The universal testimony of the great, that fame itself is barren, is thrust aside as of small moment.  She does not realise that it is love for which she hungers, rather than fame, which is the admiration of the many.  Sometimes she learns that “the love of all is but a small thing to the love of one” and that in a right marriage there would be no conscious sacrifice.  If she were not free to continue the work that she loved, she would feel no deprivation.

Happiness is often thrust aside because of her ideals.  She demands all things in a single man, forgetting that she, too, is human and not by any means faultless.  Some day, perhaps too late, she understands that love and criticism lie far apart, that love brings beauty with it, and that the marks of individuality are the very texture of charm, as the splendour of the opal lies in its flaws.

[Sidenote:  The Vital Touch]

There is always the doubt as to whether the seeker may be the one of all the world to find the inmost places in her heart.  Taste and temperament may be akin, position and purpose in full accord, and yet the vital touch may be lacking.  Sometimes, in the after-years, it may be found by two who seek for it patiently together, but too often dissonance grows into discord and estrangement.

The march of civilisation has done away with the odium which was formerly the portion of the unattached woman.  It is no disgrace to be a spinster, and apparently it is fitting and proper to be an old maid, since so many of them have “Mrs.” on their cards, and since there are so many narrow-minded and critical men who fully deserve the appellation.

There is no use in saying that any particular girl is a spinster from necessity rather than choice.  One has but to look at the peculiar specimens of womankind who have married, to be certain that there is no one on the wide earth who could not do so if she chose.

[Sidenote:  “A Discipline”]

Some people are fond of alluding to marriage as “a discipline,” and sometimes a grey-haired matron will volunteer the information that “the first years of marriage are anything but happy.”  To one who has hitherto regarded it from a different point of view, the training-school idea is not altogether attractive.

Men and women who have been through it very seldom hold to their first opinions.  It is considered as a business arrangement, a social contrivance, sometimes as an easy way to make money, but by very few as the highest form of happiness.

[Sidenote:  Small Extravagances]

The consolations of spinsterhood are mainly negative, but the minus sign has its proper place in the personal equation.  “The other woman” does not exist for the spinster, save as a shadowy possibility.  She is not asked what she did with the nickel which was given her day before yesterday, and thus forced to make confession of small extravagances, or to reply, with such sweetness as she may muster, that she bought a lot on a fashionable street with part of it, and has the remainder out at interest.  She does not have to stay at home from social affairs because she has no escort, for the law has not apportioned to her a solitary man, and she has a liberty of choice which is not accorded her married friend.