But even yet, suppose you are not that kind of a man, we have not got to the point of the subject yet. Our way lies through the head to the heart. And the man who is scrupulously careful about acts has yet to. watch at once the greatest joy, the greatest grief, the supremest healing of even deliberate wounds—words. It is a question with me whether a woman ever knows all the joys of love-making who has one of those dumb, silent husbands, who doubtless adores her, but is unable to express it only in deeds. It requires an act of the will to remember that his getting down-town at seven o'clock every morning is all done for you, when he has not been able to tell you in words that he loves you. It is hard to keep thinking that he looked at you last night as if he thought you were pretty, when he did not say so. It is hard to receive a telegram, when you are looking for a letter, saying, "Have not had time to write. Shall be home Sunday. Will bring you something nice." It is harder still to get a letter telling about the weather 'and how busy he is, when the same amount of space, saying that he got to thinking about you yesterday when he saw a girl on the street who looked like you, only she didn't carry herself so well as you do, and that he was a lucky man to have got you when so many other men wanted you, and he loved you, good-bye—would have fairly made your heart turn over with joy and made you kiss the hurried lines and thrust the letter in your belt, where you could crackle it now and then just to make sure it was there.
Nearly all nice men make good lovers in deeds. Many fail in the handling of words. Few, indeed, combine the two and make perfect lovers.
But the last test of all, and, to my mind, the greatest, is in the use of words as a balm. Few people, be they men or women, be they lovers, married, or only friends, can help occasionally hurting each other's feelings. Accidents are continually happening even when people are good-tempered. And for quick or evil-tempered ones there is but one remedy—the handsome, honest apology. The most perfect lover is the one who best understands how and when to apologize.
I have heard men say, to prove their independence, their proud spirit, their unbending self-respect, "I never apologize." They say it in such conscious pride, and so honestly expect me to admire them, and I am so amiable, that I never dare remonstrate. I simply keep out of their way. But I feel like saying: "Poor, pitiful soul! Poor, meagre nature! Not to know the gladness of restoring a smile to a face from which you have driven it. Only to know the coldness of a misnamed pride; never to know the close, warm joy of humility."
Many people know nothing about a real apology. A lukewarm apology is more insulting than the insult. A handsome apology is the handsomest thing in the world—and the manliest and the womanliest. An apology, like chivalry, is sexless. Perhaps because it is a natural virtue of women, it sits manlier upon men than upon women.
… "It becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown."
Even as chivalry, being a natural attribute of men, becomes beautiful beyond words to express when found in women.
I have often heard men say they never apologize. Sometimes I have heard women. Pitiful, indeed, it becomes then. A woman without religion is no more repulsive to me than one who "never apologizes." How I pity the people who love those men and women who "never apologize." A delicate apology brings into play all the virtues necessary to a perfect humanity. The proudest are generally those who can bend the lowest. It is not pride; it is a stupid vanity and an abnormal self-love which prevent a man or woman from apologizing. An apology requires a native humility of which only great souls are capable. It requires generosity to be willing to humble yourself. It takes faith in humanity to think that your apology will be accepted. You must have a sense of justice to believe that you owe it. It requires sincerity to make it sound honest, and tact to do it at the right time. It requires patience to stick to it until the wound has ceased to bleed, and the best, highest, truest type of love to make you want to do it.
There is only one thing meaner than a person who never apologizes, and that is a person who will not accept one.
It requires a finer type of generosity to receive generously than to give generously. And a nature is more divine which can forgive honestly and quickly than one which can only apologize and is not capable of a swift forgiveness. But it is a wise dispensation of Providence that the two are twin virtues, and are generally to be met with in the same broad and beautiful nature.