When first love takes the form of hero worship, there is practically nothing that can be done about it. The case illustrated below is almost at the last stage, as is shown by the patient’s complete loss of appetite. The object of her maiden dreams is her mother’s guest, a returned big-game hunter--one of those bronze-skinned, clean-limbed outdoor men. Really, these people with clean limbs and chiseled features ought not to be at large; they get a young girl’s innocent inhibitions and major complexes all tangled up. [Illustration] [Illustration] THE PROFESSIONAL SIREN Don’t dwell too long on the picture above, gentle reader; if you have any heart at all, you will just break down and have a good hard cry. This is one of the bitterest phases of first love--the case of the adolescent moth and the professional flame. The youth is at that tender age where he classes all women under thirty-five as crude, and all unmarried women as uninteresting. The lady in the case is just about old enough to be a nice, understanding great-aunt. She is graciously allowing the youth to pour out his heart to her in a series of home-made sonnets,--after all, his little stunt helps to pass away the time until her next dance. The Throes of First Love, in Society _A Few Fashionable Little Variations on the Oldest Theme in the World_ LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT The great romantic tragedies are no more tragic than an affair like this; for sheer bitterness, the epic of little Gladys and her adored Unknown makes “Romeo and Juliet” look like a bedroom farce. While walking in the park with her nurse, little Gladys, up to that moment but a headless slip of a girl, comes face to face with her fate--her Soul-Mate, her Ineffable One, her Man. It is love at first sight; but the anguished lovers are torn asunder almost immediately. The cruel nurse drags the stricken heroine home to her nap, while the Unknown’s father insists that he must deport himself like a little Man. [Illustration] THE DANGEROUS DÉBUTANTE And now we must witness the futile yearnings of the youth who has fallen in love with the most popular débutante of the season. He is virtually in a state of shell-shock. The thing has hit him so hard that all power of speech has completely left him. It is seldom that love affects anyone this way, in later life. You just take these little things as all in the day’s work, after you’ve had a few years’ experience with them. FIRST LOVE--AND THE NOBLE THEATRICAL GOD Here is an experience that comes but eight or ten times to a young girl--her worship of the dramatic hero. There are few purer forms of love than these idylls, and few more lucrative emotions--from the box-office standpoint. The youthful worshippers, chastely chaperoned by a vestal, attend every matinée, to bask in the glances of their idol. All their childish pennies are scraped together to buy the front row seats. It’s just the old, old story--it’s the woman that pays, and pays, and pays. [Illustration]