The attraction a widower has for a girl is in inverse proportion to a widow's influence over a man. It is true that the second wife is usually better treated than the first, and that the new occupant of a man's heart reaps the benefit of her predecessor's training. But it is not until spinsterhood is fully confirmed by grey hair and the family Bible that a girl begins to look with favour upon the army of the detached.
The Food of her Soul
It seems to her that all the romance is necessarily gone—and it is romance upon which her soul feeds. There can be none of that dear delight in the first home building, which is the most beautiful part of marriage to a girl. Her pretty concern about draperies and colours is all an old story to the man. She may even have to buy her kitchen ware all alone, and it is considered the nicest thing in the world to have a man along when pots and pans are bought.
If widowers and widows would only mate with each other, instead of trespassing upon the hunting grounds of the unmarried! It is an exceptional case in which the bereaved are not mutually wary. They seem to prefer the unfair advantage gained by having all the experience on one side.
The normal man proposes with ease and carelessness, but the ceremony is second nature to a widower. If he meets a girl he likes, he proceeds at once to business and is slow indeed for his kind if he does not offer his hand and heart within a week.
A clever man once wrote a story, describing the coming of a girl to a widower's house. With care and forethought, the dying wife had left a letter for her successor, which the man fearlessly gave her before she had taken off her hat, because, as the story-teller naïevely adds, "she was twenty-eight and very sane."
A Nice Letter
This letter proved to be various admonitions to the bride and earnest hopes that she might make her husband happy. It was all very pretty and it was surely a nice letter, but no woman could fail to see that it was an exquisite revenge upon the man who had been rash enough to install another in the place of the dead.
There was not a line which was not kind, nor a word which did not contain a hidden sting. It would be enough to make one shudder all one's life—this hand of welcome extended from the grave. Yet everything continued happily—perhaps because a man wrote the story.
A woman demands not only all of a man's life, but all of his thoughts after she is dead. The grave may hide much, but not that particular quality in woman's nature. If it is common to leave letters for succeeding wives, it is done with sinister purpose.