It might be added, "A grass widow whets the appetites of bovines".
You will find yourself at a loss to choose when an escort is needed, so
many and persistent will be the applicants for the position.
After having passed through the black waters of an unhappy marriage,
this sudden freedom and return to the privileges of girlhood will be
liable to affect you like the glare of sunlight after confinement in a
dark room.
You will be blinded for a time. It would be well for you to walk slowly,
and to use a cane of common sense, and even to feel your way with the
outstretched hands of discretion, until you become accustomed to the
light.
To fall and scar yourself now, would be a disaster.
It is a curious fact that a woman who has been unhappy with one man
usually finds many others ready to give her the opportunity for a
repetition of her experience. And it is equally curious that one unhappy
marriage frequently leads to another.
A disastrous rencontre with Hymen seems to destroy a woman's finer
intuitions. If you feel that you must marry again, go slowly, and wait
until the bruised tendrils of your heart have healed and are rooted in
healthy soil. Do not let them twine about any sort of a dead tree or
frail reed. Run no chance of a second sorrow.
One divorce always contains elements of tragedy. A second becomes a
farce.
You tell me that you and your former husband entertain the kindest
feeling for each other. You have seen him and talked with him on several
occasions, and you regard him as a friend. You say all love and
sentiment perished long before your separation, and that to continue as
his wife was to die a thousand deaths daily.
You tell me that your own higher development demanded this separation. I
know such situations do exist in the world of men and women, and that to
submit to them is a crime. Yet I also know that this idea of
"development" is used often as a cloak for all sorts of selfish impulses
and moods.
Many men and women to-day seem to forget that certain other objects
besides happiness enter into self-development.
It is not only the pilot who deserts the ship and swims ashore who saves
his life. The one who keeps his hand on the wheel, and his eye on the
lighthouse, he, too, sometimes saves his own life, as well as saves the
ship.
But since to jump overboard was the only way to save your own life, now
that you are ashore, and dry, and comfortable, your first consideration
should be to avoid falling into mires and pits as you go along.
Though romance died out of your marriage, do not let it die out of your
heart. It is commendable that you feel no bitterness or resentment
toward your husband. But do not carry your kindly feelings toward him to
the extent of frequent association and comradeship.
Outside of criminal situations, life offers no more ghastly and
unpleasant picture than that of dead passion galvanized into a semblance
of friendship, and going about the world devoid of the strong elements
of either sentiment.
There is something radically wrong with a woman's ideals when she does
not feel an instinctive unwillingness to be thrown with the man from
whom she has been divorced.
There is something akin to degeneracy in the man or woman who can
contemplate without shrinking the intimate encounter of legally parted
husbands or wives.
The softening of the human brain is a terrible malady.
Quite as terrible is the hardening of the human heart.
The loss of happiness is deemed a tragedy. But far greater is the
tragedy when the illusive charm of romance departs, and love and
marriage are reduced to the commonplace. Unless you find the man who
carries your whole nature by storm, and who makes you feel that life
without him will be insupportable, do not be led again to the altar of
marriage.
Life has many avenues for a bright and charming woman which lead to
satisfaction and peace, if not to happiness.
If you desire to be a picturesque figure in the world, remember that the
divorced woman who never marries again is far more so than she who has
taken the names of two living men.
And remember how much there is in life to do for other people, how much
there is to achieve, and how much there is to enjoy, for the woman who
has eyes wherewith to see, and ears with which to hear.
Life is a privilege, even to the unhappy. It allows them the opportunity
to display the great qualities which God implanted in every soul, and to
give the world higher examples of character.
He who leaves such an example to the world earns happiness for eternity.