A GIRL’S FLIRTATIONS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2366, 5 December 1908, Page 9 (Supplement)

A GIRL’S FLIRTATIONS.

SOLEMN WARNING FROM ONE WHO KNOWS.

There is no sillier .attitude Than that o: a woman boasting of many lovers (says a writer in “The Ladies Home Journal/’ who confesses to have horse It erred in this direction). It exposes her to the charge of vanity, of being soft, of deceit and doublo dealing on her part. When I remember my girlhood as it was, with some tinge of shame that it cl ion id be so crowded with love affairs, so mixed with frivolities, I still have- not the heart to be quite sorry. I know that many of the men who made Jove to me did so with quite as little serious purpose as I listened. But they were “not making a fool of me;” it was a case of give and take. I scorned tlie feminine fear of a man’s not being in earnest. What did I care. 1 who was never in earnest myself Y

It is a very unfortunate habit for a girl to form; that of having men tell her that they love lier. She gets used to it, and then when she marries she misses something, and misses it dreadfully. In looking back over my brief years of girlhood, which were made up of .a series of regimes of different lovers, I believe I would have been happier (not better) in after life if I had been kept in a convent till I was married. But I insist that through all iny love affairs and iny minor flirtations I was intrinsically pure-minded 1 , though men urged me to marry them by every argument known to men’s nature. How well I remember the men who kept away from me—because they did not wish to- love me, and how fondly I carried'in my heart these who were just good comrades, who loved me and wliom I loved with never a thought of marriage. There was nothing short of love between me and tlie young fellows I know; the next step was coldness, indifference, or positive dislike; but there were grades in the love of others, .and I believe most of it waS affection rather than tlie single desire for marriage. And so love dealt very strangely with me—l fairly despair of explaining if. I have loved so many men—and love them still; but to marry them—or desire even remotely to marry them—that is different—though I am a wife, mother, grandmother—l doubt very deeply whether I h ivo ever loved a man as I should have loved to marry him.

Under 'the circumstances it wps inevitable that 1 .should marry wrong. I was sincere in my quest for love, and too ignorant—not in spite of my many “chances to marry,” but because of them—to make a proper choice. A lost of the men who bad seriously asked me to marry them were on in years and schooled ill the reticences which, moil lefcrn as they grow in wisdom. 1 was not coldblooded enough in my desire to marry to make any calculation of worldly advantage of property. Love was what I was looking for. So when I encountered the rash passion of a boy ■who was nellish enough to wish me to marry regardless of the consequences I believed that I recognised iny des-tiny—-and hurried into matrimony.