"Woo'd and married and a'.
Woo'd and married and a':
An' is na she very weel aff
That is woo'd and married and a'?"
It is a beautiful fancy that marriages are ordained in heaven; it is a
practical fact that they are made on earth; and that what we call "our
destiny," or "our fate," is generally the result of favorable
opportunities, sympathetic circumstances, or even pleasant contiguity
for a season. Hence we always expect after the summer vacation to hear
of a number of "engagements." The news is perennially interesting; we
may have seen the parties a thousand times, but their first appearance
in their new character excites all our curiosity.
Generally the woman expands and beautifies, rises with the occasion,
and puts on new beauty with the confidence of an augmenting wardrobe
and an assured position. There is nothing ridiculous in her attitude;
her wedding trousseau and marriage presents keep her in a delightful
state of triumphant satisfaction, and if she has "done well unto
herself," she feels entitled to the gratitude of her family and the
envy of all her female acquaintance.
The case is not so socially pleasant for her accomplice; it is always
an awkward thing for a man to announce his engagement. His married
friends ask him prosaic questions, and "wish him joy,"--a compliment
which of itself implies a doubt; or they tell him he is going to do a
wise thing, and treat him in the interval as if he was naturally in a
state of semi-lunacy. His bachelor friends receive the news either
with a fit of laughter, an expressive, long-drawn whistle, or at best
with the assurance that they "consider marriage a good thing, though
they are not able to carry out their principles." But he is soon aware
that they regard him virtually as a deserter; they make parties
without including him; he drops out of their consultations; he has
lost his caste among the order of young men, and has not been
admitted among the husbands of the community; he hangs between two
states; is not of _that_, nor yet quite of _this_.
Naturally enough, there are a variety of opinions on the subject of
prolonging or cutting as short as possible this preliminary stage.
Those who regard marriage as a kind of commerce, whose clearing house
is St. Thomas's or St. Bartholomew's, will, of course, prefer to
clinch the contemplated arrangement as soon as possible. Their
business is intelligible; there is "no nonsense about them;" and, upon
the whole, the sooner they get to ordering dinner and paying taxes the
better. Many of us have sat waiting in a dentist's room with a
tooth-ache similar to that which made Burns
"Cast the wee stools owre the meikle;"
and some of us have watched for an editor's decision with feelings
which would gladly have annihilated the interval.
But it is not alone the prosaic and the impatient who are averse to a
long engagement: the methodical, whose arrangements it tumbles upside
down; the busy, whose time it appropriates; the selfish, who are
compelled during it to make continual small sacrifices; the shy, who
feel as if all the other relations of life had retired into the
background in order to exhibit them as "engaged men;" the greedy, who
look upon the expected love-offerings as so much tribute money,--these
and many other varieties of lovers would gladly simplify matrimony by
reducing its preliminaries to a question and a ceremony. Yet if Love
is to have anything like the place in life that it has in poetry; if
we really believe that marriage ought to be founded on sympathy of
tastes and principles; if we have any faith in that mighty ruler of
hearts and lives, a genuine love affair,--we shall not wish to dim the
glory of marriage by denying it this sojourn in a veritable enchanted
land; for in its atmosphere many fine feelings blossom that never
would have birth at all if the niceties of courtship were superseded
by the levelling rapidity of marriage. If people are _really_ in love
they gain more than they lose by a reasonable delay. There is time for
the reading and writing of love-letters, one of the sweetest
experiences of life; the tongue and pen get familiar with affectionate
and noble sentiments; indeed I doubt if there is any finer school for
married life than a full course of love-letters. But if the marriage
follow immediately on the engagement, all love-letters and all
love-making must necessarily have a flavor of furniture and dress, and
of "considerations." I admit that love-making is an unreasonable and
impractical piece of business; but in this lies all its charm. It
delights in asserting the incredible and believing the impossible.
But, after all, it is in the depths of this delicious foolishness that
the heart attains its noblest growth. Life may have many grander hopes
and calmer joys in store,--
"But there's nothing half so sweet in life
As Love's young dream."
Therefore we ought to look with complaisance, if not with approbation,
on young people serenely passing through this phase of their
existence; but the fact is, we are apt to regard it as a little trial.
