effort at first, and goes as rapidly, will one day come to want as
certainly as waters reach their level. Nature has fashioned us all for
work,--work of mind or work of body, mental or physical labor,--and
with it comes strength of muscle and of will. Listless life of
idleness, without motive, without aim, is open to every form of
temptation.
It is not a crime to be rich, or to be poor. It is a crime to be
listless in a busy world. He would be disgraced who, standing on a
wharf, saw a drowning crew without offering relief. He would be a
coward who would not defend a woman in distress; yet all around us are
the needy, helpless, drowning, starving, whom it is our duty to rescue
and lift up in life; and marriage is the place where society is born,
and grows and ripens into use.
_Don’t marry a stingy man_; of all narrow, mean men, he is worst who
has money, and has no will to do good with it. A “dog-in-the-manger”
man, who can improve his town, his church, his neighborhood, and does
not, is a drone in life’s hive and deserves no success.
One who is poor and has no means is excusable; one who locks and buries
treasures deserves the Bible sentence of him who hid his talent in the
earth--to be taken from him and placed with the active one’s talent.
A narrow, selfish, stingy man will count your pennies spent, and
postage used, and clothing worn, as wasted. One must live in constant
dread of such a creature--we need not name him man; it would disgrace
the term. A miser’s wife lives a loveless life.
_Don’t marry too hastily._ Some rush into matrimony like a steam-engine
going to put out a fire, as though one moment lost would be eternal
defeat, and the first there gain the highest prize. Many a one has
repented more leisurely and in sorrow for such conduct. But of all
things, marry at a good opportunity.
_Don’t be too slow about it._ Girls who give up the society of all but
one, and turn their homes into special receptions for one person, will
be worried to death in a year or two, if things move too moderately.
Brace up and proceed to business, or release your claim and let
some one else have an opportunity. Long engagements lead to lovers’
quarrels; they, in turn, fail to make up sometimes, and then follow
scandal and gossip over broken ties; and later two go down to their
early sleep disheartened, ruined by a trifling neglect and a reasonable
inventory of prospects. You will see it all plainly when it is over. It
will be a “might have been” then, sure enough, but too late.
_Don’t marry a silly girl._ It’s something of an art to select a
sensible person, but many are captivated by frivolous sayings and
coquettish acts of simpering school-girls and marry them. They make
better playmates than wives. They are generally shallow, nonsensical,
and superficial. They seldom learn anything; a tittering girl is
wearisome in real life. They are ever unstable as water and changeable
as wind; get some one that you can rely upon in confidence.
_Avoid slovenly dressed girls or heedless men._ Life seems very short
sometimes, but if ill-mated it may be a long and tiresome life. A woman
with shoes run down, a man with slouched and battered hat, reckless of
neatness, will grow worse, and seldom better.
Trifling as it may appear, the tidy dress, the tasty every-day apparel,
the ladylike appearance, and general style of man or woman, go a long
way to form character. Beecher was right in saying that “clothes do not
make the man, but they make him look better after he is made.” The same
rule is true of women.
_Don’t expect too much in marriage._ The story pen-pictures and
fashion-plate models of men that we see and read about are always
exaggerated. Not one man in a million would equal their description.
Men are plain flesh-and-blood creatures; women are not angels. They
build their hopes too high who expect otherwise. Take the handsomest
person you know and ten years’ wear will dull the edges; and of all
faded features, the once very handsome show change the soonest. There
are many little odd-faced fellows who grow up to be fine manly men.
The growth from boyhood or girlhood to youth, and youth to manhood or
womanhood, and so on to old age, is marvellous. It takes a keen sense
of foresight to measure the future of many boys and girls by their
beginning. There is no rule safer than choosing a good form, a good
brain, a good temper, and a good character, and waiting for the other
developments.
Endure what cannot be cured, and don’t wish your wife or husband were
as handsome as some neighbor or as rich as some nabob. Youth and good
qualities are riches. It may be he is richer by far than the very one
envied. The richest are not always those who own the most--many of
these are poor indeed, and often miserable.
