WOMEN STILL KNOW HOW TO LOVE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLI, Issue 223, 20 September 1907, Page 2

WOMEN STILL KNOW HOW TO LOVE.

(By Helen Qldfield)

It is often said nowadays that sentiment is a thing of the past; that romance is dying out, and that the world in general rapidly is becoming too matter of fact and selfish to admit tlie tender and devoted loves of '•'ye olden time." Life is a thing of pros and not of poetry ; marriage is regarded as a civil contract rather than a divine institution, and the girl of the period is said to take the length of her suitor's bank account into consideration far more than the depth of his personal affection for herself.

But is this so? Is it true that the modern girl is less capable of a true and lasting love than was her grandmother? Sweeping assertions prove nothing, and, as a clever woman once said of something equally intangible, "How are you going to measure it?" There are girls and girls, men and men, as there have been from the beginning and will be until the end of

time, and no two people ever were, nor can be, exact duplicates of each other, physically or mentally.

THE 20th CENTURY WOMAN

It possibly may be safe to assume that, as a rule, the woman of the twentieth century is less foolishly sentimental and more level-headed than her fore-mothers ever dared to be; circumstances have conspired to render her far more self-reliant. This, however, by no means of necessity implies that she is one whit less capable of depth of feeling. Even as nerves and nerve are quite opposite characteristics, so sentimentality and sentiment differ essentially. The woman of to-day meets men in great degree upon an equal ground. She is athletic and clever; she golfs and motors, plays tennis and hockey with them, and, moreover, takes no inconsiderable share of the world's work side by side with them, in a style at which her grandmother would have held up her hands in horror. She, the grandmother and her sisters, were contend to be subservient to their menfolk; to prepare pot pourri from their lavender and rose scented garden, and to devote themselves to their household affairs as their one vocation. Their lives were more restful, and also more narrow. There was not the strenuousness and bustle of modern life, with its express trains, its telegraph, and lbs telephone. But for all this there is truth in the saying that the new woman is as old as Eve, and let her surroundings change as they may the nature of the woman remains the same, and her heart will always respond to the call of love when the right man appears.

"Man's love is of man's life a thing

apart, 'Tis woman's whole existence."

Nor is this solely, as has been charged, because that existence is narrow. ."God has made them so," and love of necessity means far more to a woman than it does to a man, even as perfect motherhood involves heights and depths incomprehensible to the most tender and devoted of fathers.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

That the woman of to-day differs in character and temperament from her foremothers is abundantly evident. Not long since an art critic on a leading London newspaper called attention to the difference in feature and expression between the portraits of the dead and gone Charlottes and Amelias with those of the beauties of our own time; and since the face is generally agreed to be an index to the mind, this must be accepted as among the signs of the times. Even as the faces are more decided and stronger, so there is more will power, more decision, and more strength of character, as well as more self-reliance in the women of to-day than could be found among those who flourished fifty years ago, excepting in isolated cases where the emergency made the woman.

The girl of to-day has advantages and opportunities such as her greataunts and grandmothers never dreamed of. For them it was enough if a girl possessed a few accomplishments, and had a slight general education. Now we go to college and take degrees equal to those of men. There is a restless spirit in the age which demands constant advancement for women. JJpon leaving school or college, home fs no longer the one place for her, nor marriage her chief end and aim. She may choose her own profession and embark upon a career of her own. The old satire of the unfortunate young woman in a once popular song who wailed: "It's O, and what shall become of me? 0, what shall I do? Nobody comnig to marry me, Nobody coming to woo," has become a dead letter. But this change in nowise affects the ability of the modern girl to loveas well or better than her grandmother, and to make a good wife when the right man comes along.