Fugitive marriage is to be deplored because it almost always implies
woman's descent from a higher social plane to a lower. If the man was
not of a higher plane, or the marriage on an equality, there would be
no objections, and hence no inducement to clandestinity. In almost all
cases it means the lowering of womanhood. Observe this law: a man
marrying a woman beneath him in society may raise her to any eminence
that he himself may reach; but if a woman marry a man beneath her in
society she always goes down to his level. That is a law inexorable,
and there are no exceptions. Is any woman so high up that she can
afford to plot for her own debasement? There is not a State in the
American Union that has not for the last twenty years furnished an
instance of the sudden departure of some intelligent woman from an
affluent home to spend her life with some one who can make five
dollars a day, provided he keeps very busy. Well, many a man has
lived on five dollars a day and been happy, but he undertakes a big
contract when with five dollars a day he attempts to support some one
who has lived in a home that cost twenty thousand per annum. This has
been about the history of most of such conjunctions of simplicity and
extravagance, the marriage of