A Woman of the World | Page 2

pride in keeping my lamp well trimmed and brightly burning, and I was startled and offended at the idea of any man coming so near he imagined he might blow out the light.
Your letter, however, makes me more sorry than angry.
You are passing through a phase of experience which comes to almost every youth, between sixteen and twenty-four.
Your affectional and romantic nature is blossoming out, and you are in that transition period where an older woman appeals to you.
Being crude and unformed yourself, the mature and ripened mind and body attract you.
A very young man is fascinated by an older woman's charms, just as a very old man is drawn to a girl in her teens.
This is according to the law of completion, each entity seeking for what it does not possess.
Ask any middle-aged man of your acquaintance to tell you the years of the first woman he imagined he loved, and you will find you are following a beaten path.
Because you are a worth while young man, with a bright future before you, I am, as I think of the matter, glad you selected me rather than some other less happy or considerate woman, as the object of your regard.
An unhappy wife or an ambitious adventuress might mar your future, and leave you with lowered ideals and blasted prospects.
You tell me in your letter that for "a day of life and love with me you would willingly give up the world and snap your fingers in the face of conventional society, and even face death with a laugh." It is easy for a passionate, romantic nature to work itself into a mood where those words are felt when written, and sometimes the mood carries a man and a woman through the fulfilment of such assertions. But invariably afterward comes regret, remorse, and disillusion.
No man enjoys having the world take him at his word, when he says he is ready to give it up for the woman he loves.
He wants the woman and the world, too.
In the long run, he finds the world's respect more necessary to his continued happiness than the woman's society.
Just recall the history of all such cases you have known, and you will find my assertions true.
Thank your stars that I am not a reckless woman ready to take you at your word, and thank your stars, too, that I am not a free woman who would be foolish enough and selfish enough to harness a young husband to a mature wife. I know you resent this reference to the difference in our years, which may not be so marked to the observer to-day, but how would it be ten, fifteen years from now? There are few disasters greater for husband or wife than the marriage of a boy of twenty to a woman a dozen years his senior. For when he reaches thirty-five, despair and misery must almost inevitably face them both.
You must forgive me when I tell you that one sentence in your letter caused a broad smile.
That sentence was, "Would to God I had met you when you were free to be wooed and loved, as never man loved woman before."
Now I have been married ten years, and you are twenty-three years old! You must blame my imagination (not my heart, which has no intention of being cruel) for the picture presented to my mind's eye by your wish.
I saw myself in the full flower of young ladyhood, carrying at my side an awkward lad of a dozen years, attired in knickerbockers, and probably chewing a taffy stick, yet "wooing and loving as never man loved before."
I suppose, however, the idea in your mind was that you wished Fate had made me of your own age, and left me free for you.
But few boys of twenty-three are capable of knowing what they want in a life companion. Ten years from now your ideal will have changed.
You are in love with love, life, and all womankind, my dear boy, not with me, your friend.
Put away all such ideas, and settle down to hard study and serious ambitions, and seal this letter of yours, which I am returning with my reply, and lay it carefully away in some safe place. Mark it to be destroyed unopened in case of your death. But if you live, I want you to open, re-read and burn it on the evening before your marriage to some lovely girl, who is probably rolling a hoop to-day; and if I am living, I want you to write and thank me for what I have said to you here. I hardly expect you will feel like doing it now, but I can wait.
Do not write me again until that time, and when we meet, be my good sensible friend--one I can introduce