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Show MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE.' B Just now Senator Burrows has a marriage H law under contemplation, something that he SH hopes will be sufficient to meet most of the Ills H which come of imprudent or too much marriage. H The Senator will fail in his hopes. There are H not too many divorces, the trouble is there are H too many marriages. Men and women marry for H a hundred reasons aside from the one reason that H should control, and so their lives re filled with H regrets and often reproaches. When a married H pair cannot live happily together they ought to H separate. It is wicked for them to live together H and continue to raise children after the love- H light has gone out of the home. But the public H should be protected against the one who makes H the trouble. If the law punished with fine and j Imprisonment any man or woman who married jH after having been divorced for cause, there H would be no more divorces by default, no more by agreement, no more brought around for the ' sole purpose of marrying again, for all such dl- vorces would be treated as crimes and would very swiftly become unpopular. But divorces do H not come primarily from marriage, but from the 'M home life and Influences prior to marriage. Train a child to loolc-upon marriage as a mere i device to better its condition and almost any- thing is liable to follow a union formed on that M idea. Again a union contracted without thought of M the duties that attach to it and without any fixed iH impression of the sacredness that should attach H to it, and there is liable to be trouble. Multifold M divorces are but symptoms of the false basis on M which society rests. In law marriage is but a civil contract. When that is all there really is fl to it, it is not strange that people weary of it and j want it annulled, that a more favorable contract may be made. 'M All around us are marriages every day which we know were made simply for convenience, or j for money. Every day we see thoughtless young H men and women married, neither one of whom M has the slightest idea of the sacredness that H should attach to such a union, or the slightest ap- M preciation of the duties involved in the contract. Then in the homes of young men and women M there is not very much discipline, gjrls grow up M without much more preparation for marriage M than the larks and robins and they have not the i instinct of the lark and robin which causes them M to know from the start that there must be a M house built and that their sweetest songs there- H after must be for their mates. And when cares M come and sickness they are helpless and repining M and discontented. The young men are just about H as helpless and no national marriage and divorce H law is to cure these troubles. The wonder Is not H fl BBiiSftPlP that there are so many divorces, but that there BFfc H$II4!j1 are so few. ml W |