Show The Seven Ages of Love By Nixola Smith Greeley I THE AGE OF ROMANCe ROMANCE The Age of Romance may be any allY I age before 25 or after 60 The long ool stretch of common sense between n these periods makes romance the peculiar peI pe pe- culiar cullar property of youth or old age Occasionally Occasionally occasionally Oc oc- I men and women in middle life fall romantically in love but to tome tome tome me at least there is always something If not ridiculous in their state We do not look for snowdrops i in September nor for romance in jn the heart of 45 Nearly all the tue poets and song writers writers writ writ- I ers era have agreed in calling love a flower flow flow- er and so it is but what sort of ot flow flow- flower er In some hearts it seems to be bean an annual coming up a few days after the seed Is sown eown requiring little cultivation tion but hut lots of sunlight and dying down at the first frost never to come up again Love is a perennial in other natures taking longer to sprout needing needing need need- ing lug more care if you want it to live and grow grow- beautifully but hut lasting for years and years sometimes even for a aIn lifetime In some hearts love is a morning glory in others a century plant and of and of course difficulties arise when a man morning glory marries a woman century plant Bythe time the tile I century plant is in bloom the morning glory has lIas forgotten that it ft held up pink and purple cups to the early morning And unfortunately human society provides but one rule o of life for or morning glories and century plants plants' and exp expects ts he hearts that are merely short lived annuals to bloom with perennial perennial per per- love To the age of romance love seems not a morning glory but hut an immor immor- telle tehlo The rhe belief in the immortality of love seems to to- tobe be essential to romantic romantic romantic roman roman- tic souls Yet W. W L. L George wrote once If u life me should last forever lire would be death And nd If love last forever would it not be death too I Now marriage is love on a diet and andI while its devotees may stick to the I regiment as religiously as if they were I taking an cure they cannot a always al ala ways be as enraptured as they are conscientious con con- over its carefully apportioned apportioned calories Time must come when as Stevenson says spring windslow winds sow low disquietude a passing face tace leaves a 1 regret behind It and the road seems to 0 wind long and amid straight and dusty to tha grave Every J human being knows one groat reat constant love Time does not dim It I I i a association does not tarnish its gold It is as strong at 80 SO as at 18 It is a alove alove alove love that knows ws n no rival fears no competition competition com corn petition for it Is the love of self In romantic love self suffers a momentary momentary mo mu- eclipse Momentarily we have no value to ourselves save the value put upon us by another human being If wo we get a letter from him we believe in the immortality of the souL But Dut If it he falls to write or telephones to say that ho cant can't come after wo i I have spent sp hours In beautification and arid expectancy we know that the human race Is doomed to utter extinction and on the whole we are rather glad of it A new hat is a crown of glory or the thorns according to his opinIon opinion ion of it If we see him talking to another woman smiling at her with witha a smile we thought ought he kept for us only telling her the story of a triumph we thought he had reserved for us we decide that Jezebel Semiramis and Messalina were little white snowdrops snowdrops snowdrops snow snow- drops compared with her And we perceive for the first time how ola ole she sh Is and what a queer shaped ped head |