5. WHOM TO CHOOSE FOR A HUSBAND.--The choice of a husband requires the coolest judgment and the most vigilant sagacity. A true union based on organic law is happiness, but let all remember that oil and water will not mix: the lion will not lie down with the lamb, nor can ill-a.s.sorted marriages be productive of aught but discord.
"Let the woman take An elder than herself, so wears she to him-- So sways she, rules in her husband"s heart."
Look carefully at the disposition.--See that your intended Spouse is kind-hearted, generous, and willing to respect the opinions of others, though not in sympathy with them. Don"t marry a selfish tyrant who thinks only of himself.
6. BE CAREFUL.--Don"t marry an intemperate man with a view of reforming him. Thousands have tried it and failed. Misery, sorrow and a very h.e.l.l on earth have been the consequences of too many such generous undertakings.
7. THE TRUE AND ONLY TEST which any man should look for in woman is modesty in demeanor before marriage, absence both of a.s.sumed ignorance and disagreeable familiarity, and a pure and religious frame of mind.
Where these are present, he need not doubt that he has a faithful and a chaste wife.
8. MARRYING FIRST COUSINS is dangerous to offspring. The observation is universal, the children of married first cousins are too often idiots, insane, clump-footed, crippled, blind, or variously diseased.
First cousins are always sure to impart all the hereditary disease in both families to their children. If both are healthy there is less danger.
9. DO NOT CHOOSE ONE TOO GOOD, or too far above you, lest the inferior dissatisfying the superior, breed those discords which are worse than the trials of a single life. Don"t be too particular; for you might go farther and fare worse. As far as you yourself are faulty, you should put up with faults. Don"t cheat a consort by getting one much better than you can give. We are not in heaven yet, and must put up with their imperfections, and instead of grumbling at them, be glad they are no worse; remembering that a faulty one is a great deal better than none, if he loves you.
10. MARRYING FOR MONEY.--Those who seek only the society of those who can boast of wealth will nine times out of ten suffer disappointment.
Wealth cannot manufacture true love nor money buy domestic happiness.
Marry because you love each other, and G.o.d will bless your home. A cottage with a loving wife is worth more than a royal palace with a discontented and unloving queen.
11. DIFFERENCE IN AGE.--It is generally admitted that the husband should be a few years older than the wife. The question seems to be how much difference. Up to twenty-two those who propose marriage should be about the same age; however, other things being equal, a difference of fifteen years after the younger is twenty-five, need not prevent a marriage. A man of forty-five may marry a woman of twenty-five much more safely than one of thirty a girl below nineteen, because her mental s.e.xuality is not as mature as his, and again her natural coyness requires more delicate and affectionate treatment than he is likely to bestow. A girl of twenty or under should seldom if ever marry a man of thirty or over, because the love of an elderly man for a girl is more parental than conjugal; while hers for him is like that of a daughter to a father. He may pet, flatter and indulge her as he would a grown-up daughter, yet all this is not genuine masculine and feminine love, nor can she exert over him the influence every man requires from his wife.
12. THE BEST TIME.--All things considered, we advise the male reader to keep his desires in check till he is at least twenty-five, and the female not to enter the pale of wedlock until she has attained the age of twenty. After those periods, marriage is the proper sphere of action, and one in which nearly every individual is called by nature to play his proper part.
13. SELECT CAREFULLY.--While character, health, accomplishments and social position should be considered, yet one must not overlook mental construction and physical conformation. The rule always to be followed in choosing a life partner is _ident.i.ty of taste and diversity of temperament_. Another essential is that they be physically adapted to each other. For example: The pelvis--that part of the anatomy containing all the internal organs of gestation--is not only essential to beauty and symmetry, but is a matter of vital importance to her who contemplates matrimony, and its usual consequences. Therefore, the woman with a very narrow and contracted pelvis should never choose a man of giant physical development lest they cannot duly realize the most important of the enjoyments of the marriage state, while the birth of large infants will impose upon her intense labor pains, or even cost her her life.
[Ill.u.s.tration: EXPLAINING THE NEED OF A NEW HAT.]
CHOOSE INTELLECTUALLY--LOVE AFTERWARD.
1. LOVE.--Let it ever be remembered that love is one of the most sacred elements of our nature, and the most dangerous with which to tamper. It is a very beautiful and delicately contrived faculty, producing the most delightful results, but easily thrown out of repair--like a tender plant, the delicate fibers of which incline gradually to entwine themselves around its beloved one, uniting two willing hearts by a thousand endearing ties, and making of "twain one flesh": but they are easily torn asunder, and then adieu to the joys of connubial bliss!
2. COURTING BY THE QUARTER.--This courting by the quarter, "here a little and there a little," is one of the greatest evils of the day.
This getting a little in love with Julia, and then a little with Eliza, and a little more with Mary,--this fashionable flirtation and coquetry of both s.e.xes--is ruinous to the domestic affections; besides, effectually preventing the formation of true connubial love.
I consider this dissipation of the affections one of the greatest sins against Heaven, ourselves, and the one trifled with, that can be committed.
