We also deplore these fraudulent espousals and this sneaking exchange
of single life for married life because it is deception, and that is a
corroding and damning vice. You must deceive your kindred, you must
deceive society, you must deceive all but God, and Him you cannot
deceive. Deception does not injure others so much as it injures
ourselves. Marriage is too important a crisis in one's life to be
decided by sleight of hand, or a sort of jugglery which says: "Presto,
change! Now you see her, and now you don't."
Better to wait for years for circumstances to improve. Time may remove
all obstacles. The candidate for marital preferences may change his
habits, or get into some trade or business that will support a home,
or the inexorable father and mother may be promoted to celestial
citizenship. At the right time have the day appointed. Stand at the
end of the best room in the house with joined hands, and minister of
religion before you to challenge the world that "if they know of any
reason why these two persons shall not be united, they state it now or
forever hold their peace," and then start out with the good wishes of
all the neighbors and the halo of the Divine sanction. When you can go
out of harbor at noon with all flags flying, do not try to run a
blockade at midnight.
In view of all this, I charge you to break up clandestine
correspondence if you are engaged in it, and have no more clandestine
meetings, either at the ferry, or on the street, or at the house of
mutual friends, or at the corner of the woods. Do not have letters
come for you to the post-office under assumed address. Have no
correspondence that makes you uneasy lest some one by mistake open
your letters. Do not employ terms of endearment at the beginning and
close of letters unless you have a right to use them. That young lady
is on the edge of danger who dares not allow her mother to see her
letters.