suffered on account of it.  I don’t speak of such trifles as tears, heartaches, sleepless nights, fevers of jealousy and despair, sacrifices, or discomforts, but of real genuine self-torment and mental torture which only this passion is capable of inflicting on its victims.  The most sceptical will acknowledge that its powers in this line are only excelled by its apparent animosity.  To discover the life that completes and contents our own is not given to many of us poor mortals.  Here and there some fortunate individuals have made that discovery—­but they are rare—­and not given to boasting on the subject; yet though worldly wise folk scoff at love as a myth, I question whether they could name any other passion of the heart which has occupied so important a place in the world’s history, which has given life to all that is great and divine in art, or inspired such deeds of heroism, self-sacrifice, and martyrdom.  Before its patient strength men have stood mute and wondering, and proud heads have bent in reverence, and stern eyes grown dim.  For Love is beautiful, despite faults, and wise, despite follies.  It alone of all human emotions can lift our souls heavenwards, and make even life’s thorny path a thing of beauty.

* * * * *

[Sidenote:  John Strange Winter’s opinions.]

Love may be classed under several heads.  The first, the great, the unattainable, the one-sided, and the worn-out.  They are all real!  What can be more real than the perhaps not very practical passion which first makes young hearts ache?  What agony it is to her when he dances three times running with that horrid, stuck-up London girl, with her fashionable jargon, her languorous movements, just a turn or two, and then stop for as many minutes!  First love is not often last love. He thinks her unreasonable to mind those dances, yet when a great love comes into her life, making her think of him as “just a boy,” he suffers all, or nearly all, the pangs of a great passion.  Unavailing pain! She has cast the die of her life, and past loves are shadows compared with the absorbing power that now grips her heart like a vice.  Much may happen to the great love, but it is very real!  A great love may merge into matrimony, and life may run on oiled wheels, and Darby and Joan may pass through the world, loving faithfully, and without digression, to the end.  Or something may come between, and the great love may become the unattainable!  It will not be the less real for that.

[Sidenote:  The Unattainable.]

The unattainable has more in it of pathos than despair.  Romance sweetens it, and the romance never dies.  The tenderness of “what might have been” gives balm to many a suffering soul!  The wife may be unhappy, neglected, heartsick, she may even loathe him whose name she bears, but she is often upholden by the thought that he would have been wholly different!  A husband may know that he