If you have sensible parents take them into your confidence in all the
affairs of the heart. They will give you more good advice in one hour
than you can get from all the world beside in five years. They have
toiled for you so long, and prayed for you so much, they have your
best interests at heart. At the same time let parents review their
opposition to a proposed marital alliance, and see if their opposition
is founded on a genuine wish for the child's welfare, or on some whim,
or notion, or prejudice, or selfishness, fighting a natural law and
trying to make Niagara run up stream. William Pitt, the Prime Minister
of England in the reign of George III., was always saying wise things.
One day Sir Walter Farquhar called on him in great perturbation. Mr.
Pitt inquired what was the matter, and Sir Walter told him that his
daughter was about to be married to one not worthy of her rank. Mr.
Pitt said: "Is the young man of respectable family?" "Yes." "Is he
respectable in himself?" "Yes." "Has he an estimable character?"
"Yes." "Why, then, my dear Sir Walter, make no opposition." The advice
was taken, and a happy married life ensued. Let ministers and officers
of the law decline officiating at clandestine marriages. When they are
asked to date a marriage certificate back, as we all are asked, let
them peremptorily decline to say that the ceremony was in November
instead of January, or decline to leave the date blank, lest others
fill out the record erroneously. Let a law be passed in all our
States, as it has already been in some of the States, making a license
from officers of the law necessary before we can unite couples, and
then make it necessary to publish beforehand in the newspapers, as it
used to be published in the New England churches, so that if there be
lawful objection it may be presented, not swinging the buoy on the
rocks after the ship has struck and gone to pieces.
And here it might be well for me to take all the romance out of an
escapade by quoting a dozen lines of Robert Pollock, the great Scotch
poet, where he describes the crazed victim of one of these escapades:
"... Yet had she many days
Of sorrow in the world, but never wept.
She lived on alms, and carried in her hand
Some withered stalks she gathered in the spring.
When any asked the cause she smiled, and said
They were her sisters, and would come and watch
Her grave when she was dead. She never spoke
Of her deceiver, father, mother, home,
Or child, or heaven, or hell, or God; but still
In lonely places walked, and ever gazed
Upon the withered stalks, and talked to them;
Till, wasted to the shadow of her youth,
With woe too wide to see beyond, she died."