WHAT IS LOVE?

Hastings Standard, Issue 82, 31 July 1896, Page 2

WHAT IS LOVE?

[To the Editor.] Sir, —" A Warrior Bold " has asked a question that is perhaps not difficult to answer. It is only since the last census was announced that we found out that there were 40,000 of us short —that is there are that number of males more than females in this colony. Consequently we are now quoted at about 112f, and can afford to make a refusal. Last year so many of our sex were likely to be placed "on the shelf" that we were afraid to say anything that would annoy our lovers. This year we can do as we please, and I venture to say that as a consequence there will be mora happy marriages than.. ever recorded. The love sick maidens are out of date, and the wormian of 1896 can be depended upon to aatosnQ mistake. The poet once

sat " Lore was blind," and the recent suicides go to prove an old saying. Please don't let my name be known, as too many proposals would come as quite a shock to yours &e., Becky Shakf. Hastings, July 80th, 1896. (To the Editor.) Sib,—Your correspondent " A Warrior Bold" deals with a grave subject in a trifling manner. Love-sickness and the toothache are both subjects « which are only considered worthy of cracking jokes upon. From time to time the comic papers poke fun at the victims of either malady, although in sober truth the parties principally concerned can feel nothing but the grim and painful earnestness of the situation. The only reason by which I can account for the gaiety with which unthinking persons regard these matters is that neither ailment is supposed to carry with it serious results for those affected. Now, whatever may be said in favor of the toothache, anyone with even a superficial knowledge of human nature must be aware of the vast irresistible and none the less potent, because silent and intangible, influence which woman and her attractions exercise over the affairs of mankind. The French cynic who said " Cherchez la femme" when a man did anything exceptionally criminal or crazy, may be considered unpolished and rude cf speech, but he had undoubtedly the true philospher's deep-seated knowledge of our nature, and there is a considerable amount of truth in the satire, though I cannot fully agree with it. Without attempting to describe the indescribeable. It will call the scarcely limitable power which woman weilds for good or evil, under the vague name of sexual magnetism. For this, in itself she cannot be held responsible, but like every other faculty or function which is entrusted to humanity it is capable of abuse, and she may, either in sheer wantonness and vanity or for even less worthy motives, misuse her witchery by leading some not too strong minded man to identify her with his earthly happiness and everything worth living for, with the result thai when he is suddenly disallusioned his reason totters under the shock, and he falls a prey to his own hands. Of course the mere fact of a man being capable of idealising a woman by placing her upon a pedestal, surrounding her with a halo and then, like the worshiping animal that man naturally is, falling down before her in adoration, argues a refined, romantic, and poetic temperament. . A man with an imagination strong and refined enough to do this must possess some lofty mental traits which a good woman who loved him and who disdained to occupy the false position of a goddess might develop. Nevertheless, refined «,nd poetic as it unquestionably is, this idol-making is responsible for a great number of suicides amongst men, for the simple reason that the idol in most instances is utterly unworthy of the name and only steps on the pedestal because it flatters her amour propre, and when she tires of posing as a divinity, a; she ultimately must, she 1 discovers her feet of clay to her disenchanted lover by kicking him contemptuously, and leaving him. If he has pride and character he gets up and profits by the lesson, but if he lacks both, he, babylike, pines and whines for what he cannot get, until, in a fit of hysteria, he may possibly destroy himself before the effects wear off. But, be a man strong or weak, the trial is a severe one, and should not form the subject of a jest. It is, of course, because I am bad from surface to centre, but I confess personally I don't like angels —to live with. They would seem to be a living continuous reproach to me and to my frailties. When I married I wed a little mortal woman who had nearly as many imperfections as myself, and we are all the happier because neither of us had * to climb down. A man rejected by a woman should learn that there are high and noble duties to be performed in the world, and that that most selfish of all passions—love—is very far from being the only thing worth living for*; he should look around at all his brothers and sisters each bearing his or her inevitable burden, and, calling upon his manhood and pride to assist him, he should raise himself out of the 'selfish slough of misery, and devote himself mentally and physically to his work until Time, the healer of all ills, takes the sting from his heart.—l am, &e., Mentob.