_Don’t marry a fop._ Vanity in a woman is bad enough, in men it is
intolerable! A man-milliner, a namby-pamby female male, a walking
model for ready-made furnishing-stores, may think himself exceedingly
stunning, but to a real lady or gentleman he is a nonentity. Such
husbands never could be satisfied with the admiration you would give
them; they would weary your mirrors and try your patience. What are
they good for, anyway? There is room for women and room for men, but a
half-woman or a half-man is never great. They are not very likely to
marry at all, and less likely to make home happy.
_Don’t expect everything of one person._ Some expect to marry love,
beauty, talent, riches, and affection all in one. It is unreasonable;
you will never find it, and may as well give up looking in good season.
“Waukeen” Miller was requested to rewrite an article sent to a New York
magazine and returned this pithy reply: “I can’t re-copy it. I can’t
do everything. What do you expect of a man, anyway--to be a genius,
an inventor, and a writing-teacher? No, I can’t bother my brains with
copying worth four to six hundred a year at the highest.” This covers
the whole subject in a sentence. But it is well to add that Nature is
sparing of her gifts. To one she allots beauty, to another strength,
to another wisdom, to a third courage, to a fourth ability to acquire
riches, to another that to write and speak, to teach, to manage, to
paint, or to control armies: all are not alike, and to no one belong
all virtues.
_Don’t expect too much of a wife._ If she is beautiful, that will be
her pride and ideal. If plain, she may make it up a thousand times in
goodness, gentleness, industry, virtue (the plainest are the least
tempted). Earnest in her duty, she may be of all women the most suited
to your station. If talented, she will devote herself to it. You
cannot own beauty, talent, domestic drudgery all in one.
“Looking for angels, are you?” said an advanced maiden in the country.
“Well, you’ll not find ’em fit for kitchen work; and, while I think of
it, how would you look by the side of an angel, you brute you?” and he
subsided.
No, they are not much suited to kitchen work, the so-called angels;
but many a mother who has brought up a large family as her own kitchen
maid, without servants, who has braved the hardships of poverty and
privation, has led a life but little lower than the angels, after all.
_Don’t marry and cross your husband._ While on this division, don’t
cross your wife just at dinner-time. After the cares of business he is
tired, fretful, and she is of similar humor. To make a dispute is much
easier than to make a coal fire. Wait!
Don’t flash up and speak back, and irritate by quick answer. Wait!
If man or woman could only wait in seasons of anger, all would blow
over and harmony return like spring flowers, that are not always in
blossom.
Don’t both speak at once, nor both get angry at once, nor both be too
determined at once. No one is ever convinced by angry tones. It is
horribly repulsive to talk so; besides, you will both be sorry for
it very many times. Wait, and let your judgment mature after dinner;
quarrel, if you must, in whispers; that is the new fashion. Try the
newer form.
About ten thousand new divorces could be prevented each year by
observing these rules of common sense and reason. When will married
people and unmarried people, and lovers and neighbors, learn how
pleasant peace is, and how awkward it is to quarrel together?
One man pounds his finger with a tack-hammer and blames his wife for
it a month later; one man’s goose gets in a neighbor’s garden and is
killed--perhaps served him right--and yet they are sworn enemies for
five years later; and not until some child is rescued from a burning
building or a mad dog, by the enemy neighbor do the two know how
pleasant and useful it is to dwell in harmony.
Families who have been estranged for years are some day--ah, some
day!--called to look into the sightless eyes that once flashed in
anger, or lay away in its earthy home the form they shunned for some
trifling answer in a passion. If we knew how soon, how cautious we
would be! Life is so short to quarrel and make up in; they who quarrel
may never make up.
_Don’t marry in fun._ Be in earnest about a matter of so much moment.
It may seem funny to a lot of girls out on a sleigh-ride to call in
some one and wind up an escapade by a double wedding; but few of such
marriages ever end well.
Sudden and ill-considered matches are mismatches. You may have a
mother, a sister, or a family to consult; then the old-fashioned way is
the best. It’s a left-handed marriage at best that will not allow the
forms used for ages to strengthen its solemnity.
