IDLE THOUGHTS OF A BUSY WOMAN.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 197, 24 September 1914, Page 4

IDLE THOUGHTS OF A BUSY WOMAN.

A life, of hope deferred too often is a life of wasted opportunities. . , A life of perished hope too ofteit is a life of all-lost opportunities. —Christina Rosetti.

■'' I can't imagine why Marion doesn't marry, she is such a nice-looking girl!" and Marion's mother sighs pathetically over her teacup. "Then look at Sylvia, too. There isn't a man for miles round who hasn't proposed to her, and she is so ■ tiresome, she refuses them all." Poor lady! Two perfectly incomprehensible daughters must be a sore trial!

That remark was made to me long, long ago, and to-day Marion and Sylvia are perilously near the border,-line where "old maid" becomes a phrase that.stings, and the question of marriage is no longer a merry joke. With the inexorable traces of time on face and form, they meet life with less enthusiasm than formerly, and, 1 fear, alas! with secret regrets. The girl who has lost her youth, and finds herself with the grey years stretching ahead in lonely monotony, is one of the saddest sights of suffering humanity and so pitiably often it is all due to her own fault. There is a blindness about the selfsufficiency of youth that some most bitterly pay for. To take the case in question. The one girl was possessed of sterling qualities, all the attributes that Would have

made her a .splendid wife and mother, but an unkind Fate -had given her no tact or subtle intuition to divine the moods and feelings of others. She was over-anxious to be popular with men, showing her eagerness in a thousand little ways that drove many a budding friendship from her. She could not, somehow, see that:—

Love like a shadow, .flies, when substance love pursues, Pursuing that which flies, and flying what pursues.

It is the male instinct to love where love is made difficult. The obstacles to be overcome increase the pleasure in the chase, and the woman who reverses matters is playing the game all wrong.

On the other hand, there is the girl gifted with a knack of attracting, an elusive charm that subdues all who come withinits range. Quite young she learns to feel her power, till the love of flirtation becomes an all-absorbing passion. She loses sight of the more serious side of life altogether. The world to her is a pleasant place, full of amusement and excitement, supplied by the methods with which «he plays with the emotions of the opposite sex. In her particular sphere she feels she can rule like a queen with a hundred subjects to do her bidding, and any idea of giving on her side never seems worth consideration.

With her, too, the tables are slowly turned. Almost imperceptibly she loses her hold, the old power of fascination dwindles away, until the day comes when the mirror reflects- the image of a hardened, passe woman. The truth must strike home to her at last, the bitter fact that "lost opportunities" can never be regained. There is infinite tragedy in the

woman who has desired much and gained nothing, and infinite pathos in the woman who has had much and lost all.

Both pay, and . - pay with the hard coinage of regret for the follies of earlier years, while those who look on are powerless to interfere or comfort. Over and over again sees enforced the ice-cold truth of the old adage, "If youth but knew, if age could do,".but human nature can -only learn by experience, and in so many cases Experience teaches her lessons too late. —HARRIET RAWDON, in an English Exchange.