that will control everything from Sandy Hook to Golden Horn. That will
put an end to brokerages in marriage. That will send divorce lawyers
into a decent business. That will set people agitated for many years
on the question of how shall they get away from each other to planning
how they can adjust themselves to the more or less unfavorable
circumstances.
More difficult divorce will put an estoppal to a great extent upon
marriage as a financial speculation. There are men who go into the
relation just as they go into Wall Street to purchase shares. The
female to be invited into the partnership of wedlock is utterly
unattractive, and in disposition a suppressed Vesuvius. Everybody
knows it, but this masculine candidate for matrimonial orders, through
the commercial agency or through the county records, finds out how
much estate is to be inherited, and he calculates it. He thinks out
how long it will be before the old man will die, and whether he can
stand the refractory temper until he does die, and then he enters the
relation; for he says, "If I cannot stand it, then through the divorce
law I'll back out." That process is going on all the time, and men
enter the relation without any moral principle, without any affection,
and it is as much a matter of stock speculation as anything that
transpired yesterday in Union Pacific, Wabash, and Delaware and
Lackawanna.
Now, suppose a man understood, as he ought to understand, that if he
goes into that relation there is no possibility of his getting out,
or no probability, he would be more slow to put his neck in the yoke.
He should say to himself, "Rather than a Caribbean whirlwind with a
whole fleet of shipping in its arms, give me a zephyr off fields of
sunshine and gardens of peace."