Let the world know by open dealing that you have married above any
secrecy, elopement, or underhanded fashion. Be brave enough to follow
the form of society in a manner that concerns every neighbor and every
relative.
Marry at home or at church, in good form, without display; marry
according to the best usage of the best people, and you will reap some
benefit from the sensible conclusion.
_Don’t marry without an eye to comfort._ A man that expects to live
thirty years or more with a partner will investigate his likes and
dislikes; so should a woman. Are you ready to attend a cattle ranch and
brave the frontier? Then look the matter clearly in the face at the
first hint of the man’s proposal who expects it.
Do you prefer the city to the country? Look to the earliest
opportunity. Can you endure a soldier’s absence, or wait for an
explorer? or will you prefer a domestic relation that brings you both
under one roof daily? These questions should be answered soon enough
to prevent regret, remorse, or separation. The greatest of all dangers
in marriage is the color-blindness of lovers: they never use but one
color--rose color--till a few weeks after the wedding.
_Don’t spurn a man for his poverty._ “Prosperity is the parent of
friends; misfortune is the fire by which they are tried.” One may be
poor by an honest failure, another may be rich on ill-gotten gains.
The first the lord of honor, the last a prosperous knave.
“I would give it all willingly and work by the day if we could be
placed back where we were, and be free from the worry and dread and
anxiety,” said a rich man’s wife to a waiting friend by her sick
bedside.
Who does not know of poor, plain boys who endured the poverty of youth,
struggled with their studies, carved out a fortune as from flinty
marble, and enjoyed it in maturer years, all the more for the effort
it cost them, all the more likely to last and continue to bless other
generations?
Franklin commenced poor with a penny loaf; Greeley was homely and
awkward. Few would have looked for Lincoln’s rise. Giddings and Collier
and Garfield all started low on the ladder, and ended high in honor and
worthy of any woman’s affection.
If we could only get near enough to Genius to comprehend its superior
worth; if we could reverence talent and admire integrity and take true
measure of prospective greatness, what a fortune we would possess!
Like high-priced lots in large cities, the discoverers of rare
locations seldom knew the value of their purchases. It takes time for
development; more time in genius and character than we are always ready
to wait for; but the far-seeing are always rewarded, so with the prizes
of matrimony.
_Don’t marry and expect a husband to be wealthy while young._ Only the
older men should be looked to for high financial standing. In a hopeful
country like ours, few are rich under fifty, seldom under sixty.
Young men who earn their education, and begin and learn a business are
barely partners at thirty or thirty-five. It takes time to prosper.
Several mistakes may be made. Scarcely a wholesale house in New York
or Boston has run on twenty years without a failure. Failure is the
rule, success the exception. Patience, pluck, and perseverance win the
victory, but they who spend freely in the forenoon have little left in
the evening. Those who save early double in like ratio later on.
_Don’t marry in opposite religious views._ If possible, marry near
your own belief. This may seem strained, but the story of divorces
will confirm its wisdom. Children and parents very often disagree on
religious subjects. The farmer’s “Betsey and I are out” controversy,
“was a difference in our creed. And the more we argued the matter, the
less we ever agreed.”
It is pleasant to agree on a subject so vital in families, more
especially so in Protestant and Catholic families, where education is
sometimes controlled by church government, and marriages are held
illegal in one church if not solemnized by its forms and between
regular believers in its faith and doctrines.
_Don’t marry a duke_, or any man who travels on his title. The most of
such men are very common, and the most of young people who seek their
company are sold, deceived, and seriously disappointed.
They expect a fortune to begin with, and will be the most exacting
of all mortals. This is a mere matter of birth and surroundings.
Novels tell many beautiful stories (pretty visions) about brave and
noble dukes and their princely palaces, attentive servants, and
flower-arbors. Experience tells far different stories.
The history of nine out of ten of such unnatural unions is a record
of a half million or so squandered on a petted daughter to satisfy a
mother’s ambition, and ending in misery entailed by the dearly bought
purchase. Don’t marry so much out of rank as to be a burden, or carry a
burden.
