Show SINGLE OR DOUBLE JOYS OF CELIBACY AND matra MONT contrasted sir frank beille say sensible marriage lead to atrophy rio mantic marriage to murder and Sal clde single to melancholy madness by the american ireae elation all rights reserved ri r i w I 1 za WANT anat jt got is the nor y mal condition of nian probably it is a good thing for the world that this is so for unsatisfied desire is the spring of exertion and we all know that the man who can lie all day ander his banana trees and eat their la scions fruit without even the labor of plucking it will not be likely to toil all day in the ann to raise a crop of corn similarly a man who does not wish to marry and is deaf to the voice of the charmer who is perfectly satisfied with hie home in a boarding bouse and the family covered by his own aliat liat will not labor and plan and push for money and place as will he who ardently desires to take to himself a wife to provide for that wife a fitting home and to see that home filled with his own children of course the exertion he makes for his own selfish end redounds to the benefit of the world at large his work provides work for other people and the results of his labor enrich society in one way or another nature has planted deep in the constitution of either sex an impulse toward the other around this impulse which nature simply bestows as part of her economy of self preservation we have thrown a great deal of romantic drapery and pretty sentiment have buried it in thickets of roses and lilies have drowned its voice in songs of nightingales and tinkle of lutea and mandolins have called upon the elars to witness to its loftiness and the moon to admire its purity in fact we have deified ourselves and our natural desires into some sort of impossible creation quite unfit for this mundane sphere while all the time good old matter of fact mother nature smiles and says go on toy dears be as romantic and ridiculous as you please only in the end marry have children and keep the world going just as it always has gone prosaic individuals there are in alie world principally among those so swathed around with the good bilings of this earth that they have very little freedom of individual action that they recognize this simple law of nature and follow it without self deception or sentimental pretense kings queens and their families nobles concerned in the transmission of their titles very wealthy persons who have alie ambition of founding a family and perpetuating a name all these marry just as nature intended for the sake of the children likely to come of such marriage and they choose their partners with the deliberate consideration of their fitness for the position they have to offer once in awhile some poor little princess rebels and claims her privilege of flowers and birds and stare and moon and all the other pretty adornments of courtship and once in awhile some self willed young duke or prince asserts his self will by marrying quite the wrong person for Us duchess or princess but on the whole these highborn unfortunates are pretty submissive to their hereditary redi tary destiny and follow out their appointed law with stolid submissiveness in this country few citizens feel themselves ander these hereditary obligations and as a general thing an american of either sex marries from pure inclination cli nation and not with any special obligation to posterity from this independent social condition arises far more freedom of choice than is dreamed of by our unfortunate titled brethren across the seas and not only freedom of choice among various candidates but freedom of choice between the two states of matrimony and celibacy nobody hero in america need marry it bo want to and consequently most marriages are those of inclination now the question is are these marriages likely to be happier than those contracted from motives of policy some persons will add la any marriage likely to be happier than no marriage it ie a common saying that marriage Is a lottery and like most other trite sayings it is so true that it baa been worn to rags by the constant usage of those who found the coat so well fitted to their own backs that they could not resist putting it on marriage is a lottery and when we ask ie it better to marry or to remain single it is as if we asked Is it better to give all that we possess for a ticket which may entitle us to a splendid fortune and which may turn up blank every one knows in buying the lottery ticket that the most likely cliance is of tho blank but yet tho possibility of the fortune is so alluring that lotteries drive a thriving business all over the world and many a man who cannot buy a coat will manage to pay for at least the fraction of a ticket just so with marriage one cannot take up a newspaper reading of divorces of wife murders of domestic treachery and wild revenge of all sorts of misery and sin and that in one way or another have resulted from marriage without going to tho public print one looks through alie list of their own acquaintance and for one happy marriage docs not one find two that conduce more to the misery than the bliss ot ono or the other of tho parties and yet the lottery tickets sell a great deal bettch than bibles and yet the churches the offices of justices or registrars every place where le may be married 01 marry themselves are thronged with impatient applicants for the means of self destruction and if you capture any one of these self devoted couples and point out to them the fate of two thirds of their predecessors they wave you aside and blandly declare ours is an entirely different case and nothing of the kind yon mention win ever wall us and would it be better if the cynical philosopher supposed to thus address them succeeded in convincing them of their mistake suppose they tarn back from tho door where he encounters them and leave the expectant person to wait for them in vain As lifo goes oo 00 and man and maid shrivel into middle aged celibacy do they bless that kind friend who stood in their way or do they curse him for n meddling fool probably the latter for there ia no proverb eo pregnant with melancholy truth as that tharo is no cream so rich as that which rises on spilled milk mr whittier put the same idea into prettier phrase when lie wrote of ell sad words of