Yet there are people, and good women amongst the number, who so little understand that love, if it be worthy of the name, means beauty and purity, and embraces the very holiest and best in our human nature, that they would banish the word from every story that is written for the young. They would bid an old wife and mother like me lay down her pen and refrain from using it on the sweetest theme that creation can furnish.
Such readers as these would link the idea of love rather with the fallen and sinful state of humanity, forgetting that the first pair of lovers were also the first created of mankind, and were such before sin possessed a name, much less a place in Paradise.
Would the silencing of tongues and the laying down of pens keep young hearts from throbbing, or silence the voice which God Himself has placed in every breast and endowed with eloquence? Far, far better for us older folk to treat the subject with tender reverence, and manifest our loving sympathy with our young ones who are just placing girlish feet on the enchanted ground which we trod in the far-away past.
The subject is, perhaps, the only one which has an interest for people of every nation, age, and condition—which has in it the "touch of Nature that makes the whole world kin." It links the queen and her humblest waiting-damsel. It joins in its mysterious bonds the monarch who can bestow a crown, and the peasant who follows the plough and dreams of the day when he can call a tiny thatched cottage his home, and prepare it as a fitting nest for his village playmate who has just passed him, poising a well-filled pail upon her head. The glimpse of her bright young face and the kindly smile of her brown eyes have put new energy into the toiler, and he resumes his work, albeit a moment before he was watching the lengthening shadows, and longing for the moment when he should unyoke the weary horses and take the homeward way.
No use trying to silence Nature's voice in the breast of the young. It may speak little and shyly. The fair cheek may flush and the head be bent, but thought will be the busier for the very reticence of the tongue. And we old folk, what can we do? If we have nothing but sweet memories of pure joys that were ours in the far-away past, let us at least thank God for these, and give our sympathy to the young. Will not those who have walked in love towards God and each other whilst on earth, look forward to a reunion which shall last whilst eternity endures, with the dear one who has gone before for a little while?
Tell us what kind of life is looked upon as the hardest. Not one of poverty, labour, difficulty, or even of affliction. Poverty and labour are lightened, difficulties smoothed, trials more easily borne with love for a companion. Suffering is almost forgotten when the tender voice of sympathy is heard and the pillow smoothed by affection's hands. Unrest is easier to endure when kind eyes watch beside the sleepless, and become moist with tears because the power to aid falls so far short of the will.
The loveless life is the only really hard life. He who is all Love has shown us that with it we feel rich, but having all beside, we are poor without it.
If parents could but see this, they would realise that they are exercising one of the most delightful of their privileges when sympathising with their children. They live again the days of their own pure young love, in the happiness of their girls and boys.
Once an excellent lady, who was neither wife nor mother, said, "If I could have my way, I would keep every word relating to love out of books and stories for girls."
Ah, dear lady! Then you must take many a passage out of the "Book of books," and begin the excision with the very words of the Creator, "It is not good for man to be alone."