What Love Is......


( Originally Published 1892 )

Love is the essence of every existing thing: the root of life! the recompense for death.

It is the all creative spark, the vital force of the universe. There is power to achieve in the mere utterance of the word—Love. I think God said: "I love the earth," and lo! the earth sprang into being. Love is the natural element of all things. The illimitable oceans of space are composed of the waters of Love. Whoever loves most widely and warmly is most in harmony with the universe. Love is the key to success. To love your work is to excel in it. To love observingly and nobly any worthy object or aim is to eventually obtain and attain it.

Love is at once an ecstasy and an agony. It is the bridge whereon we are compelled to walk continually to and fro, between heaven and hell, but ever back to heaven.

When the bridge breaks or its timbers rot away, then are we precipitated into hell, and unable to find the door of heaven again; for the only way to go is over the bridge of Love.

He who loves greatly hates feebly. All strong emotions proceed' from and derive their strength from Love. if Love uses his own force there is nothing left for Hate. It is only when Love grows indolent and sleeps, that Hate is enabled to steal his garments of strength and sallies forth to do evil. But even then he has not his elder and divine brother's power; for he was sired by man, and Love was fathered by God.

God espoused Nothing, and said, I love, and Love was born to rule the universe. Afterward Nothing conceived by man and bore a misshapen creature, called Hate; but at one glance from the divine eyes of his nobly born brother, he falls vanquished at the feet of Love.

To love is to become wise with the wisdom of ages, yet to become as a little child in humility and subjection.

To love enables us to lead an army into the jaws of death, and to serve as a menial at the feet of one so loved.

To love is to know happiness but not contentment, rapture but not peace, exhilaration but not satisfaction ; for contentment means inertia, peace means stagnation, and satisfaction means satiety, and these three cannot exist where Love is. Love and action are co-existent, and there is no repose where Love is, but there is rest even in its rest lessness, ecstasy in its misery, hope in its fear, joy in its sorrow, and sweet in its bitter.

How Men Like To Be Loved

( Originally Published 1892 )



A cynical Frenchman has said, "The woman whom we love is only dangerous, but the woman who loves us is terrible," to which a greater cynic added, "Fortunately she never loves us."

This was more witty than true, for every woman loves, has loved or expects to love some man.

Man has a horror of being loved with a mercenary motive. So great is this horror to-day that it amounts to morbid expectancy. Nine young men out of ten speak of a wife as a possession only to be purchased. But if a man had never been niggardly, woman would never have become mercenary. And mercenary women are few.

Men are far more stereotyped in mind than women. Therefore their ideas regarding the grand passion are more uniform.

While almost every woman likes a dramatic element in a man's love for her, the normal man has a dread of the dramatically disposed woman, especially in the role of a wife. This is the reason we find so many phlegmatic women who are wives. Intensity worries a man unless it is kept well under check, and the tragic he finds insupportable in daily life.

Less romantic than women by nature and with less idealism, yet somewhere in his heart every man hides a dream of that earthly trinity—father, mother and child—in which he imagines himself the chief element.

Sooner or later, to greater or less degree, every man passes through the romantic phase.

Unfortunately for women, his idea of a sweetheart is essentially different from his requirements for a wife later in life.

The average young bachelor is attracted by the girl whom other men admire. He likes to carry off the belle of the season before the eyes of rivals. He is amused by her caprices, flattered by het jealous exactions, and grateful for the least expression of her regard for him. He is lavish with compliments and praise. But sentiment in man—the average man—springs wholly from unappeased appetites. The coveted, but unpossessed woman, can manifest her love for him in almost any manner, and it will be agreeable and pleasing.

Whether she is coy, shrinking, coquettish or playful, demonstrative or reserved, his imagination will surround her with every charm. A man's imagination is the flower of his passions. When those passions are calmed, the flower fades. Once let him possess the object of his desire, and his ideas become entirely changed. He grows critical and discriminating and truly masculine in his ideas of how he wishes to be loved.

We all know the story of the man who compared his courtship to a mad race after a railroad train, and his married life to the calm possession of a seat with the morning paper at hand. He no longer shouted and gesticulated, but he enjoyed what he had won none the less for that.

It was a very quick witted husband who thought of this little simile to explain his lack of sentiment, but there are very few wives who are satisfied to be considered in the light of a railway compartment, for the soul of the wife has all the romantic feelings which the soul of the sweetheart held. It is only the exceptional man (God bless him and increase him! ) who can feel sentiment and romance after possession is an established fact. Unhappily for both sexes, sentiment is just as much a part of woman's nature after she surrenders herself as before.

