Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 193, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1915 — Love and Human Nature. [ARTICLE]

Love and Human Nature.

“Love?” he repeated again, relaxing his huge body slowly and flinging one leg over the other. “I’ve seen as much of love as the next man, in more places than most. I’ve never been mixed up with it myself—not with the real thing. But most things are mixed up with it. You’ll believe that I don’t read poetry. If you people could ever get the beat of life you’d get it with prose. Imagine fitting human beings —black or white —into a stanzaic form! I realized that young. I’ve seen people, make love all over the shop. I’m not denying it’s effective. But the one thing I’ve never-seen it do is really change a person. That’s why I don’t believe all the things they tell me the poets say about it. Time and again I’ve seen the trick tried; and time and again I’ve seen the woman or the man slump back into the shape God made ’em in.”— From a story by Katharine F. Gerould, in Scribner.