_Do marry a man that you can look up to_, and see that he can
do likewise. There are plenty of farmers, mechanics, merchants,
conductors, doctors, lawyers, and men of general business, who are
worthy, trusty, generous, noble, and will make excellent husbands.
Seek them out from their character, their conduct at home, their
treatment of sisters and mothers, their devotion to business and
adherence to principle. Show them that you trust them. Be ready to
marry. Become accomplished and useful. Make yourself worthy of a home,
and know how to manage it with skill and kindness. Loving natures are
not long neglected. The worn-out belles and women who fade and wither,
and die snappish and single, were insincere, or lacked some quality of
winning manners.
_Do marry a President._ That is the correct form now. It’s so romantic.
Waive all the hints of other objections,--age, love, spite, money, and
the like. Get a President,--just for the position, you know!
Then all the little jewels and diamonds and presents will come rolling
in like flowers to a favorite singer. All little objections vanish in
the presence of a President. He must be suited to any condition of
beauty, genius, or intellect. Don’t refuse a President’s offer; you may
never get but one such in a lifetime.
_Do marry a plain man._ Just a plain, common-sense man; be he banker,
lawyer, doctor, farmer, builder, merchant, so he is a man; for manhood
is at a premium to-day in home life! The world is full to overflowing
with brilliant men. Public offices are public trusts, and all that such
responsibility implies, and there are women in stations where the word
home has very little meaning, and other women who long for the quiet
and comfort of true domestic life away from the cares of office and the
demands of lofty stations.
Two of the things that lead to greatest misery of the masses to-day are
over-ambition and reckless marriages.
_Don’t coax a woman to love you._ If you wish to win, that is certainly
the wrong way. If they have any notion of it, you are in the opposite
direction of success.
Women despise a fawning, cringing nature. “Fortune and women, born to
be controlled, stoop to the forward and the bold.”
A far more sensible way to win will be by indifference. Show enough
willingness to reassure her, and enough courage to act manly.
Ten to one you have mistaken her temper by lack of frankness. Nothing
is more touching than truth. If you are really bent on marrying and
have told the right person the whole story, earnestly and truthfully,
the answer should be decisive.
Keen dealers seldom banter; they may hesitate, they may explain their
wants and wishes, they never parley very long or express much anxiety
to strike a bargain.
_Winning a wife or a lover is a rare art._ To be worthy of either
is the first essential. It is better to be worthy of it than to be
President and unworthy.
It must be consoling even to a jilted lover to feel that he is superior
to the one successful. The next thing to being worthy is being ready.
Many a youth begins driving, sleighing, and dressing for society who
pays his clothing bills by instalments, and whose salary is wholly
unequal to his outlay.
Fairness demands that a girl in marrying should better her condition.
How can one expect her to marry into misery?
Chesterfield quotes an old Spanish saying of great force and aptness:
“It is the beginning that costs in everything. The first step over, the
rest is easy.”
_Don’t marry recklessly._ Before two or more men form a partnership,
they learn each other’s means of furthering the business to be engaged
in; the confidence that each is worthy of, the skill, attention, etc.,
each can give, and the prospects of a mutual agreement and prosperity.
Without some inquiry on these vital requisites, no company concern
would be founded. It would be a foolish investment to purchase goods
and fit up stores or warehouses without some forecast of results; and
yet this is precisely in the line of marriage.
Partnerships are business marriages. It is not best to be too cool and
calculating about it; one caution may let another take the venture and
draw the premium. But some common-sense may as well be mixed with a
matter so vital as a life-long engagement.
Firms are limited to a few years; marriages are unlimited save by
death, or divorce, for over a third of a century, on an average. While
it is very difficult to tell whom to marry,--for no one can foresee
your circumstances,--still, it is well to mention a large class that no
one should marry, at least till all others are no longer accessible.
If one could foresee the extent of happiness depending on this
selection of partners, if he would take a simple business caution
and investigate enough to be considerate, he might save society from
disgrace and himself from lasting misery. For the fact is, that the
most glaring of all our American evils is the looseness of marriage
ties, and the misery it entails on domestic relations.
