Life — March 27, 1902 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

*LIPE: » Affinity. V E have not met—and yet, I know as well As if we greeted gladly day by day, ‘The very words your tender lips would say When I had some half-doleful tale to tell, How you with smiling comfort would dispel All threat’ning clouds and change grave mood to gay; And best—the sympathy in thought and way, If for a space sweet silence on us fell. Dear love, my life is sometimes hard to bear Alone and lonely, when I feel that you, Heart tuned to mine, are waiting otherwhere, And fear—Ah, Fate, forbid it should be true!— Lest in some careless moment you and I, Unrecognizing, pass each other by ! Charlotte Becker, *AN EARTH MARRIAGE. IT Boston they combine a March wind with an April fickleness of sky, and call it May. The driver had hardly been able to get through the crowd of eager rela- tives, sweethearts, and proud fellow. citizens, who lined the street, in a pelting shower, watching for a regiment fresh from the Philippines, which was expected to march that way. The New Thought Club was to hold its last meeting for the season at the house of Mrs. Saltonstall Pierce, and I was swept out of the carriage like a dry leaf and well sprinkled with the drifting rain before I could get equilibrium to ring the doorbell. I had accepted Mrs. Pierce's invitation without much thought, and was now ina panic, as I wondered what might be the etiquette of a Woman's Club. On the threshold of the drawing-room I was completely re- assured. What had I been afraid of? It was just like a tea; acozy, informal tea, with about fifteen women comfortably chatting, at the highest pitch in their registers. My hostess was putting me still further at my ease by a perfectly conventional greeting, when sbe was pulled back- ward into her chair by her eyeglassed and frowning daughter, Marta, and I heard a voice from the opposite corner of the room, remarking in a quite unofficial and casual manner : “Tam to speak to you to-day, ladies, of the Third Marriage.” I looked up and caught the eye of the dearest-looking girl I ever saw. That is the only word. She was not pretty, but when you looked at those clear, trustful, blue eyes with their long, dark lashes, and that innocent, mobile mouth with its smile of strange chcrubic sweetness, you felt that here was a human creature that had trailed the clouds of glory from her infancy pretty well into her twentieth year. I bad heard that she had been brought up in the seclusion of a library, with a gray-haired and famous writer on Sweden- borg for a father; also that the indefatigable Mrs. Pierce had “discovered” her, — ‘so clever, you've no idea, and so un- conscious! "— ‘* Miss Nora Bergen.” What could she possibly know about Third Marriages? In a pause created by the entrance of one or two late comers, my thoughts had time to wander thus far. Then the sweet, confiding smile came again, and the irresponsible, young voice went on: “The First Marriage, you will remember, was the Marriage between the Intellect and the Will, within the Individual. In this marriage, the Intellect, never before complete in itself, and the Will, never before complete in itself, becoming com- plete in each other, are—thus wedded —for the first time completely themselves.” “How beautiful!” sighed an ecstatic young girl near me. “The Second Marriage was the marriage between the Mas- culine Man and the Feminine Man, —” “*—In which the Masculine Man, or Intellect, is so wedded to the Feminine Man, or ‘Vill; that, through this indissoluble bond, each is made more completely itself,” finished another rapt listener. A slight—very slight surprise, tinged with annoyance, shadowed the speaker's sweet face; but she said quietly: “Yes, This, of course, has nothing to do with the legal and technical contract of Earth that has assumed its sacred name, for it but too rarely occurs that Marriage here is the Real Wedlock.” A young woman, whom I knew to be a bride of the month, tossed her head at this, with an air of superior information ; but an older and less assured little person next her asked, ina tone that she tried to keep unconscious, if an earth marriage, even though a mistake, might not —as discipline —help to- ward the inward marriage of Intellect and Will, thus pre- paring the Individual for the Ideal Marriage in the next world, Miss Bergen, after a moment's thought, was quite sure it might, —but evidently impatient to get on, without further interruption, to the Third Marriage. This, she said, was the marriage between the Individual and Society —the summum bonum of Sociology —that perfect and indissoluble union of thought, feeling, and interest. “ How different, this spiritual thought of high, uplifting union with all mankind, from the low plane of uniting one’s self for life to a mere, faulty, uninspiring man,—a union destined to pull one down from one’s loftiest levels to the groveling standards of housewifery. How much more traly Womanly to sacrifice heart and brain to the Good of All, than to bow one’s spirit to the trivial needs of —probably the wrong man! ‘‘Ia this marriage to Society, our souls grow broad and inclusive. We cast away the Little and Personal, and accept the Great and Impersonal. We discipline our petty wills, our finite intellects, by contact with—subordination to—the Will, the Intellect, of the Race. Hence, Peace, Faith, and the only Ideal Love.” She paused, and the inspired smile flitted over her child- like face; but the audience was clearly less interested in the Third Marriage, and barked persistently back to the Second. “*Might not the chance of marrying the Ideal masculine man be worth trying? — Because, you know, an Individual, thus made more completely himself, would be so much more fit for the higher Marriage with the State.” This was * This story took the second prize of $100 In Live's Short Story Contest. comicbooks.com