The Love Affairs of an Old Maid | Page 2

her heart. I should scarcely dare ask you to welcome her, did I not suspect that her friends are yours. You have your Flossy and your Charlie Hardy without doubt. Pray Heaven you have a Rachel to outweigh them.
CHICAGO, March, 1893.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
1. I INTRODUCE ME TO MYSELF 1
2. I COME INTO MY KINGDOM 8
3. MATRIMONY IN HARNESS 18
4. WOMEN AS LOVERS 30
5. THE HEART OF A COQUETTE 51
6. THE LONELY CHILDHOOD OF A CLEVER CHILD 65
7. A STUDY IN HUMAN GEESE 78
8. A GAME OF HEARTS 91
9. THE MADONNA OF THE QUIET MIND 120
10. THE PATHOS OF FAITH 137
11. THE HAZARD OF A HUMAN DIE 156
12. IN WHICH I WILLINGLY TURN MY FACE WESTWARD 174

THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF ON OLD MAID
* * *
I
I INTRODUCE ME TO MYSELF
"There is a luxury in self-dispraise; And inward self-disparagement affords To meditative spleen a grateful feast."
To-morrow I shall be an Old Maid. What a trying thing to have to say even to one's self, and how vexed I should be if anybody else said it to me! Nevertheless, it is a comfort to be brutally honest once in a while to myself. I do not dare, I do not care, to be so to everybody. But with my own self, I can feel that it is strictly a family affair. If I hurt my feelings, I can grieve over it until I apologize. If I flatter myself, I am only doing what every other woman in the world is doing in her innermost consciousness, and flattery as honest as flattery from one's own self naturally would be could not fail to please me. Besides, it would have the unique value of being believed by both sides--a situation in the flattery line which I fancy has no rival.
It is well to become acquainted with one's self at all hazards, and as I am going to be my own partner in the rubber of life, I can do nothing better than to study my own hand. So, to harrow up my feelings as only I dare to do, I write down that it is really true of me that I passed the first corner five years ago, and to-morrow I shall be 30.
What a disagreeable figure a 3 is; I never noticed it before. It looks so self-satisfied. And as to that fat, hollow 0 which follows it--I always did detest round numbers.
30; there it goes again. I must accustom myself to it privately, so I write it down once more, and it laughs in my face and mocks me. Then I laugh back at it and say aloud that it is true, and for the time being I have cowed it and become its master. What boots it if the laughter is a trifle hollow? There is no harm in deceiving two miserable little figures.
Let me revel in my youth while I may. To-night I am a gay young thing of twenty-nine. To-morrow I shall be an Old Maid. I have very little time left in which to make myself ridiculous and have it excused on account of my youth. But somehow I do not feel very gay. I have a curious feeling about my heart, as if I were at a burial--one where I was burying something that I had always loved very dearly, but secretly, and which would always be a sweet and tender memory with me. I feel nervous, too, quite as if I did not know whether to laugh or to cry. I remember that Alice Asbury said she was hysterical just before she was married. I wonder if a woman's feelings on the eve of being an Old Maid are unlike those of one about to become a bride.
My cat sits eying me with sleepy approval. I always liked cats. And tea. Why have I never thought of it before? It is not my fault that I am an Old Maid. I was cut out for one. All my tendencies point that way. Please don't blame me, good people. Come here, Tabby. You and Missis will grow old together.
After all, it is a sad thing when one realizes for the first time that one's youth is slipping away. But why? Why do women of great intelligence, of intellect even, blush with pleasure at the implication of youth?
There are fashions in thought as well as in dress, and the best of us follow both, as sheep follow their leader. We will sometimes follow our neighbor's line of insular prejudice, when worlds could not bribe us to copy her grammar or her gowns. Dull people admire youth. They excuse its follies; they adore its prettiness. That it is only a period of education, and that real life begins with maturity, does not enter into their minds. The odor of bread and butter