The Modern Lover.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1032, 11 December 1891, Page 4

The Modern Lover.

The Countess of Munster, writing in the current number of Piccadilly, with reference to an article upon the ‘ Modern Lover,’ says:—“Much ae poor mothers may sttive to guard their girls from the knowledge of the evil so rife in the outer world they become acquainted with and accustomed to the idea that marriage i 3 a less awfully solemn climax to their love than ‘ mamma is always telling us it is.’ And I ask any thinking man, any farseeing Owl, who is justly anxious that the ‘ love supply should be uncontaminated and uncorrupted,’ how is it possible to keep a clever and enquiring giri’s mind untainted or innocent of the horrors of divorce when our daily papers teem with ail its disgusting details? How can love any longer appear to them the pure thing it should be? Or how can marriage be any longer looked upon by a girl as it should be—as the end of the first volume ot her life and the beginning of the second—which could only find its ending in the death of either herself or her husband ? Girls are of a truth better educated than they were, but are they as innocent? People sometimes say, when these unpleasant facts are asserted, ‘ that girls knew as much in old days as they do now, but that they were lees open, leas natural.’ Maybe, but I doubt it; and, anyhow, if they did ‘ know as much’—hypocrisy being the homage paid by vice to virtue—their prudent silence proved that they had at t any rste a salutary sense of what had better be eaten, drank, and avoided —or spokeu about. And have they that sense now? The modern ‘jolly girl!’ leaves little, either in conversation or dress, to the imagination ; and it is considered chic for her to be as manny as possible in slang and in joke. She smokt s, too, and joins the shooters when she does not shoot herself. In fact, she seems ready to commit any folly so that she may only be in the men’s train ; while they, with the familiarity which does not breed respect, look upon her as a chum, as a girl with no uonaenso about her. These, then, are some of the reasons why the modern lover is less leas assiduous, in his petits soins. I have yet one other subject on which to say a few words, but only at* a mere suggestion as to the reason why the modern lover so frequently seeks a mate beneath him in the social scale. May it not be that in choosing a wife not out of his own set he expects her to be more easily satisfied than ‘ Luly Laura’ would be, not expecting so much from hitn in the way of jewels, carriages, and horses, <fcc.? And the silly young man expects her contentment to last for ever, quite forgetting the old saw concerning the traditional meudicant’s equestrian feats, which sometimes, nay often, cornea true, as it no doubt generally does in all such cases.”