full heart; a man's is more often the result of a full stomach.

Indeed, a man's sluggish current may not be called love, compared with
the rushing fountain that wells up when a boy's heart is struck with

the heavenly rod. If you would taste love, drink of the pure stream
that youth pours out at your feet. Do not wait till it has become a

muddy river before you stoop to catch its waves.
Or is it that you like its bitter flavor--that the clear, limpid water

is insipid to your palate and that the pollution of its after-course
gives it a relish to your lips? Must we believe those who tell us

that a hand foul with the filth of a shameful life is the only one a
young girl cares to be caressed by?

That is the teaching that is bawled out day by day from between those
yellow covers. Do they ever pause to think, I wonder, those devil's

ladyhelps, what mischief they are doing crawling about God's garden,
and telling childish Eves and silly Adams that sin is sweet and that

decency is ridiculous and vulgar? How many an innocent girl do they
not degrade into an evil-minded woman? To how many a weak lad do they

not point out the dirty by-path as the shortest cut to a maiden's
heart? It is not as if they wrote of life as it really is. Speak

truth, and right will take care of itself. But their pictures are
coarse daubs painted from the sickly fancies of their own diseased

imagination.
We want to think of women not--as their own sex would show them--as

Lorleis luring us to destruction, but as good angels beckoning us
upward. They have more power for good or evil than they dream of. It

is just at the very age when a man's character is forming that he
tumbles into love, and then the lass he loves has the making or

marring of him. Unconsciously he molds himself to what she would have
him, good or bad. I am sorry to have to be ungallant enough to say

that I do not think they always use their influence for the best. Too
often the female world is bounded hard and fast within the limits of

the commonplace. Their ideal hero is a prince of littleness, and to
become that many a powerful mind, enchanted by love, is "lost to life

and use and name and fame."
And yet, women, you could make us so much better if you only would.

It rests with you, more than with all the preachers, to roll this
world a little nearer heaven. Chivalry is not dead: it only sleeps

for want of work to do. It is you who must wake it to noble deeds.
You must be worthy of knightly worship.

You must be higher than ourselves. It was for Una that the Red Cross
Knight did war. For no painted, mincing court dame could the dragon

have been slain. Oh, ladies fair, be fair in mind and soul as well as
face, so that brave knights may win glory in your service! Oh, woman,

throw off your disguising cloaks of selfishness, effrontery, and
affectation! Stand forth once more a queen in your royal robe of

simple purity. A thousand swords, now rusting in ignoble sloth, shall
leap from their scabbards to do battle for your honor against wrong.

A thousand Sir Rolands shall lay lance in rest, and Fear, Avarice,
Pleasure, and Ambition shall go down in the dust before your colors.

What noble deeds were we not ripe for in the days when we loved? What
noble lives could we not have lived for her sake? Our love was a

religion we could have died for. It was no mere human creature like
ourselves that we adored. It was a queen that we paid homage to, a

goddess that we worshiped.
And how madly we did worship! And how sweet it was to worship! Ah,

lad, cherish love's young dream while it lasts! You will know too
soon how truly little Tom Moore sang when he said that there was

nothing half so sweet in life. Even when it brings misery it is a
wild, romanticmisery, all unlike the dull, worldly pain of

after-sorrows. When you have lost her--when the light is gone out
from your life and the world stretches before you a long, dark horror,

even then a half-enchantment mingles with your despair.
And who would not risk its terrors to gain its raptures? Ah, what

raptures they were! The mere recollection thrills you. How delicious
it was to tell her that you loved her, that you lived for her, that

you would die for her! How you did rave, to be sure, what floods of
extravagant nonsense you poured forth, and oh, how cruel it was of her

to pretend not to believe you! In what awe you stood of her! How
miserable you were when you had offended her! And yet, how pleasant

to be bullied by her and to sue for pardon without having the
slightest notion of what your fault was! How dark the world was when

she snubbed you, as she often did, the little rogue, just to see you
look wretched; how sunny when she smiled! How jealous you were of

every one about her! How you hated every man she shook hands with,
every woman she kissed--the maid that did her hair, the boy that

cleaned her shoes, the dog she nursed--though you had to be respectful
to the last-named! How you looked forward to seeing her, how stupid

you were when you did see her, staring at her without saying a word!
How impossible it was for you to go out at any time of the day or

night without finding yourself eventually opposite her windows! You
hadn't pluck enough to go in, but you hung about the corner and gazed

at the outside. Oh, if the house had only caught fire--it was
insured, so it wouldn't have mattered--and you could have rushed in

and saved her at the risk of your life, and have been terribly burned
and injured! Anything to serve her. Even in little things that was

so sweet. How you would watch her, spaniel-like, to anticipate her
slightest wish! How proud you were to do her bidding! How delightful

it was to be ordered about by her! To devote your whole life to her
and to never think of yourself seemed such a simple thing. You would

go without a holiday to lay a humbleoffering at her shrine, and felt
more than repaid if she only deigned to accept it. How precious to

you was everything that she had hallowed by her touch--her little
glove, the ribbon she had worn, the rose that had nestled in her hair

and whose withered leaves still mark the poems you never care to look
at now.

And oh, how beautiful she was, how wondrous beautiful! It was as some
angel entering the room, and all else became plain and earthly. She

was too sacred to be touched. It seemed almost presumption to gaze at
her. You would as soon have thought of kissing her as of singing

comic songs in a cathedral. It was desecration enough to kneel and
timidly raise the gracious little hand to your lips.

Ah, those foolish days, those foolish days when we were unselfish and
pure-minded; those foolish days when our simple hearts were full of

truth, and faith, and reverence! Ah, those foolish days of noble
longings and of noble strivings! And oh, these wise, clever days when

we know that money is the only prize worth striving for, when we
believe in nothing else but meanness and lies, when we care for no

living creature but ourselves!
ON BEING IN THE BLUES.

I can enjoy feeling melancholy, and there is a good deal of
satisfaction about being thoroughlymiserable; but nobody likes a fit

of the blues. Nevertheless, everybody has them; notwithstanding
which, nobody can tell why. There is no accounting for them. You are

just as likely to have one on the day after you have come into a large
fortune as on the day after you have left your new silk umbrella in

the train. Its effect upon you is somewhat similar to what would
probably be produced by a combined attack of toothache, indigestion,

and cold in the head. You become stupid, restless, and irritable;
rude to strangers and dangerous toward your friends; clumsy, maudlin,

and quarrelsome; a nuisance to yourself and everybody about you.
While it is on you can do nothing and think of nothing, though feeling

at the time bound to do something. You can't sit still so put on your
hat and go for a walk; but before you get to the corner of the street

you wish you hadn't come out and you turn back. You open a book and
try to read, but you find Shakespeare trite and commonplace, Dickens

is dull and prosy, Thackeray a bore, and Carlyle too sentimental" target="_blank" title="a.感伤的；多愁善感的">sentimental. You
throw the book aside and call the author names. Then you "shoo" the

cat out of the room and kick the door to after her. You think you
will write your letters, but after sticking at "Dearest Auntie: I find

I have five minutes to spare, and so hasten to write to you," for a
quarter of an hour, without being able to think of another sentence,

you tumble the paper into the desk, fling the wet pen down upon the
table-cloth, and start up with the resolution of going to see the