Show the marriage problem by A PAYSON TERHUNE author of the runaway bag black gold etc now none of tre the proposed new amend ments to marriage Al arriage Is newer than the sphinx HERT in feht be a quaint pleasure till in letting the imagination run riot cheerily independent of sanity in a forecast is qs to the future of marriage to paint bizarre pictures of a marriage less world or an upside down wedded condition chere are a hundred amus ing cariati ns of the possibilities and each could be backed by specious logic and eich e ich would be asinine you might as sanely forecast tor for fifty bears ears hence a blue sun rising dilly in a maroon sl y an I 1 back it by the s i anere Inc asin power of ultra vi I 1 let or infra red rays the sun will keep on in its old color and on its own course when hen our generations great greit granle gran hildren are dust so will marriage because in a few of its outermost fringes marriage today differs ever so littie litile from marriage of a century ago that is 13 no reason for thinking it will go on changing I 1 those eccentric outermost fringes shall affect the core of it there is nothing new in the called so new era the fundamentals have not shifted cannot clift sl ift any more than the solar system has sh cited or can shift one is as basic and as eternal as is the other what are the new twists to mar ariage as against the customs of a cen tury ago prevalence of divorce the right of a wife to her own money the tile omission of the under worked word obey from the wedding ceremony the equal ty or the superiority of worn an her refusal to stay in the kitchen and develop into a drudge while her husband goes ahead her insistence on the keeping of her maiden nama name her occasional refusal to be true to any one man these are some of them and the rest are of the same order from these hypotheses we b gilld up a vision of a new marriage lage age state why the same thing his has been happening over and over ag again aln for eons bons Divorce Divor ceP 9 why it was so common among the romans of the empire that women married and d voiced five or six successive husbands among the bedou mi ins for or 3 years a handful of spoken words have constituted a legal bill of dt di tor cement the right of a wife to her oun in more than one 0 of the the civilized nations and sects of the old world in the days of egyptian supremacy the same thing pret a led and was a sacred law it is found among certain tribes today the omis sion of obey v 9 co back to post classical rome for that and to babylonia Baby loma too and for marriage custom in lands more than han half civilized hurtig dun ig hundreds of years since then the equal ty of woman was declared in I 1 apt during a long dynasty and in other elligh enlightened t nad and unenlightened lai ds her superiority was claimed by the amazons and other people and Is still led as a proved fact in parts of mong lla ila her refusal to bp be a drudge read reid at least one greek play that very refusal and the tiles of comins womans ancient r revolt evolt in kingdoms that are dead the keeping of her maiden name bea re ever lucy stone w was wis is dreamed of that was wis a time hallowed custom in a d aen places african tribes mar til iq lq ie negroes many other folk all tr pd ed that thit out centuries agone head I 1 B harries margaret Mar giret 0 ilvie for proof of its presence in scotland of fifty years b luck bick ick her refusal to be bound to any one man did you never heir of p alyin dry a cust ni in still pr in af and elsewhere under sine tion of law leil husbands hus binds to oi 01 e dou don and domineering wife and so on through the whole sorry list none of these new things is much newer than the sphinx fr ir in trial marriage to the sa s1 ticking of the ng ring all of them hale hate been tried sometimes in gr ups since before the dawn of the christian era anif by the way an actual marriage ceremony was not nor in vogue I 1 in some parts of the civilized world until long after alter the birth of that era through it all the same ancient mar ria ariage e c in and and tie and the cle cleaving aing of one man to one w fe he and of one wife to one min m in have con C tinned as unfalteringly as has the course of the sun itself have con contin aed c shall continue so long as human nature and human exigencies and human civilizations shall endure the marriage of the future fifty years or fety centuries hence ivill will be the mar nage of today and of a thousand years ago from time to lime time variants and in notations novat ions will seem to threaten it as ever they have done and always it will go on und curbed by them human fluman nature changes not at all except in its occasionally added or discarded externals every thing that sapiens ens has happened before and will happen again until human nature changes the true essentials of marriage and of wedded life and wedded comradeship can never change 0 public ledger inc w service |