Beyond Valentine’s Day: Examples of Love and Devotion From History

Beyond Valentine’s Day: Examples of Love and Devotion From History
History reveals couples of great love and devotion. “A Lover’s Token,” 1830, by Charles Moreau. Art Renewal Center
Jeff Minick
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Who can explain it, who can tell you why? Fools can’t explain it, wise men never try.

Those lines from “Some Enchanted Evening,” one of the numbers in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical “South Pacific,” are speaking of love, particularly love at first sight. But are they accurate? Can love not be explained?

Let’s imagine that Sam has just returned home from a get-together with friends. While at the party, he has become smitten with a stranger, Maggie. Restless, he paces his apartment, wondering whether Maggie would consider him strange if he called her in the morning (he asked for and received her phone number) and invited her to supper for Valentine’s Day.

Jeff Minick
Jeff Minick
Author
Jeff Minick has four children and a growing platoon of grandchildren. For 20 years, he taught history, literature, and Latin to seminars of homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” Today, he lives and writes in Front Royal, Va.
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