ROMANTIC WOMEN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXXI, Issue 10235, 2 January 1894, Page 3

ROMANTIC WOMEN.

Most women are inclined to be romantic. This tendency is not confined to the young or to the beautiful, to the mentally gifted or to the refined—it is a part of the nature of all women capable of strong feeling, and in moderation is one of the most potent charms of feminine character.

Were more of it in man’s make-up, the world would be better and nobler, for when defined it is that exquisite poetry that imparts to everyday happenings something above the ordinary, something that ia beautiful in the truest sense of the word.

Mawkish sentimentality, however, arouses only contempt and makes its possessor appear feeble of mind and dwarfed in the best of worldly knowledge. Therefore women, fearing to ba regarded as silly, endeavour to repress their real feelings aud build up about themselves a wall of reserve, endeavouring to stifle all emotion, lest the world should think them weakly sentimental. They are ashamed to show that they do feel; they blush for the glistening tear or half-stifled sigh, that are evidences of a depth of nature that is appealed to through the medium of music or poetry, and little by little they close their hearts to the atmosphere of romance hovering over even the most prosaic duties of life and become callous and indifferent. What would life be without its illusions ? Where would happiness exist if the halo of sentiment was forever destroyed? It is not necessary that every woman should be a heroine, or that every individual history should read like a novel, in order to impart to the routine of our existence a poetical flavour that softens the rough edges and helps us over the barriers ia our pathway. It need not ba an ideal world, this one where romance and sympathy grow to the fullest fruition. Look at life in its long perspective, watching the variety of its light and shade, bub keep up the enthusiasm of youth, do not lot the poetry die out of your soul, and wherever rugged reality can ba turned into tender romance, do so, for life ia this way is mode better and higher, and far more worth the living.