  IN the utmost beginning of things—in that time when roosters were very large, and geese were very fierce, and only mother could avert the thousand perils, heal the thousand wounds—existed a mythical partner established in family annals as “Your Little Sweetheart.” “Annie? Don’t you remember Annie! Why, she was Your Little Sweetheart. You used to play together day in and day out. It was so cute to see you!” But no. You may catch here a bit of blue ribbon, there an echo of a laugh, yet, try as you will, you may not recall her. Evidently when Your Little Sweetheart Annie was put away along with dresses and curls, she was put away so far that she was lost forever. What space of months, or of years, elapses, you cannot tell. Nevertheless, suddenly you do witness yourself, still of age most immature, (you recollect that somewhere in this period you were miserably spelled down on “fish”), laying votive offerings upon the desk of your First Love, a girl with brown eyes and rounded, rosy cheeks. These offerings are in the shape of bright pearl buttons and carnelian pebbles. The transfer requires much breathless daring. Down the aisle of the school-room you march, your gift tightly clutched in your hand, which swings carelessly by your side. Past her seat you scuttle, and, without a single glance, you leave the treasure upon the oaken top, beneath her eyes. Away you hurry, affrighted, ashamed, apprehensive, but hopeful. Presently, blushing, from your seat you steal a look across at her. She smiles roguishly. The offering is gone. It is accepted; for she holds it up that you may see. And you grin back, as red as a beet, while your heart, exultant, goes thumpity, thumpity, thumpity. In company with another boy, who must have been a rival, you descry yourself hanging about her gate, turning somersaults, wrestling, and performing all kinds of monkey-shines, in the brazen fancy that she may be peeking out of a window and admiring you. She is framed, for an instant, by the pane. You and he scamper up and deposit in plain view—you upon the right gate-post, he upon the left—a handful apiece of hazelnuts. Then the pair of you withdraw to a discreet distance and wait. Out she trips, and gathers in your handful; but his she disdainfully sweeps off upon the ground. He whooped in contempt and swaggered in derision; and you—you—what was it you did? Alas! the picture is cut here abruptly, as by a knife; the First Love vanishes, and the Second Love succeeds. She is the minister’s daughter, a gentle, winsome little lass, not at all like the saucebox of the brown eyes and the rich cheeks. In the case of this Second Love there seems to have been no studied wooing, no sheepish bribery by pearl buttons and carnelians and nuts. You fall in with each other as a matter of course. In playing drop-the-handkerchief you nearly always favor her, and she you; and when either favors some one else the understanding between you is perfect that this is done merely for the sake of appearances. Your mutual affection is of the telepathic order. Others in the party may romp and squeal and shout in the moonlight, but you and she sit together on the wheelbarrow, and look on in tolerant, eloquent silence. In games you have occasionally kissed just the tip of her ear, and that was sufficient. Teasing companions may cry: “Aw, kiss her! Fraidie! fraidie! That ain’t kissin’!” But you know she knows, and smacks—those boisterous smacks current in the realm—are superfluous. In addition to the kissing games, and the state of exaltation upon the wheelbarrow, you are able to conjure up yourself in another rÔle: at the frozen river’s edge, strapping on her skates—your first remembered gallantry. Assailed by the shrill scoffings of your rude comrades, under the refining influence of love you kneel before her as she is struggling with a stiff buckle. Like to the manner born, she permits you to assist. Then—then you skated, you and she, for each other’s sake enduring all the pursuing gibes? This point is not clear. You may not further linger with her, the minister’s daughter, your Second Love, for in a hop, skip, and jump you are worshiping at the skirts of the Third Love. Her eyes are black—large and black. You are desperately smitten. You live, move, and have your being in a very ecstasy of fervor. Her name is Lillian. Somewhere, somehow, you have run upon the lines of Tennyson: “Airy, fairy Lilian, Flitting, fairy Lilian, When I ask her if she love me, Clasps her tiny hands above me; ·········· She’ll not tell me if she love me, Cruel little Lilian.” They appeal to you. They touch a spot which seems not to be reached by even Oliver Optic or “The Gorilla Hunters.” You must have poetry, and you memorize them, and repeat them over and over to yourself, regardless of the fact that she, your inspiration, is neither airy, fairy, nor flitting, but of substantial, buxom proportions. The Third Love, with her bold black eyes and her generous plumpness, is not so submissive as was that gentle Second Love. She flouts you. When the mood is upon her, she makes faces at you. At a party, when you stammer: “The stars are shining bright; May I see you home to-night?” as like as not she turns up her nose, or else she tosses her head and snaps ungraciously: “Oh, I s’pose so!” You never are sure of her; yet always you find yourself meekly at her apron-strings. You willingly go to church (you conceive that your family does not know why, but in this you are much mistaken), because she sits in front of you. What a blissful, comfortable feeling you have, with her safely installed near at hand, twitching her short braids