[Sidenote:  The Food of her Soul]

It seems to her that all the romance is necessarily gone—­and it is romance upon which her soul feeds.  There can be none of that dear delight in the first home building, which is the most beautiful part of marriage to a girl.  Her pretty concern about draperies and colours is all an old story to the man.  She may even have to buy her kitchen ware all alone, and it is considered the nicest thing in the world to have a man along when pots and pans are bought.

If widowers and widows would only mate with each other, instead of trespassing upon the hunting grounds of the unmarried!  It is an exceptional case in which the bereaved are not mutually wary.  They seem to prefer the unfair advantage gained by having all the experience on one side.

The normal man proposes with ease and carelessness, but the ceremony is second nature to a widower.  If he meets a girl he likes, he proceeds at once to business and is slow indeed for his kind if he does not offer his hand and heart within a week.

A clever man once wrote a story, describing the coming of a girl to a widower’s house.  With care and forethought, the dying wife had left a letter for her successor, which the man fearlessly gave her before she had taken off her hat, because, as the story-teller naievely adds, “she was twenty-eight and very sane.”

[Sidenote:  A Nice Letter]

This letter proved to be various admonitions to the bride and earnest hopes that she might make her husband happy.  It was all very pretty and it was surely a nice letter, but no woman could fail to see that it was an exquisite revenge upon the man who had been rash enough to install another in the place of the dead.

There was not a line which was not kind, nor a word which did not contain a hidden sting.  It would be enough to make one shudder all one’s life—­this hand of welcome extended from the grave.  Yet everything continued happily—­perhaps because a man wrote the story.

A woman demands not only all of a man’s life, but all of his thoughts after she is dead.  The grave may hide much, but not that particular quality in woman’s nature.  If it is common to leave letters for succeeding wives, it is done with sinister purpose.

Romance is usually considered an attribute of youth, and possibly the years bring views of marriage which are impossible to the younger generation.  No girl, in her wildest moments, ever dreams of marrying a widower with three or four children, yet, when she is well on in her thirties, with her heart still unsatisfied, she often does that very thing, and happily at that.

[Sidenote:  The Hidden Heartache]

Still, there must be a hidden heartache, for woman, with her love of love, is unable to understand the series of distinct and unrelated episodes which make up the love of a man.  It is hard to take the crumbs another woman has left, especially if a goodly portion of a man’s heart is suspected to lie in the grave.