CAN OLD LOVE REVIVE 2

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 45, 22 February 1905, Page 10

CAN OLD LOVE REVIVE 2

People talk of love being tieac—of the tire being burnt out, and the dreani broken through.

"1 was over head and ears in love once," they will t*U you, "but that's long gone by. It's all past and gone now. My love's dead and buried, and nothing on earth can bring it to life again." That's all very well, but sometimes people take for death what was nothing but a trance. There is positively no knowing when love has burnt out. You may think it is nothing but white ashes, and the ashes are cold. You congratulate yourself considerably upon the fact that that old love of yours ended as it did, and that you parted before it was too laig. Not a mention of her name or a thought of bor has had power to make yourheart beat a throb the faster those last sis years. Then, all at once, a sudden meeting— si word, a look, a chance expression, which brings back the past—has power to stir the old romance into life, and to send a spark springing up again through the ashes, till they are all in one red glow.

And old love can and docs revive again and again, often in the most unexpected way. How often do we hear of widows and widowers meeting again the love of their youtu, from whom they parted years ago, and marrying them, to the wonder and surprise of all their friends? There i≤ something in the memory of an old romance that can exercise a wonderful effect upon a heurt that might be quite incapable of forming an altogether new attachment.

Most of us. no matter how world-dried and matter-of-fact we may be, have some secret hidden memory of a past romance put away deep down from outside eyes. YVe may have half forgotten it, but it is there, and indeed it may bo debated whether love, if it is the real, cenuine article, ever doo S die at all, or is only in abeyance, waiting to come out. if anvtliinjr should call it.

Perhaps we quarrelled with the girl we loved. Perhaps we wore too poor to propose, and had to see her carried off by that Puppy Jones, whom wo longed to kick. Perhaps parents were cruel, or she thought somebody's merits greater than our own. Poor human nature is prone to err!

But one day, when we have been widowed long enough to wear out the patience of our 3pinatei- acquaintances,

we meet the object of thafTT""" ** mance The glow of that «* that hangs about her has • charm to you which no one eKJ , * » to possess, and the'old love ™L-*■*» such alacrity that one can Tes **«» it has been lying in an.bS.3f for its chance for years.