A well timed compliment, a tender caress given unasked, would avert many a co-respondent case if husband's were wiser.

After marriage a man likes to be loved practically.

All the affection and demonstrations of love possible cannot render him happy if his dinner is not well cooked and if his home is disorderly! Grant him the background of comfort and he will be contented to accept the love as a matter of course.

Grant a woman all the comfort life may offer, yet she is not happy without the background of expressed love.

When men and women both learn to realize this inborn difference in each other's natures and to respect it, marriage will cease to be a failure.

In this, I think, women are ready to make their part of the concession more cheerfully than are the men. Women who loathe housework and who possess no natural taste for it become excellent housekeepers and careful, thrifty managers, because they realize the importance of these matters in relation to the husband's comfort.

But how few men cultivate sentiment, although knowing it so dear to the wife.

Man is forever talking eloquently of woman's sensitive, refined nature, which unfits her for public careers. Yet this very sensitiveness he crucifies in private life by ignoring her need of a different heart diet than the one which he requires.

Wives throng the cooking schools, hoping to make their husband's happier thereby. Why not start a school of sentiment wherein husbands should be coached in paying graceful compliments and showing delicate attentions, so dear to their wives.

A man likes to be loved cheerfully. A morbid passion bores him inexpressibly, no matter how loyal it may be.

He likes tact rather than inopportune expression of affection. He likes to be loved in private, but to be treated with dignity in public. Nearly all women are flattered and pleased if the man they adore exhibits his love before the whole world.

If he defies a convention for their sake, they feel it a tribute to their worth and charm.

I have found this to be true of the most dignified and correct woman. But I have yet to see the man who is not averse to having the woman he loves provoke the least comment in public. He seems. to feel that something is lost to him if the public observes his happiness, however legitimate and commendable it may be.

The woman who is demonstrative when he wants to read, and who contradicts him before people an hour later, does not know how to make a man happy. He is better satisfied to have her show deference to his opinions and suppress her demonstrations if she must choose.

A man likes a woman to show her love in occult ways, to consult his tastes, to agree with him in his most cherished opinions, to follow his counsel and to ask his advice. He will not question her love if she does this. But a woman needs to be told in words how dear she is, no matter what other proofs a man may give.

Yet few men live who do not appreciate a little well timed expression of love, and every man is made happier and stronger by praise and appreciation of the woman nearest to his heart.

The strongest man needs sympathy and is made better by it, though he may not confess it. The tendency of the age is to give all the sympathy to woman, the tendency of woman is to demand all the sympathy. But not until woman sympathizes with man in his battle with the world and himself, and not until man sympathizes with woman in her soul hunger, will the world attain to its best.

It is a queer fact that while women are without doubt the most lovable objects in the world, yet on man is lavished the greatest and most enduring passions.

A great many women go through life without ever having been loved by any man.

I doubt if any man ever reached old age without having been adored by some women.


How Women Like To Be Loved

( Originally Published 1892 )


Poets and orators speak of a woman as a love-craving being, who lives almost wholly in her affections.

Real life proves her to be many-sided and variable in her ideas of how men should express their love for her.

Every woman needs love as every plant needs light and heat; yet there are plants which thrive better in shaded nooks than in the broad sunlight, and there are other plants which bloom their brightest in the artificial warmth of the hot-house.

There is a large percentage of highly cultivated, mentally emotional women, who live in the imagination so far as sentiment is concerned, and who find little but discontent and disappointment in the realm of the real.

They are excellent friends and devoted mothers, but they neither give nor receive positive happiness as sweethearts or wives. They shrink from demonstrative love, and the actual seems coarse and common to them through comparison with the ideal. They enjoy a lover's letters better than his society, and they are more devoted nurses to a husband in sickness, than companions to him in health.

They are faithful to every duty, but they are forever dreaming of a more spiritual and romantic love than they have known, and a veil of sadness and disappointment hangs between them and happiness.

There is another order of woman to whom admiration is far more gratifying than love. The flattery of a crowd of admirers gives her more lasting delight than the sincere love of one undemonstrative heart. The most earnest expressions of affection would not afford her happiness unless other people heard them and recognized them as tributes to her powers of fascination. She finds more pleasure in a ball-room with a score of men paying her empty compliments, than . in her boudoir, listening to the conversation of the man who loves her.

There are women who demand a combination of both valet and maid in the attentions of a lover, and there are other women to whom this manner of expressing devotion is odious.

"You should see Julie's husband," said Julie's friend to Annie one day in my hearing. "He is the most adoring lover I ever saw. He does not allow Julie to do a single thing for herself. He looks after the servants, does all the marketing, takes care of Julie's gloves, laces and ribbons, keeps them all in order, even hangs up her hat and wrap when she comes in from a promenade. I think such devotion just lovely!"