Lovers are so happy and self-satisfied that they do not understand
why everybody else is not in the same supreme condition. If the house
is ever so small, they expect a clear room to themselves.
Yet such an engagement, of reasonable length, is to be advised
wherever young people are tender and constant in nature, and really in
love with each other. I would only ask them to be as little
demonstrative in public as possible, and to carry their happiness
meekly, for, in any case, they will make large demands on the love,
patience, and toleration of their friends. But perhaps one of the
greatest advantages of a prolonged engagement is the security it
brings against a _mesalliance_. Now, to a man a _mesalliance_ is the
heaviest weight he can carry through life; but to a woman it is simply
destruction.
The best women have an instinctive wish to marry a man superior to
themselves in some way or other; for their honor is in their husbands,
and their status in society is determined by his. A woman who, for a
passing fancy, marries a man in any way her inferior wrongs herself,
her family, and her whole life; for the "grossness of his nature"
will most probably drag her to his level. Now and then a woman of
great force of character may lift her husband upward, but she accepts
such a labor at the peril of her own higher life. Should she find it
equally impossible to lift him to her level or to sink to his, what
remains? Life-long regrets, bitter shame and self-reproach, or a
forcible setting of herself free. But the latter, like all severe
remedies, carries desperation instead of hope, with it. Never can she
quite regain her maiden place; an _aura_ of a doubtful kind fetters
and influences her in every effort or relation of her future life.
In the early glamour of a love affair, women do not see these things,
but fathers and mothers do; they know that "the world is _not_ well
lost for love," and they have a right to protest against such folly.
In an imprudent love affair, every day is so much gained; therefore
when this foolishness is bound up in the heart of a youth or a maiden,
the best of all plans is to arrange for time,--as long an engagement
as possible.
But I will suppose that all my unmarried readers have found proper
mates who will stand the test of parental wisdom and a fairly long and
exacting engagement, and that after some happy months they will not
only be "woo'd," but "married and a'." Now begins their real life, and
for the woman the first step is _renunciation_. She must give up with
a good grace the exaggeration and romance of love-making, and accept
in its place that far better tenderness which is the repose of
passion, and which springs from the tranquil depths of a man's best
nature.
The warmest-hearted and most unselfish women soon learn to accept
quiet trust and the loyalty of a loving life as the calmest and
happiest condition of marriage; and the men who are sensible enough to
rely on the good sense of such wives sail round the gushing adorers,
both for true affection and comfortable tranquillity.
Just let a young wife remember that her husband necessarily is under a
certain amount of bondage all day; that his interests compel him to
look pleasant under all circumstances to offend none, to say no hasty
word, and she will see that when he reaches his own fireside he wants
most of all to have this strain removed to be at ease; but this he
cannot be if he is continually afraid of wounding his wife's
sensibilities by forgetting some outward and visible token of his
affection for her. Besides, she pays him but a poor compliment in
refusing to believe what he does not continually assert; and by
fretting for what it is unreasonable to desire she deeply wrongs
herself, for--
"A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty."
Shall our Daughters have Dowries?
Those who occupy themselves reading that writing on the wall which we
call "signs of the times" may ponder awhile the question which Mr.
Messinger puts with such plaintive appeal to the parents of this
generation: "Shall our daughters have dowries?" But in the very
commencement of his argument he abandons the case he has voluntarily
taken up, and enters a plea, not for the daughters, but for the young
men who may wish to marry the daughters. Also in urging upon parents
the duty of endowing their daughters he seems to have lost sight of
the fact that "dowry," in its very spirit and intention, does not
propose to care for the husband, but is solely in the interest of the
wife.
He asserts, doubtless with accuracy, that the average income of young
men is $1,100 a year, and he finds in this fact a sufficient reason
for the decrease of marriage among them. It is no reason at all; for a
large and sensible proportion of young men do marry and live happily
and respectably on $1,100 a year, and those who cannot do so are very
clearly portrayed by Mr. Messinger, and very little respected by any
sensible young woman.
But it is not to be believed that they form any preponderating or
influential part of that army of young men who are the to-morrow of
our great republic. Let any reader count, from such young men as are
known to him, the number who would divide their $1,100 as Mr.
Messinger supposes them to do:--
Dress for self and wife $600
Apartments 400
Amusements 100