If these hints or reminders should induce one woman to avoid a bad
marriage, and one man to contract a good one, or save a long quarrel,
or keep families in harmony, or help some poor bashful fellow to gain
his Yes by a sensible proposal, the time in reading will be well spent,
the trifling cost will be a splendid investment.
ROMANTIC MARRIAGES.
Caroline Crofton had completed her course at Vassar, one of its
earliest graduates, and one of the most brilliant in her class of
thirty odd young New England, graceful, gifted, and generous girls,
that have long been noted for their purity of principles and perfection
of character. She was smaller than her classmates, an only daughter of
Judge Crofton, whose manner and training marked him as a classical,
refined, and upright gentleman, and a dignified and just judge.
All that culture could impart, or character add to the graces of
nature, was bestowed upon Caroline, who never assumed the fashion of
shortening her name by fancy contractions. Carline was the shortest
way of calling her, and this was not a favorite with her mother. From
her father she inherited the qualities ascribed to her, while her
mother, like a clinging vine wound around the oak, was of a trusting,
lovable, nature, of darker hair and eyes than the Judge; and the two
mingled in the daughter, and formed a slender figure and a graceful
form, an ardent, lovable character, as one could easily discover.
Diligent by nature and proud of her progress in early studies, Caroline
had entered Vassar’s advanced classes and employed all her energy to
excel in each department.
She literally lived in her books for four full years, to the exclusion
of modes, society, or even the newspapers; her one ambition seemed
ever to be excellence, and when the graduating day arrived, and the
long row in white were seated in breathless awe to read their papers
and receive their reward, something more than a common interest was
awakened.
Such are the days when young men of wealth and ambition, and poorer
men with an eye to the beautiful, come in and listen to the overdrawn
pictures of school-girls’ first productions.
The theme of Caroline Crofton was “Pioneers;” how they had founded
our government in the little log school-houses of New England, in
the sixteenth century; how they had established their town meetings
and voting precincts; how they had gradually driven back the Indians
(“noble redmen”) from the rich, fertile valley of the Mohawk in New
York, cleared away the underbrush from the fertile plains of Northern
Ohio and Pennsylvania, and boldly evaded the massive pineries of
bleak, cold Northern Michigan; dauntlessly, fearlessly, and bravely
establishing schools and churches in the very midst of Indian huts and
wigwams, taking their lives in their hands, to improve and populate a
great and growing nation; and how wonderfully they had all prospered.
In her vivid and graphic picture of a fruitful theme (a theme learned
from books and stories), she dwelt on the part that mothers had borne,
and brothers were bearing, in this tide of prosperity and improvement,
till tear-drops came fast to the earnest eyes of the old gray-haired
professors, who were judges, and many a mother’s heart leaped with
joyous pride at the mention of brave sons battling with the Western
wilderness, for their sons were among them.
Caroline Crofton could feel the hush of silence, always such applause
as is irresistible; she could feel the emotion, and conveyed that
emotion to her audience; she forgot herself, forgot her hearers,
and read with a girlish animation born of deep-seated belief in the
grandeur of the theme she advocated. Round after round of applause
greeted her conclusion, and she staggered to her seat literally
overcome by the brilliant effort which resulted in a handsomely
inscribed medal as first of her class of Vassar.
Whether the influence of that essay on the mind of Caroline, or its
greater influence on Cyrus Arthur (a newly arrived resident of Vassar)
was the most potent means of a quick acquaintance between them, is not
well known to the writers; certain it is that an early friendship soon
refined into affection, and meagre inquiries into his character being
satisfactory to Caroline, he was promptly admitted as a suitor at the
dignified household of Judge Crofton, on the banks of the beautiful St.
Lawrence. The Judge was led to believe that a long acquaintance had
ripened between schoolmates, when in fact it was a love at first sight
affair, and on very little consideration.
That these young and ambitious lovers enjoyed all that is allotted
to their class is forever a secret, for their after-life reveals but
little of its mystery. Their after-life was a struggle for bread first,
and position soon after. They really put off living, very foolishly.