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The Spinster Book by Myrtle Reed
page 21 of 146 (14%)
[Sidenote: Woman and Death]

Woman and Death are close friends in art. Opera is her greatest joy,
because a great many people are slaughtered in the course of a single
performance, and somebody usually goes raving mad for love. When Melba
sings the mad scene from _Lucia_, and that beautiful voice descends by
lingering half-notes from madness and nameless longing to love and
prayer, the women in the house sob in sheer delight and clutch the hands
of their companions in an ecstasy of pain.

In proportion as women enjoy sorrow, men shrink from it. A man cannot
bear to be continually reminded of the woman he has loved and lost,
while woman's dearest keepsakes are old love letters and the shoes of a
little child. If the lover or the child is dead, the treasures are never
to be duplicated or replaced, but if the pristine owner of the shoes has
grown to stalwart manhood and the writer of the love letters is a
tender and devoted husband, the sorrowful interest is merely mitigated.
It is not by any means lost.

[Sidenote: "The Eternal Womanly"]

Just why it should be considered sad to marry one's lover and for a
child to grow up, can never be understood by men. There are many things
in the "eternal womanly" which men understand about as well as a kitten
does the binomial theorem, but some mysteries become simple enough when
the leading fact is grasped--that woman's song of life is written in a
minor key and that she actually enjoys the semblance of sorrow. Still,
the average woman wishes to be idealised and strongly objects to being
understood.

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