There are still such girls—but they are not often met with, and, once met with, are likely to have changed on a second meeting. “Pale ghosts of a passionate past come thronging,” at times, to them perhaps; more likely they join with their companions in cynically singing:
But now how we smile at the fond love token,
And laugh at the sweet words spoken low.
This phase of woman’s character is not particularly novel. Poor Sir John Suckling, long curled, arrayed in velvets and satins, a princely host, seemingly the typical gallant, yet secretly devoured by melancholy, a suicide at the end, doubtless knew whereof he spoke when he said:
I am confirmed a woman can
Love this, or that, or any man:
This day she’s melting hot,
To-morrow swears she knows you not.
The twentieth century girl, of the rare, real sort, cherishes her love tokens not, perhaps, with the same, but with an equal, affection as she of troubadour days. Her tokens, to be sure, are different:
Your boxing gloves slyly I’ve fastened
Out of sight in the corner, right here.
I’d put them up high, but I “dassent,”
You see it would look rather queer!
And that the twentieth century girl of this sort, even if boxing gloves are love tokens with her, is just the same dear, old-time girl we all love, she proves by her ultimate confession:
Dear old chap, I’m not given to gushing,
You know, but I’m tired to-night.
· · · · ·
I think I am centuries older,
Yet if you were here I dare say,
I should put my head down on your shoulder
And cry—you remember my way!
Despite this up-to-dateness, this true good fellowship, or perhaps because of it, many women still living there are that have known the anguish of a love token that should have been destroyed in the long ago—in the long ago when the heartbreak had come—and gone, as they thought. There have been women of supreme beauty and of brainy splendor, dressed to descend where the words were to be spoken, “Until death do you part”—who at that last moment of freedom have seized with a curse and angrily torn into shreds the cherished souvenir of a love of—oh, when was it? Other brides there have been, arranged for the sacrifice, that have locked the door while there was yet time, and, kissing the love token of that long ago, have thrust it into their bosom, that their heart might beat against it even while, kneeling at the altar, they whispered, “I will.”
You don’t believe it? Oh, very well; some day this madness, that is rearoused by a faded violet or a time-stained ribbon, may enter into even your life. But I hope you may be spared it.