thin you, for some other one. Every
mention of that name stirs the flame into new burning. Every passing or
lingering thought of him or her is like fresh air making the flames leap
up more eagerly. And each personal contact is a clearing out of all the
ashes, and a turning on of all the draughts, to feed new oxygen for
stronger, fresher burning.

There are many other things that seem like love. Kindliness and
friendliness, and even intenser emotions, use love's name for themselves.
But though these have likenesses to love, they are not love. They have
caught something of its warm glow. A bit of the high coloring of its
flames plays on them. But they are not the real thing, only distant
kinsfolk. The severe tests of life quickly reveal their lack.

Love itself is really an aristocrat. It allows very, very few into its
inner circle, often only one. The real thing of love is never selfish. Now
we know very well that in the thick of life the fine gold of love gets
mixed up with the baser metals. It is very often overlaid, and shot
through with much that is mean and low. Rank selfishness, both the coarse
kind and the refined, cultured sort, seeks a hiding-place under its cloak.
But the stuff mixed in it is not love, but a defiling of it. That is a bit
of the slander it suffers for a time, from the presence in life of sin.

Weeds with their poison, and snakes and spiders with their deadly venom,
draw life from the sun. That is a bit of the bad transmuting the good,
pure sun into its own sort. The sun itself never produces poison or any
hurtful thing.

Love itself is never mean, nor bad, nor selfish. The man who truly loves
the woman whom he would have for his own lifelong, closest companion is
not selfish. He does not want her chiefly for his own sake, but for her
sake, that so he may guard and care for her, and her life be fully grown
in the sunlight of the love it must have. And, if you think that is
idealizing it out of all practical reach, please remember that true love
will steadily refuse the union that would not be best for the loved one.

What is the finest and highest love that we know? There are many different
sorts and degrees of love revealed in man's relation with his fellow:
conjugal, the love between husband and wife; paternal, the love of a
father for his child; maternal, the mother's love for her child; filial,
the love of children for father and mother; fraternal, or brotherly,
meaning really the love of