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Show I How Miss ' Langford Lost -Jkj I" Her Sweetheart When : . He Saw a Room Full of ; W$$0tf:Jt ' : Photographs of Her E. : ' By Ruth Helen Lajiford 1 rEo, I am single, because I am a "weatb-j "weatb-j er" voman. A man jilted me for the senseless reason that I am a creature of moods. I am likely to die a spinster because be-cause men do not recognize the charm of YarJableness. Tet these men adapt tbeni-ielveo tbeni-ielveo to a change of weather, wear a rain coat when it storms, a linen one on a Summer day. and moods are only mental -weather. Men are Inconsistent creatures. They admire ad-mire many women for different qualities Maud for her pretty airs and graces, Jane for bnr statellness, Afrlce for her domestic traits, MUlicent for her chic, Margaret for her spiritual spirit-ual qualities. Tet when one woman combinoB In herself all those attributes and many more," they eay she Is "moody" and run away from her. Theoretically they admire woman an a "creature of infinite variety." Actually tbey are such cowards that they are terrified by her elastic temperament. My story is brief but to the point, a very sharp and painful point. I was in love. The man, too, was in love. A literary man, ho was nervous and sensitive, imaginative and full of Ideality. He did not merely love me as ordinary mortaSs do. He adored me, worshipped wor-shipped me as a- deity, a saint enshrined. He asked me repeatedly to marry him. I asked time to reflect. One evening a dull November rain was fall-lDg. fall-lDg. It beat against the window panes. It beat upon my heart I drew my ermine wrap-about wrap-about me and gazed Into the firo. The pelting of the rain gt upon my nerves. I sighed.-Suddenly sighed.-Suddenly I felt n tear upon my cheek. "1 am lonely," I thought "For tho first time In ray life I know the awful sense of alonencss. If it is like this at twenty, fancy what it must be at eighty!" , I ran to the telephone and called. "Bob, dear, is that you? Please come over here and marry me right away." I beard a 6trangc sound at the other end of the wire. I thought it was an exclamation of K Joy at receiving a favorable answer at last. I Hj hung up the receiver, rang for my maid and put on his favorito of all my gowns, a rose Hl colored velvet trimmed with silver. When he came in I saw at once that some-Hj some-Hj thing was wrong. "What's the matter, Robert dearest?" I asked. "Aren't you delighted that I we are to be one?" But his glance never sought my anxious face. Instead It roved around the room. "What are you looking at, dear?" I Inquired, tearful at the thought that he might bo losing his brilliant, lauded mind. "At your pictures, Helen," he said ruefully. "When 1 look at these I am afraid to marry you. I might be arrested for bigamy. I ' should feel that T were married not to onu woman, but to forty." t T bad been photographed many times and each picture looked a different girl than the others. It was a quito harmless little fad of mint: to study myself in my own moods as revealed to me by these photographs. "Moods! Moods!" "My reluctant suitor flung up hl9 hands In despair. "I want to many a woman, not a bundle of moods. Look!" There were forty photographs in the room. I had arranged fhem there to pleafio him. And the ungrateful man hB.d turned. "Look at that," said he, pointing to a Nlobe-Iike Nlobe-Iike photograph. "Suppose I wedded her and she should vanl6h and this other one should appear." He nodded toward a frowning, scornful scorn-ful creature. "I should feel that T must move my traps into another room. It wouldn't seem quite right nor legal to share hers, don't you know," 'And that." he pointed to a girl in the sulko, who Eeemcd to be no relation to tho others. "How would I know how often she might ap pear." His glance roamed on till it reached my most smiling picture. "Exit Mme. That and enter Mme. This. Why, my dear Helen, T 6hould feel positively immoral." Then he started on a new line of argument "A woman of that sort is a mental vampire," ho said. "She would sap all a mail's energies by keeping him wondering and worrying about which of the forty girls you have here he would find when he returned home- In the evening. No, my dear Helen, I must bid you adieu." He kissed my hand and was gone. I wept raged, laughed, exhausted all my moods, and gave the rose and silver gown to my maid, bidding bid-ding her to keep it out of my sight That Is the reason I am tejling the story of bow T was jilted, instead of addressing my wedding cards. Men are purblind creatures, who don't know what they like. They admire tho woman of moods, but arc afraid of her. They like changes of thought and attitude as they like changes of season, and like tho changes or season they are good for them. Various views and ideas are as tonic as tho change from Winter to Spring and Summer to Autumn. Men who fear them arc as timid as the poor, cowering male creatures who welcome Spring but are afraid to lay aside their overcoats. "At least," said a friend of mine, brilliant beautiful and as changeful as a will-o'-the-wisp, and with whom her husband is much in love, "I never bore that dear man I married." Moods are Hke travel. They widen our horizon hori-zon and give us mental stimulus. As we range the world we tire of the frozen regions of the uorth and of that which some one has aptly Rulh Helen Langford, the Girl of Many Moods. termed "the eternal grin of the South." To satisfy all our needs we require the temperate zone which has au these extremes in rapid succession. I admit that I have many moods. One of my most common ones is that of devilish playfulness. Another, a lately awakened one, is love of admiration. A mood of extreme self-reliance, which some are unkind enough to term stubbornness, is a frequent one, but 1 contend that this is most desirable, for if we do not follow the light within wo are lost in a great darkness. We should listen to and weigh advice, but we should be our own Judges of whether it is good or bad and follow that de cision. I have moods of religious ecstasy and moods of poetical exaltation. I am plunged often into moods of profound studiousness. There are hours when lam extremely critical. At one time I may like some one exceedingly A week hence I may not care at all for tnao person. But most marked is the difference between ray moods of joy or sorrow. For no apparent reason they come and go. I awake In the morning and my maici. when eho brings in my coffee, is pale with fright, and her eyes are soft with sympathy. Sho knows at a glance that this will be. one of my black days. I awake with the sense of a heavy, impenetrable impene-trable cloud pressing down upon me and smothering mo with its weight My wholesome, whole-some, practical friends say commlseratingly: "You are liverish, my- dear." But I know that (hey are mistaken, for I am sound as any race horse starting on the final sprint to win. Sometimes, when I havo heard this, I have set forth for a walk, or I have slapped my thorax above the liver, as my masseuse has taught me. to wake it from its sleep. It has been of no avail. I have eaten more freely or eaten not at all. T have taken warm baths and cold plunges to drlvo away the blue devils. In vain! When I had abandoned all hope and thought of suicide benold! On tho Instant, the cloud lifts and I am another Helon Lang-ford, Lang-ford, laughing, smiling, dancing, singing, drunk with tho joy of lire. Asked to explain this, I reflect, but have reached no conclusion that wholly satisfied me. Of ono thing I am sure, the womanly woman is assuredly a moody creature. The womanly nature is finely organized, exceedingly exceed-ingly sensitive. The vibrations of the thoughts and emotions of those about her affect her as tho wind an Aeolian harp. Moods! Moods! They allure men, affright them, hold some, drive many away. But woman would not be womau without them. The man who fails in love with a woman must fall in love with her moods. When I hear of a woman. "She Is always tho same," T know she is stupid and a bore, and that her husband will tire of her. Would Chill a Polar Bear. W While She Is Sarcasl |