the sunny sea; she meets him (in imagination). He is so near and dear to her that she refuses to put any more solid figure in his place, and lives on in the hope of that future for which she is neglecting her present opportunities. She dare not become engaged for fear she meets someone afterwards she Kkes better. She dreads a marriage which will close the gates of romance on her for ever. The one day she awakes to the tragic fact that even if her dream prince should arrive now, it is too late. She has grown too old to be his princess. Whether she then fulfils the ancient prophecy of "going through and through the wood and putting up with a crooked stick at last" by making a desperate clutch at matrimony, and her friends attend her wedding to one whom they describe as "the worst of all her chances;" whether she withers unwed, of one thing one may be sure, she will never in this world meet the

hero of her visions, because she lacks the capacity, so necessary to love, of finding her dreams embodied in common clay.