toneto or pen the are these it might have been but the idea is alie same and there is no truer one afloat whatever you do you will wish yon had done the other thing suppose for instance that you anre a sensible man and have chosen your wife as the vicar of wakefield says be did bis partner and she did her wedding gown not so much for present attractiveness tr as for ita likelihood of wearing well or suppose you are a sensible girl and accepted from among your many suitors the one most likely to bea come wealthy and to make for you and himself such a name and place in the world as your ambition led you to desire well you two sensible persons are married and what is the result why you are both pining or grumbling or scolding aa your temperament suggests because having all eliat you bargained for in your matrimonial venture yon have not also secured quite another set of advantages which you had no right to expect the man tired and disgusted with his day among his fellow men biome with a feeling that here is or be a refuge from the selfishness the hardness alio indifference to his interests or pleasure which have all day surrounded him and kept his wits upon the fe lest some one should get the advantage of liim vaguely and unconsciously expects to find sympathy tact sweetness forbearance and tenderness enshrined within alie precincts of the he calls home oven though it be but a room in a boarding aliouse well ho docs not find them and be is cruelly bitterly disappointed even though he may not know just how or why he finds aliat he bargained for a shrewd capable partner of his purse and prospects not at all of hie heart and soul she inquires how his business has gane gives her opinion as to what lio has done left undone or ought to have done puts her finger upon the weak spot he lias vainly tried to hide from her and when he confesses that the man he trusted baa disappointed and cheated liam she calmly replies 1 I told you so really I 1 wonder you will not tako my advice sometimes about things and bhe well was there ever a woman who did not want somebody upon whose shoulder she could cry her unreasonable tears and be petted back into joyousness and smiles was there ever a woman who did not want a man s endorsement indorsement indor of her new bonnet or a mans opinion upon alie act of glicr new gown and perhaps alio girdle of a mans arm around the waist as ho whispers eliat nothing could lit lp fitting well to so pretty a figure or suiting so sweet a face some of my readers who have made alie other kind of marriage from a sensible one will understand what I 1 mean well the woman who has made the sensible marriage would doubtless liko this sort of thing as well as her weaker sister and although she may not know what it is that is lacking she feels the lack she frets and pines for she knows not what and finally it she has good luck grows cold and hard and numb and buries alie best part of her woman nature so deep that it ceases to trouble her that ia a sensible marriage ant 1 am not prepared to say that it is not preferable to a lore marriage for the disappointments point ments if more withering and hardening are not so intense and not so apt to lead to destruction in tho love marriage bogli parties set out with an absolutely impossible ideal not only of the character and of the chosen partner but as to alio conditions under which they are to live together the marriage relation as formulated by a pair of true lovers is one that never was and never will bo realized on earth and as we are told upon alie best authority that there are no mari biages in wo may fairly conclude that it is absolutely ideal and never to bo realized anywhere it is a pity for 1 suppose the human mind is to conceive of anything more satisfactory than an ideal marriage a lius band noble lofty wise and powerful among men tender deferential and protective toward bis wife a sort of combination of napoleon solomon and romeo I 1 do not now remember meeting such gentleman but ho i one well known I 1 n feminine chateaux en cs with lucli a man is mated in the ideal marriage a woman compounded of penelope aspasia griselda Re camier and the joan who saw ho man in tha world but her batby she ie endowed with beauty wit grace and sense enough to make her an intelligent companion for her husband yet feminine humility enough to make lier always look ap to him as her head and lawgiver she is as good tempered as an angel as sweet of voice and manner and thought as a seraph as innocent as a dove and as wise BS serpent skilled in all accomplishments ments and a queen in society yet always preferring alio domestic and a tete a acte with a tired husband to the most brilliant entertainment well when two average persona marry each expecting to find in tho other some such ideal aa here depicted there is apt to a very severe dis on both sides and the married pair are fortunate indeed if in the revulsion from absurd delusion they do not fall into alie opposite extreme of unreasonable discontent ending in re elimination suspicion contempt die liko and final alienation if then neither a reasonable marriage nor a romantic marriage is likely to be satisfactory is it not the part of wisdom to avoid both and accept the part of single blessedness inquires bome one all my friend there ia no class of beings covetous of the cream upon the spilled milk of their youthful possibilities as the old maid or the old bachelor they do not talk about it especially the old maids do not but it one could see the bitter pangs of lon lieness they silently endure if one could hear tho inarticulate moans of envy and regret uttered by their sorrowing hearts at eight of what appears the wedded bliss of some former companion one could not doubt the sharpness these sagged teeth of charamis Chary Mis on which they have thrown themselves to avoid the black gulfa scylla which then is better or to put it n little cynically which is the lesser evil the scylla of matrimony or the of single loneliness and if one decides for matrimony which la the blacker gulf that of n mariage de conveyance convenance con venance which wo have styled a een sible marriage or that of a marriage of romance and delusion sure to end in bitter disillusion I 1 do not pretend to answer like the sphinx I 1 only ask and wait for a reply |