ON WIDOWS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 793, 29 June 1877, Page 4

ON WIDOWS.

Winter-kept apples, seasoned wine, a clouded meerschaum, a vase ai’ound which the scent of the roses still hangs—all these have a rare, ripe, evanescent flavor that suggests, but cannot express, the charms of the widow. A young widow is, perhaps, the most interesting object in nature —or in art. She represents experience without its wrinkles or its grey hairs. She has matronly beauty and maidenly freedom combined. She is a grief with a laughing eye—sorrow in a house of festival—a silver moon in a sable cloud. She is too sweet for anything ! Like all good things she can only be created at a good great sacritice. Mrs Browning says that a man must he pretty thoroughly spoiled before he can leave a widow. This black swan—this mournful Phoenix—rises only out of the funeral xrrn that holds the ashes of a husband’s heart. Let irs wipe away the briny tear and proceed. Perdite Pierides. Poets, statesmen, heroes, and philosophers, have each felt the indefinable influence of widowhood. Its quality is not strained. It falls alike irpon the just and unjust. Edward Plantagenet married Elizabeth Gray, though Ire knew she brought civil war for her dowry. Ned Walker, Joe Addison, Sam Johnson, George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, John Wesley, Tony Weller, Ben Disraeli, and all the boys married widows. Henry Ylll. was so fond of them that he tock two, and King David was so pleased with Abigail, Hie widow of Nabal, whom he took to wife, that he turned Bathsheba into a widow on purpose to marry her. When Judith ceasing her cogitations over the virtues of the late lamented Manassas of Bethulia, puts off her mourning and adorns herself in brave attire to set out for the camp of Holofernes, we feel instinctively that she will come back with his heart, his crown or head, whichever she goes for. When the old widow Naomi counsels the young widow Ruth how to lay snares in the harvest fields of her kinsman, and spring her net on the threshing floor, wo know at once that the wealthy Boaz might as well order the wedding garments. Allan Ramsay wrote a song telling how to woo a widow. He might as well have left directions how to get struck with lightning.