not more than three feet before your happy nose! When the pew is filled to overflowing, then, sometimes, you are crowded out into her pew. Embarrassed of mien, you decorously slide into your new location, she receiving your presence with a shrug and a sniff, and you growing redder and redder as you imagine that all the congregation must be reading your secret. In a moment she darts at you a sly glance (the coquette! How vastly superior she is to you in the wiles of love!), and you swell and swell, until it seems to you that you are towering into the raftered heights above. And at the conspicuousness thus entailed you blush yet deeper. Ah, her folks are about to leave town; she is to move away! The news comes with sickening directness, and on top of the announcement she pitilessly asserts that she is glad. You muster courage to declare that you are “going to write.” She flirts her bangs, and retorts grudgingly: “I don’t care.” Which is all the good-by that you get. Beyond childish notes, you never have written to a girl; and what a bothersome time this first letter gives you! The chief trouble lies in the start. “Dear Friend,” which appears to be the address sanctioned by society, is too common-place and formal; “Dear Lillian” may err in the other direction, she is ridiculously touchy. You want something unique, and in your researches you encounter “ChÉrie”—where, history reveals not. “ChÉrie” sounds nice; you do not know what it means, but all the better, for consequently it is finely ambiguous; and, proud of your originality, you take it. Once started, you occupy four pages, in your scrawling script, with what you deem to be clever badinage. Badinage is the main conversational stock in trade of girl-and-boy days. Principally you rail her about a certain youth of your town with whom she used, to your torment, to run races. You hope that she will reply in a manner to convey that really she despised that other chap and is longing for you. Two weeks of waiting. Then, one noon, your father, with an arch remark, fishes from an inside pocket a little square envelope, and passes it to you, at the dinner-table. The dinner-table, of all public places! You endeavor calmly to receive it with a cursory glance; but you deposit it in your jacket well aware that your trembling frame emanates confusion. Having bolted your dinner, you retire to the barn loft to revel in the missive. The double sheet of miniature stationery has a rosebud imprinted at the top. Alas! underneath are the thorns. Friend Will: No, I don’t have George Brown to run races with any more, but I have somebody lots better, and we run races every night. Don’t you wish you knew who it was, smartie? Even yet the lines rankle. They but indicate the tenor of the whole letter—a letter from which you failed, no matter how earnestly you pored over it, to obtain one grain of comfort. You try her again, with another clumsy essay at wit. Answer never comes, and for a while you sneak about afraid that the truth will leak out, and you be made a butt by your schoolmates. The queen is dead! Live the queen! This Fourth Love is a “new girl,” a stranger who one morn dawns upon your vision in the school-room. She is an adorable creature, with blue eyes, golden hair, and a bridling air that challenges your attention. With joy you learn, at home, that your folks know her folks; and when your mother proposes that you go with her to make a friendly call, so that “the little girl won’t get lonesome for want of acquaintances,” you accede unhesitatingly. You are presented at court, and, sitting with her upon the sofa, do your best to be entertaining while the elders chat about “help” and church. You grasp, from her sprightly remarks, that she is well accustomed to boy admirers. She speaks of her “fellow”! She writes to him! He “felt awful bad” to have her leave! Beside hers, your experience in the ways of the world—particularly boy-ways and girl-ways, mingled—appears pitifully meager, and beneath her assertions and giggling sallies you are ofttimes ill at ease. Impressed with her value, you depart, escorting your mother; and that night, before you go to sleep, you firmly resolve to win this girl or perish. The Fourth Love resolves into a sad thing of mawkish sentiment. You are not given to mooning or spooning. You are too healthy. Drop-the-handkerchief, clap-in and clap-out, post-office—these tumultuous kissing games, open and aboveboard, are the alpha and omega of the caresses in your set. However, the new girl instils another element, hitherto foreign to the social intercourse. To-day you recall, with great vividness, that winter evening before supper, when you lingered, on your way home, in the front hall at her house, planning with her to go skating. “Oh, isn’t it dark!” she piped suddenly. “I can’t see you at all.” “And I can’t see you, either,” you responded. Silence. “Where are you?” she whispered. “Oh, I’m here by the door. Are you ’fraid?” you bantered innocently. Silence. “S’posing you kissed me! Wouldn’t that be awful!” she tittered in pretended horror. But you—you summoned your chivalry, and went forth secure in the knowledge that you had not taken advantage of her helplessness. This was the end. From that evening dated her coldness. Another boy jumped in and supplanted you. You encountered them together, and they looked upon you and laughed. He informed you that she said you “hadn’t any sense.” You sent back a counter-accusation, which he gladly reported. But enough; away with this Eve. What becomes of her you are able to decipher not. Let us consider the Fifth Love. Her you acquire