WIDOWS.

Hawke's Bay Herald, 25 April 1877, Page 1

WIDOWS.

Winter-kept apples, seasoned ■wine, a clouded meerschaum, a vase around -which • tlie scent of { the roses still hangs, all V these have a rare, pipe, evanescent flavor that suggest, but cannot express, the charm of the widow. A young widow is, perhaps, the most interesting object in nature "or in art. She represents experience without its wrinkle or gray hairs. She has matronly and maidenly freedom combined. She is grief with a laughing e y e — sorrow in a house of festival — a silver moon in a sable cloud. She is too sweet for anything ! Like all good things, she can only be created at a great sacrifice. Mrs Browning says that a man must be pretty thoroughly spoiled before he can leave a widow. This black swan — this Phoenix rises only out of the funeral urn I that holds the ashes of a husband's heart. | Let us wipe away the briny tear and proceed. Perdlte Plenties. Poets, statesmen, Heroes, and philosophers have each felt the indefinable influence of widowhood. Its quality is not sustained. It falls alike on the just and unjust. Edward Plantaganet married the widow Elizabeth Gray, though he knew she brought civil war for her dowry. Ned Walker, Joe Addison, Sam Johnson, i George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, John Wesley, Tony Weller, Ben. Disraeli, and all the boys married widows. Henry VIII. was so fond of them that he took two, and King David was so pleased with Abigailjtho widow of Nabal,whom ho took to wife, that he turned Bathsheba into a widow on purpose to marry her. i When Judith ceased her cogitation over ' the virtues of the late lamented Manasses of Bethulla, puts oil' her mourning, and adorns herself in brave attire to set out for the camp of Holf ernes, we feel instinctively that she will come back with his heart, his crown, or head — whichever she goes for. When the old widow Naomi counsels the young widow Ruth how to lay her snares in the harvest fields of her kinsman, and spring her net in the threshing floor, we know at once that the wealthy Bachelor Boaz might as well order the wedding garments. Allan Ramsay wrote a song telling how to woo a widow. He might as well have left directions how to get struck with lightning. — Exchange.