ROYAL MARRIAGES.
There has lately been such a jingle of bells in St. Petersburg and London
that we have heard them quite across the sea. The queen's son has married
the daughter of the Russian emperor. We are glad of it. It is always well
to have people marry who are on the same level. The famous affiancing in
New York of a coachman with the daughter of the millionaire who employed
him did not turn out well. It was bad for her, but worse for the coachman.
Eagle and ox are both well in their places, but let them not marry. The ox
would be dizzy in the eyrie, and the eagle ill at home in the barnyard.
When the children of two royal homes are united, there ought be no
begrudging of powder for the cannonading, or of candles for the
illumination. All joy to the Duke of Edinburgh and his fortunate duchess.
But let not our friends across the sea imagine that we have no royal
marriages here in this western wilderness. Whenever two hearts come
together pledged to make each other happy, binding all their hopes and
fears and anticipations in one sheaf, calling on God to bless and angels to
witness, though no organ may sound the wedding-march, and no bells may
chime, and no Dean of Westminster travel a thousand miles to pronounce the
ceremony,--that is a royal marriage.
When two young people start out on life together with nothing but a
determination to succeed, avoiding the invasion of each other's
idiosyncrasies, not carrying the candle near the gunpowder, sympathetic
with each other's employment, willing to live on small means till they get
large facilities, paying as they go, taking life here as a discipline, with
four eyes watching its perils, and with four hands fighting its battles,
whatever others may say or do,--that is a royal marriage. It is so set down
in the heavenly archives, and the orange blossoms shall wither on neither
side the grave.
We deplore the fact that because of the fearful extravagances of modern
society many of our best people conclude that they cannot possibly afford
to marry.
We are getting a fearful crop of old bachelors. They swarm around us. They
go through life lopsided. Half dressed, they sit round cold mornings, all
a-shiver, sewing on buttons and darning socks, and then go down to a long
boarding-house table which is bounded on the north and south and east and
west by the Great Sahara Desert. We do not pity them at all. May all their
buttons be off to-morrow morning! Why do they not set up a plain home of
their own and come into the ark two and two?
The supporting of a wife is looked upon as a great horror. Why, dear
friends, with right and healthy notions of time and eternity it is very
easy to support a wife if she be of the kind worth supporting. If she be
educated into false notions of refinement and have "young ladies'
institutes" piled on her head till she be imbecile, you will never be able
to support her. Everything depends on whether you take for your wife a
woman or a doll-baby. Our opinion is that three-fourths the successful men
of the day owe much of their prosperity to the wife's help. The load of
life is so heavy it takes a team of two to draw it. The ship wants not only
a captain, but a first mate. Society to-day, trans-Atlantic and
cis-Atlantic, very much needs more royal marriages.