_Attorney at Law, Aged Thirty_
My dear Mr. Gilbert:--Your letter followed me across the ocean, and
chanced to be the first one opened and read in my weighty home mail
to-day. I have lost all trace of you during the last six years, in that
wonderful way people can lose sight of one another in a large city. Once
or twice I heard you had just left some social function as I arrived, or
was expected just as I was leaving, and once, recently, I saw you across
the house at a first night, with a very pretty girl at your side. I
fancy this is the "one woman in the world for you," of whom you speak in
the letter before me--the letter written the evening before your
marriage. How good you are to carry out my request made seven years
ago, and to write me this beautiful letter, after reading over and
burning your former boyish epistle, returning to me my reply.
It is every man's duty to himself, his bride, and the other woman, to
destroy all evidences of past infatuations and affections, before he
enters the new life. It is every woman's duty to do the same--_with a
reservation_. Since men demand so much more of a wife than a wife
demands of a husband, a woman is wise to retain any proof in her
possession that some man has been an honourable suitor for her hand. She
should make no use of such evidence, unless the unaccepted lover
indulges in disrespectful comments or revengeful libels, as some men are
inclined to when the fruit for which they reached is picked by another
hand.
And it is when the grapes are called sour that the evidence may prove
effective of their having been thought sweet and desirable.
It is a curious fact that no woman thinks less of a man for his having
had his vain infatuations, and that all men think less of a woman if she
has loved without response.
Therefore, it behoves her to destroy no evidence that the other man, not
herself, was the discarded party.
But woe unto the man who retains old love-letters, or other tokens of
dead loves and perished desires.
Few men could be guilty of showing or repeating the contents of another
man's love-letters. Women who are models of virtue and goodness have
been known to make public the letters written a man in earlier years by
another object of his affections. I have to my personal knowledge known
a woman to place before the eyes of a third person, lines written
evidently in the very heart's blood of a former sweetheart of her
husband--words the man believed he had destroyed with other letters,
more than a score of years before. Imagine what the feelings of that
early sweetheart, now a happy and beloved wife, would be, did she know
the words written so long ago were spread before cold and critical
eyes, and discussed by two people who could have no comprehension of the
conditions and circumstances which led to their expression.
Because I know otherwise tender-hearted and good women are capable of
such acts, I am glad you have obeyed my wish of seven years ago, and
that all proofs of your boyish infatuation for an older woman are
destroyed. You say you have told the girl you love that you once were
foolishly fond of me, and that I helped you to higher ideals of
womanhood and life.
That is wise and well, since you found her to be broad and sensible
enough to share such a confidence. But had she seen your written words
to me and my reply, it would have been less agreeable to her than to
hear your own calm recital of the now dead passion.
Words written in a state of high-wrought intensity retain a sort of
phosphoric luminosity, like certain decaying substances, and even after
the passage of years, and when the emotions which gave them expression
are dead and for-gotten, they seem to emit life and feeling.
_Burn your bridges as you walk along the highways of romance to St.
Benedict's land_.
Since you compliment me by saying I have helped you to higher ideals of
life, will you allow me to give you a little advice regarding your
treatment of your wife?
You have every reason to know that I have been a happy and well-loved
wife of the man of my choice. You know that I have neither sought nor
accepted the attentions of other men when they crossed the danger-line
lying between friendship and love.
Therefore it may astonish you when I confess that, at the time you
temporarily lost your head, I was conscious of an undercurrent of
feminine vanity at the thought that I was capable of inspiring a young
and talented man with so sincere a feeling.
A similar experience with an older man would have suggested an insult,
since older men understand human nature, and realize what a flirtation
with a married woman means. But your ingenuousness, and your romantic,
boyish temperament, were, in a measure, an excuse for your folly, and
made me lenient toward you.
My happy life, my principles and ideals, submerged this sentiment of
feminine vanity to which I confess, but I knew it was there, and it led
me to much meditation, then and ever since, upon the matter of woman's
weakness and folly.
As never before, I was able to understand how a neglected or misused
wife might mistake this very sentiment of flattered vanity for the
recognition of an affinity.
Had I been suffering from coldness and indifference at home, how
acceptable your boyish devotion might have proved to me.
And how easily I would have been persuaded by your blind reasoning that
we were intended by an all-wise Providence for life companions.
There is no sin a woman so readily forgives as a man's unruly love for
her, and hundreds of noble-hearted women have been led to regard a
lawless infatuation as a divine emotion, because they were lonely, and
neglected, and hungry for affection.
See to it, my dear friend, as the years go by, that your wife needs no
romance from the outside world to embellish her life with sentiment.
Do not drop into the humdrum ways of many contented husbands, and forget
to pay the compliment, and cease to act the lover.
Notice the gowns and hats your wife wears, and share her pleasures and
interests when it is possible.
Not that you should always be together, for separate enjoyments and
occupations sometimes lend an added zest to life for husband and wife,
but do not drift apart in all your ideas and interests, as have so many
married people.
You are the husband of a bright and lovely girl, and if you forget this
fact after a time, remember there are other Ray Gilberts who may realize
it, and seek to awaken such an interest in her heart as you sought to
arouse in mine.
You found the room occupied by its rightful host.
See it that no man finds the room vacant in your wife's heart.
Study the art of keeping your wife interested and interesting.
A woman thrives on love and appreciation. I know a beautiful bride of
eighty years, who has been the daily adoration of her husband for more
than half a century.
She has been "infinite in her variety," and he has never failed to
appreciate and admire.
Devote a portion of each day to talking to your wife about herself.
Then she will not find it a novelty when other men attempt the same
method of entertainment.
Whatever other matters engross your time and attention, let your wife
realize that she stands first and foremost in your thoughts and in your
heart.
Do not forget the delicacies of life, manner, speech, and deportment in
the intimacy of daily companionship.
Never descend to the vulgar or the commonplace.
One characteristic of men has always puzzled me. No matter how wide has
been a bachelor's experience with the wives and daughters of other men,
when he marries it never occurs to him that his wife or daughters could
meet temptation or know human weakness.
It must be the egotism of the sex.
Each man excuses the susceptibility of the women with whom he has had
romantic episodes, on the ground of his especial power or charm. And
when he marries, he believes his society renders all the women of his
family immune from other attractions.
Do not rely upon the fact that your wife is legally bound to you, and
therefore need not be wooed by you hereafter.
There are women who are born anew with each dawn, and who must be won
anew with each day, or the lover loses some precious quality than can
never be regained.
It will pay you to study your wife as the years pass.
Do not take for granted that you know her to-day, because you knew her
thoroughly last year.
This is a long letter, but when one writes only once in seven years,
brevity is not to be expected.
My greeting to you, and may the years be weaver's hands, which shall
interlace and bind two lives into one complete pattern.