LOVE, COLD MUTTON, AND ROSES.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 14741, 22 August 1921, Page 7

LOVE, COLD MUTTON, AND ROSES.

By Mary Hickford. Can love last? Well, really it does, not often get a chance. How can love go on being served up again and again like cold mutton? And yet that is what most young people ask of it. "You did not kiss me as often to.day as you did yesterday;" sighs Miranda. ' "And "you never want to do anything but read silly novels," grumbles Claude. . After a little mutual recrimination both make a frantic attempt to recontsruct the love picture. Claude assiduously numbers up the kisses. And Miranda, with her head on Claude's shoulder, tries not to wonder what the hero in the novel did next. And the result? Love becomes cold, mutton indeed! Served up again with 1 fewer and fewer "trimmings." • • • But, dear young people, love must be spontaneous. It must "happen." It cannot be artificially held. . But provided a man and woman have truly loved one another for one single instant there is no earthly reason why love should not last. You cannot force it. You must not "reconstruct." But do not forget that surroundings and circumstances count. Roses bloom all the years round in certain favoured regions in the tropics; a rose tree in England does its best, but in a colder clime you cannot have roses all the way. It is the same with love. Miranda and Claude meet at a tennis party andi become engaged during a round, of golf. Their honeymoon is a walking tour in the Welsh mountains, after which they begin life. Claude works in an office in the City and Miranda washes and. rewashes the muslin, curtains of a little jhouse in Chelsea. Well, It cannot be helped, you ■know. But It is putting love —especially young love —to a severe test. Presently, no doubt, there will be compensations. Miranda will neglect the horrible muslin curtains to wash tiny garments. And flowers will bloom in the little garden at Chelsea. Miranda and Claude will have no time for introspection. They will be bound together by mutual interest and' sacrifice, and then love peeps out ; -unexpected. But it is little use to tell Miranda .and Claude in the first months of transition from a. golf course to Chel--sea that there will presently be compensations; that they can afford to wait. Too often during those first : months love is overstrained and dies. But life would have been easier 'for these young people had they remembered how much love does de--pend upon circumstances. They took •their rose tree out of the tropics and -planted it in Chelsea—how could ♦hey expect roses all the way? Claude could have taken a house at Slowcum, near a golf course—only it would have taken him longer to reach his Miranda. Miranda could also have kept up her girl friends and lawn tennis parties—only all these things would have left less rtimes for Claude. Little did they guess that in mar--rying the life they like they would have kept love. Love gives happiness, it is true; but. strange paradox, •it thrives best on happiness. Love is the bird in the tree, not in the cage. - Men's Lounge Hats from 2/11. Grea' value. Geo. Cullen and Co.