"I am sure I should not want a man to show his devotion to me in that sort of fashion," retorted Annie. "I should feel as though I had married my butler and, forgetting myself, would be talking to him about his wages and his 'day off.' My ideal of a lover would be terribly lowered were a man to take care of my ribbons and laces and wait upon me generally."

"I don't understand you," said Julie's friend.

"Well, then, to be more explicit," continued Annie, "I could not love a man unless I felt like serving him. Every attractive woman finds scores of men who are ready to play page and courtier to her in boudoir and ball-room—all that is very well. But it is rarely that she finds among these one whom she respects and loves enough to wish to serve. I could not be happy with a man unless 1 felt this sort of love for him."

"I should never wish to feel like serving any man," replied Julie's friend.

"Then you would never wish to love according to my idea of the passion," responded Annie. "It is all a matter of temperament—most women desire rather to be loved than to love—but I should not respect a man enough to be happy in his love unless he were able to create in me as great a love as he gave, and he could not do this if he acted as a valet towards me. He must be my king, not my servant."

There are more Julies than Annies in the world, perhaps because there are more pages than kings among men.

There is another type of woman who guages a man's love toward her by the amount of money he expends upon her. Gold blinds her eyes to his moral and mental deficiencies, and she flaunts her jewels and fine dresses in the eyes of less splendidly attired wives, seemingly content with her lot.

In her husband's presence she speaks of his extravagance where she is concerned, and reproaches him for it with smiling approval in face and voice. She seems utterly indifferent to, or unconscious of, the fact that a lavish expenditure of money does not always indicate an equal outgo of affection.

More prudent and loyal husbands she designates as misers, and frankly confesses that she could not live with a man who did not consider her comfort and pleasure before all other things.

It is not infrequently the case that the bank officer who is "short" in his accounts possesses a wife of this kind. Such women add materially to the population of Canada.

Analogous to her is the woman who measures a man's affection for her by the selfishness and incivility he exhibits towards all others.

"My husband used fairly to snub people to get them out of the house so that he could have me all to himself," a professedly religious woman once said to me with great gusto. "His relatives were all furious because of his absorbing love for me and his consequent indifference to them," and she laughed with delight at the recollection of how very unhappy this man had made every one but herself.

I have met a great many women of this type, and over and over have heard them, relate with pride and exultation the selfish and unkind acts which love for them had prompted men to commit.

Such women invariably express surprise when any wife of their acquaintance permits her husband to show liberality and affection towards relatives, and are quick to intimate that the husband who is thoughtful of others does not really love his wife.

Now and then I hear a woman speak of a man's love for her as something which should make him incapable of an unkind or selfish action--something which should render him generous and full of charity and goodness to all the world—but only now and then! Women who are the soul of benevolence and kindness in all other things seem devoid of humanity in this respect.

There are women whom too much love renders exacting and incapable of self-sacrifice, as too much broad sunlight deprives some flowers of their perfume.

"Just think," said a woman to me recently—one who had been a petted daughter and a worshiped wife. "Just think, my husband was foolish enough to expose himself and take cold, and I had to give up my room and be broken of my rest in consequence!" Not a word of sympathy for the sick man, only angry resentment at the inconvenience she had been caused.

Perhaps the most unfortunate type of woman is she who, from natural tendency or acquired habit, finds excitement and adventure a necessary element in man's love.

Unless her lover is in a constant state of jealous despair or vehement protestation, there is no pleasure for her in being loved. The quiet domestic thle is worse than purgatory to her.

The man who shows a calm security and a happy content in her presence, destroys her interest in life. The salt of love is without savor to her taste unless seasoned with the tragic.

With her, marriage is always a failure, and advancing years hold nothing for her.

After her beauty begins to wane she can feast only on that worst of all dead sea fruit, the recollections of dramatic love scenes with men long since dead, or grown into happy fathers—or grandfathers. She suffers the agonies of death in witnessing the triumphs of younger women, and becomes bitter or grotesque in her attitude towards the male sex as she grows old, and blames Providence and mankind for the misery which she has brought upon herself.

In spite of the existence of all these various types, the majority of women in the civilized world are content to feed their hungry hearts on crumbs of affection, and to lavish on their children or their church the love which, like Noah's dove, has gone forth in search of a resting place and flown back_ weary and disappointed, to the ark in their bosoms_

While many women abuse the love that is lay. ished upon them, the average woman lives upon kind look, a tender tone and an occasional care less and repays these with the devotion of a lifetime.