Cinderella, and Other StoriesDavis, Richard Harding
General
Cinderella, and Other Stories
Davis, Richard Harding
United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
A young man runs two chances of marrying the wrong woman. He marries her
because she is beautiful, and because he persuades himself that every
other lovable attribute must be associated with such beauty, or because
she is in love with him. If this latter is the case, she gives certain
values to what he thinks and to what he says which no other woman gives,
and so he observes to himself, "This is the woman who best understands
_me_."
You can reverse this and say that young women run the same risks, but as
men are seldom beautiful, the first danger is eliminated. Women still
marry men, however, because they are loved by them, and in time the
woman grows to depend upon this love and to need it, and is not content
without it, and so she consents to marry the man for no other reason
than because he cares for her. For if a dog, even, runs up to you
wagging his tail and acting as though he were glad to see you, you pat
him on the head and say, "What a nice dog." You like him because he
likes you, and not because he belongs to a fine breed of animal and
could take blue ribbons at bench shows.
This is the story of a young man who was in love with a beautiful woman,
and who allowed her beauty to compensate him for many other things. When
she failed to understand what he said to her he smiled and looked at her
and forgave her at once, and when she began to grow uninteresting, he
would take up his hat and go away, and so he never knew how very
uninteresting she might possibly be if she were given time enough in
which to demonstrate the fact. He never considered that, were he married
to her, he could not take up his hat and go away when she became
uninteresting, and that her remarks, which were not brilliant, could not
be smiled away either. They would rise up and greet him every morning,
and would be the last thing he would hear at night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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