OCR Text |
Show o TO MARRY, OR NOT TO MARRY? Physicians tell us that marriage conduces to longevity. Yet a recent news dispatch gives an account of a maiden lady in New York who is chipper, sprightly and able to write legible and interesting letters at the ripe age of 101 years. For exactly a century and a hundredth fraction thereof has this remarkable person dwelt in single blessedness, blessed-ness, and in a letter to an admiring correspondent she gives as a reason for her long life, peace and general happiness, the fact that she was never married. Her nine brothers and sisters, she says, all married, and all died long ago. She, with only herself to look after, still lives. This is certainly cer-tainly expert testimony in favor of celibacy from a strictly hygienic standpoint. But we do not believe it will lessen the marriage rate. Most young people would not be deterred de-terred from matrimony even if they knew that a single life would carry them, forward, alone and love-less, to the twenty-first century's dawn.- And in spite of this wonderful old maid's belief to the contrary, there is no doubt that the majority of married people are happier, healthier and very much better off in all respects than the majority of unmarried people, |