SEVERAL instances, showing the results of playing with hearts, have come under my notice, which have emphasized in my mind the danger of being careless in such matters.

That it is natural for young men to admire and love young women goes without saying. As well argue that we must not love flowers and music and sunlight, as to say one must not love the beauty and grace and sweetness of young womanhood.

A home to many if not most young men means all that is restful and delightful; a place for comfort after the toil of the day; a place of companionship with some one whose interests are identical with his, and whose tastes are congenial to his own. He does not wait, as does a woman, to see if love be reciprocal. He loves, and hopes for and asks for a return.

The girl is apt to be less impulsive. She, or her mother for her, is perhaps worldly wise, and considers well whether the man can support her, and whether he will probably make her happy. She accepts the attentions of one or a dozen, and decides among them. This is right according to our modern society, but she too often forgets whether she is giving pain needlessly.

It is too much the fashion to argue that men are not deeply touched in such matters; that, full of business as they are, a refusal is easily borne, and another love takes the place.

True, we read in the daily press quite often of a suicide resulting from a rebuff or a broken promise, but we seem to forget, unless perchance it touches our own home circle, and then the mother’s heart breaks for her tenderly reared son or daughter.

I believe the history of the world shows that men love deeply, and with an affection as lasting as that of women. Who can ever forget the undying affection of Sir Walter Scott for fair young Margaret? He met and loved her at nineteen, and for six years worked at his law drudgery, looking forward to a happy union with her. He said to a friend, “It was a proud night with me when I first found that a pretty young woman could think it worth while to sit and talk with me hour after hour, in a corner of the ball-room, while all the world were capering in our view.”

As his first year’s practice brought him but $125, his second $290, and his third $420, the young lady counselled waiting for better days.

Two years later Margaret was married to the eldest son of a baronet, afterward Sir William Forbes, and died thirteen years after her marriage. The cause of her change of mind is not known.

At first Scott felt that he had been wronged, but this feeling against Margaret soon subsided, and was replaced by an unchangeable affection. She became the heroine of “Rokeby” and of “Woodstock.”

Thirty years later, when Europe and America were filled with praise of Scott, he met the mother of his early love. He writes in his diary, after the meeting:

“I went to make a visit, and fairly softened myself like an old fool, with recalling old stories till I was fit for nothing but shedding tears and repeating verses for the whole night. This is sad work. The very grave gives up its dead, and time rolls back thirty years to add to my perplexities. I don’t care. I begin to grow case-hardened, and, like a stag turning at bay, my naturally good temper grows fierce and dangerous. Yet what a romance to tell, and told, I fear, it will one day be. And then my three years of dreaming and my two years of awakening will be chronicled, doubtless. But the dead will feel no pain.”

When he visited St. Andrews he recalled how thirty-four years before he had carved her name in runic characters on the turf beside the castle gate, and asked himself why, at fifty-six, that name “should still agitate his heart.”

I never read of stern and fearless Andrew Jackson without recalling his devoted love for Rachel Robards. With the world he was thought to be domineering and harsh, and was often profane; but with her he was patient, gentle, and deferential. Having no children, they adopted her nephew when but a few days old. When Jackson conquered at New Orleans and young ladies strewed flowers along the path of the hero, to have the commendation of Rachel was more than that of all the world beside. When he was elected President she said, “Well, for Mr. Jackson’s sake I am glad; for my own part I never wished it.”

Earnest in her religious convictions, he built a small brick church for her in the Hermitage grounds, that she might gather her neighbors and servants about her for worship. Mrs. Jackson died suddenly just after her husband’s election to the presidency. He could not believe that she was dead. When they brought a table to lay her body upon, “Spread four blankets upon it. If she does come to, she will lie so hard upon the table.”

All night long he sat beside the form of his beloved Rachel, often feeling of her heart and pulse. In the morning he was wholly inconsolable, and when he found that she was really dead the body could scarcely be forced from his arms. He prepared a tomb for her like an open summer-house, and buried her under the white dome supported by marble pillars.

