, know _something_ of the real man and woman
_behind the mask_--even though that which lies behind it may prove
disappointing--before you can prove that your love is _real_ love, that
your friendship is _real_ friendship, that you love your lover or your
friend, not only for what they are, but also in spite of what they are
_not_.

_The Might-Have-Been_

It is rare to come across anybody with very definite ideas; it is rarer
still to meet a man and woman brave enough to put their ideas into
practice. The hardest battle in life--and one of the longest--is the
battle to live your own life. No one realises what fighting really
means until they stand in battle-array face to face with relations.
But most of us have to fight this battle sooner or later, and if we
fight and yet make a "hash" of the victory we gain, is it not better
so? Relations always think they know what is best for you. Well,
perhaps they do, if the "best" be a circumspect kind of goodness. But
they rarely know what you _want_, and, until you have got what you
really want, even though you find it is "Dead Sea fruit" after all, the
thought always haunts the disappointed Present by visions of the
glorious Might-Have-Been.

Relatives always seem to imagine that, when you say you want to lead
your own life, it is always a "bad" life you want to lead. They seem
to think that a girl leading her own life is a girl entertaining men
friends, until goodness knows what hour of the night, alone in her
bachelor flat, they picture a man leading his own life as a man whose
memoirs would send shudders down a really nice woman's spine. They
never realise that there is happiness in personal freedom and
liberty--happiness which is happy merely in the independent feeling of
self-respect which this freedom and liberty gives. They would like
boys and girls to continue to maturity the same life which they led
when they were children, subject to the same restrictions, bowing to
the same parental point of view. No one knows of what he is capable
until he has begun the battle of life in the world of men, independent
and on his own. Better make a "hash" of everything; better suffer and
endure and grow old in disappointment, than live in a gilded cage with
clipped wings, while kind-hearted people feed you to repletion through
the bars.

A girl or boy, who has no occupation, other than the occupation of mere
amusement, who has no Ideal; who has no interest other th