woman in himself."

This thought impressed Dauvit.

"Noo I understand Rabbie Burns," he cried. "Rabbie cudna love a wumman
because he loved the wumman in himsel. She was the wife that bore his
bairns--his poems." He paused, and a pained look came to his face.
"There may be a poet in me, dominie," he said ruefully, "but she has
borne me nae bairns. I am ane o' the mute inglorious Miltons . . . and
I wud ha' been better if I had married Maggie and talked aboot neeps
and tatties a' my life."

"You couldn't have done it, Dauvit," I said as I rose to go.

From the door I looked back at the old man as he stared at the fender.

* * * * *

One of the analysts says that the flirt is suffering from a mother
complex. He has never got over his infantile love for his mother, and
he is always trying to find the mother again in women. Hence he is
like a bee, sipping at one flower and then flying on to another.

I suspect that many a bachelor is a bachelor because his early love is
fixed on the mother. Few mothers realise the danger of coddling their
children. I have heard grown men dying in pain call on their mothers.
It is a hard task for parents, but they must always try to break their
children's fixation upon them.

Women having father-complexes are common. The other day I met a girl
who had no interest in young men; all her interest was in men with
beards. No matter what the conversation was about she managed to
mention her father. . . "Father says!" She will probably marry a man
twice her age. It is well-known that boys of seventeen often fall in
love with women of thirty, while adolescent girls usually fall in love
with men of thirty. They are not really in love; they are looking for
a substitute for the mother or father.

The psychology of the man of forty who falls in love with the girl of
sixteen is more difficult to grasp. I think that in most cases the
man's love interest is fixed away back in childhood; often the girl of
sixteen is a substitute for a beloved sister. Perhaps on the other
hand, a man of forty's paternal instinct has been starved so long that
he wants to find at once a wife and a child.

Few of us realise how much of our love interest is fixed in the past.
Think of the men who want to be mothered by their wives . . . they
generally address their wives as "Mother." I know happily married men
who are psychically children; "mother" won't allow them to carry c