While Jackson lived he wore her miniature constantly about his neck, and every night laid it open beside her prayer-book at his bedside. Her face was the last thing upon which his eyes rested before he slept, and the first thing upon which his eyes opened in the morning, through those eight years at the White House. He made his will bequeathing all his property to his adopted son, because, said he, “If she were alive she would wish him to have it all, and to me her wish is law.”

Two days before he died he said, “Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do not find my wife there.” He used to say, “All I have achieved—fame, power, everything—would I exchange, if she could be restored to me for a moment.”

Washington Irving cherished forever the memory of Matilda Hoffman, who died at the age of seventeen. He could never hear her name mentioned afterward. After his death a package was found marked “Private Mems.” In a faded manuscript of his own writing were a lovely miniature of Matilda and a braid of fair hair. For years Irving kept her Bible and prayer-book under his pillow, and to the end of his life these were always carried with him on his journeys.

In the faded manuscript one reads:

“The ills that I have undergone in this life have been dealt out to me drop by drop, and I have tasted all their bitterness. I saw her fade rapidly away: beautiful and more beautiful, and most angelical to the last.

“I seemed to care for nothing; the world was a blank to me. I abandoned all thought of the law. I went into the country, but could not bear the solitude, yet could not endure society.... I seemed to drift about without aim or object, at the mercy of every breeze; my heart wanted anchorage. I was naturally susceptible, and tried to form other attachments, but my heart would not hold on; it would continually recur to what it had lost; and whenever there was a pause in the hurry of novelty and excitement I would sink into dismal dejection. For years I could not talk on the subject of this hopeless regret; I could not even mention her name; but her image was continually before me, and I dreamed of her incessantly.”

“For time makes all but true love old;
The burning thoughts that then were told
Run molten still in memory’s mould,
And will not cool
Until the heart itself is cold
In Lethe’s pool.”

The memory of Ann Rutledge never faded from the heart of Abraham Lincoln. Years after her death he was heard to say, “My heart lies buried in the grave of that girl. I can never be reconciled to have the snow, rains, and storms beat upon her grave.”

Gruff Samuel Johnson worked in his garret, a most inconvenient room, after his “Tetty” died, because, said he, “In that room I never saw Mrs. Johnson.” Her wedding-ring was placed in a little box, and tenderly kept till his death.

Michael Angelo’s devotion to Vittoria Colonna will be told, perhaps, even after the wonderful statues of Day and Night are lost or destroyed. “He bore such a love to her,” said his pupil Condivi “that I remember to have heard him say that he grieved at nothing so much as that when he went to see her pass from this life he had not kissed her brow or her face, as he kissed her hand. After her death he frequently stood trembling and as if insensible.”

All lovers of art know of Saskia, whose life was to Rembrandt like the transcendent light he threw over his pictures; whose death left him forever in the shadow of shadows.

If men give such affection as these men gave,—and tens of thousands do,—then the affection is worth the most careful consideration; accepted, if possible, with gratitude that one has been thought worthy of homage; refused, if necessary, with the utmost delicacy and kindness.

Young women sometimes, perhaps because of youth, do not realize the far-reaching influence of what the world is pleased to jest about as “love affairs.”

An acquaintance of mine, pretty, intelligent, and reared by a Christian mother, became engaged to two young men at the same time. One of course was refused, with, to him, bitter heartache. She married the other, led a wretched life with him, and finally was divorced.

Another received for years the attention of a worthy and wealthy young man. Another young man visited her, for whom she possibly had a preference. Both offered themselves to her, and both were accepted, she doubtless hoping to choose later the one who pleased her best. Both discovered her plan, were indignant, and left her to make other conquests.

These cases are far from isolated. I do not believe they arise from the heartlessness of women, but from lack of thought and care. A man can offer a woman nothing higher than a sincere love. While she need not assume that men who offer her attention wish to marry her, it is a mistake to keep one’s eyes shut, and open them only to find that a heart has been hurt temporarily, and perchance permanently. Good common-sense as well as principle are necessary in matters pertaining to hearts.