deliberately, with purpose aforethought, so to speak. A love is now absolutely necessary to you, and casting about, you hit upon the girl across the street. You have known her virtually all your life. She is not very pretty; she is just a plain, jolly, wholesome lassie, who is continually running over to your house, and with whom you are as free as with your own sister; but she will do. Forthwith you begin a campaign. You walk home with her; you lend her books; you take her riding—a real, ceremonious ride, and not, as formerly, merely a lift down-town; you strive as hard as you can to enthuse over her and remark beauties in her. And she, meantime a little flustered and astonished at your unwonted assiduousness, accepts your crafty attentions and frankly confides to your sister that she wishes she had a brother. Unsuspicious girl! She treats you with a camaraderie which should warn you, but which only proves your undoing. Mindful of the lesson gained at the hands of the Fourth Love, she the sentimental, you resolve that you will not be classed, in this present instance, as having “no sense.” Accordingly, one evening, upon parting with the Fifth Love at her gate, you baldly propose—well, you blurt awkwardly: “Let’s kiss good night.” With what scorn she spurns the suggestion! Then, while your ears are afire and you hang your head, she administers a severe, virtuous lecture upon the impropriety of an act such as you mention. “But lots of boys and girls do it,” you hazard. She does not believe you; and, anyway, she never would. And she packs you home. You trudge across the street, angry, irritated, abashed, uncertain as to whether she was hoaxing you or whether she was sincere. Girls are the darndest creatures! Evidently here closes the episode of the Fifth Love. It was but natural that thereafter you should be rather disconcerted when in her presence; and although she might act as if nothing had happened, you (plagued unmercifully by your sister) could not forget. And the Sixth Love? Yes, she followed, with scarce a decent interval, hard upon the exit of the all too high-minded Fifth. Maybe it was in a spirit of pique that you sought her. Whatever the preliminary circumstance, regard yourself eventually head over heels again, immersed in the current of a passion equaled only by your affair with that Third Love—“cruel little Lilian.” This Sixth Love, too, has black eyes and an engaging plumpness. Black eyes, apparently, are the eyes most fatal to you. For the Sixth Love you would unflinchingly die, if life without her were the alternative; and you picture to yourself the manner in which she would mourn (you hope) when you are lying cold and still, with just your white face showing, in the family parlor. No matter how circuitous it makes your route, going and coming you always manage to pass her house. You wonder if she is proud of you because you can throw a curve. You would like to have her see that you are strong, and skilled in all the exercises to which boys are heir. You want to be her ideal, her knight. Some times you suspect that she does not thoroughly appreciate your prowess and good points, for she prates of other boys who do so and so, whereas you can easily do as much and more. Now, whether or not it was due to the snake-curves (every boy is positive, soon or late, that he can throw a snake-curve), looking back you behold yourself possessed at last of this maiden of your choice. Of course no word of love has been uttered between you. That would be too silly and theatrical, almost morbid; furthermore, it is unnecessary. She has shyly confessed to you that she “likes” you, and this is sufficient. You generously refrain from urging her beyond this maiden admission. Aye, ’tis distance lends enchantment to the view! You have been so accustomed to the excitement of the chase that with idleness you wax restive. The Sixth Love verges upon being a nuisance. Her black eyes, beaming for you alone, pall upon you. You grow callous toward her. You tire of always having her choose you at parties; you tire of her eternal assumption of proprietorship over you; you wish that she would not come so much to see your sister, and thrust herself upon you in your home. And you set out to shake her off; you skip by the back door as she enters by the front; you avoid her at parties; you show her, in a dozen ways, that you do not fancy her any more. Poor anxious, forsaken Sixth Love! It is she who turns the wooer; it is she who passes and repasses your house; it is she who haunts your steps, hoping that she may catch a glimpse of you. Regardless of the fact that you yourself so often have played this game, you remain obdurate. Finally pride rises to her rescue, and she sends notice that she “hates you.” “Pooh! Who cares!” you sniff, with a curl of the lip. Thus lapses behind you the Sixth Love; and although you have a faint vision of her parading, to meet your eyes, your most despised enemy, whom, in bravado, she had immediately adopted, memory indicates that you were unaffected by the sight, save to sneer, and that already the Seventh Love was engrossing your attention. For there was a Seventh Love, and an Eighth, and more besides, to constitute a long train of wee, innocent heart-troubles as evanescent as a dream, but at their time just as real; until from this series of shallow, dancing ripples of Boy’s Love, lo! one day you suddenly emerged upon the deep ocean of Man’s Love, and anchored in the quiet haven where She awaited—She, the gracious embodiment of the best in these her girlish predecessors. NOON |
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