3. FRITTERING AWAY AFFECTIONS.--Young men commence courting long before they think of marrying, and where they entertain no thoughts of marriage. They fritter away their own affections, and pride themselves on their conquests over the female heart; triumphing in having so nicely fooled them. They pursue this sinful course so far as to drive their pitiable victims, one after another, from respectable society, who, becoming disgraced, retaliate by heaping upon them all the indignities and impositions which the fertile imagination of woman can invent or execute.
4. COURTING WITHOUT INTENDING TO MARRY.--Nearly all this wide-spread crime and suffering connected with public and private licentiousness and prost.i.tution, has its origin in these unmeaning courtships--this premature love--this blighting of the affections, and every young man who courts without intending to marry, is throwing himself or his sweet-heart into _this h.e.l.l upon earth._ And most of the blame rests on young men, because they take the liberty of paying their addresses to the ladies and discontinuing them, at pleasure, and thereby mainly cause this vice.
5. SETTING THEIR CAPS.--True, young ladies sometimes "set their caps,"
sometimes court very hard by their bewitching smiles and affectionate manners; by the natural language of love, or that backward reclining and affectionate roll of the head which expresses it; by their soft and persuasive accents; by their low dresses, artificial forms, and many other unnatural and affected ways and means of attracting attention and exciting love; but women never court till they have been in love and experienced its interruption, till their first and most tender fibres of love have been frost-bitten by disappointment. It is surely a sad condition of society.
[Ill.u.s.tration: MOTHERHOOD.]
6. TRAMPLING THE AFFECTIONS OF WOMEN.--But man is a self-privileged character. He may not only violate the laws of his own social nature with impunity, but he may even trample upon the affections of woman.
He may even carry this sinful indulgence to almost any length, and yet be caressed and smiled tenderly upon by woman; aye, even by virtuous woman. He may call out, only to blast the glowing affections of one young lady after another, and yet his addresses be cordially welcomed by others. Surely a gentleman is at perfect liberty to pay his addresses, not only to a lady, but even to the ladies, although he does not once entertain the thought of marrying his sweet-heart, or, rather his victim. O, man, how depraved! O, woman, how strangely blind to your own rights and interests!
7. AN INFALLIBLE SIGN.--An infallible sign that a young man"s intentions are improper, is his trying to excite your pa.s.sions. If he loves you, he will never appeal to that feeling, because he respects you too much for that. And the woman who allows a man to take advantage of her just to compel him to marry her, is lost and heartless in the last degree, and utterly dest.i.tute of moral principle as well as virtue. A woman"s riches is her virtue, that gone she has lost all.
8. THE BEGINNING OF LICENTIOUSNESS.--Man it seldom drives from society. Do what he may, woman, aye, virtuous and even pious woman rarely excludes him from her list of visitors. But where is the point of propriety?--immoral transgression should exclude either s.e.x from respectable society. Is it that one false step which now const.i.tutes the boundary between virtue and vice? Or rather, the discovery of that false step? Certainly not! but it is all that leads to, and precedes and induces it. It is this courting without marrying. This is the beginning of licentiousness, as well as its main, procuring cause, and therefore infinitely worse than its consummation merely.
9. SEARING THE SOCIAL AFFECTIONS.--He has seared his social affections so deeply, so thoroughly, so effectually, that when, at last, he wishes to marry, he is incapable of loving. He marries, but is necessarily cold-hearted towards his wife, which of course renders her wretched, if not jealous, and reverses the faculties of both towards each other; making both most miserable for life. This induces contention and mutual recrimination, if not unfaithfulness, and imbitters the marriage relations through life; and well it may.
10. UNHAPPY MARRIAGES.--This very cause, besides inducing most of that unblushing public and private prost.i.tution already alluded to, renders a large proportion of the marriages of the present day unhappy. Good people mourn over the result, but do not once dream of its cause. They even pray for moral reform, yet do the very things that increase the evil.
11. WEEPING OVER HER FALLEN SON.--Do you see yonder G.o.dly mother, weeping over her fallen son, and remonstrating with him in tones of a mother"s tenderness and importunity? That very mother prevented that very son marrying the girl he dearly loved, because she was poor, and this interruption of his love was the direct and procuring cause of his ruin; for, if she had allowed him to marry this beloved one, he never would have thought of giving his "strength unto strange women." True, the mother ruined her son ignorantly, but none the less effectually.
12. SEDUCTION AND RUIN.--That son next courts another virtuous fair one, engages her affections, and ruins her, or else leaves her broken-hearted, so that she is the more easily ruined by others, and thus prepares the way for her becoming an inmate of a house "whose steps take hold on h.e.l.l." His heart is now indifferent, he is ready for anything.
13. THE RIGHT PRINCIPLE.--I say then, with emphasis, that no man should ever pay his addresses to any woman, until he has made his selection, not even to aid him in making that choice. He should first make his selection intellectually, and love afterward. He should go about the matter coolly and with judgment, just as he would undertake any other important matter. No man or woman, when blinded by love, is in a fit state to judge advantageously as to what he or she requires, or who is adapted to his or her wants.
14. CHOOSING FIRST AND LOVING AFTERWARDS.--I know, indeed, that this doctrine of choosing first and loving afterward, of excluding love from the councils, and of choosing by and with the consent of the intellect and moral sentiments, is entirely at variance with the feelings of the young and the customs of society; but, for its correctness, I appeal to the common-sense--not to the experience, for so few try this plan. Is not this the only proper method, and the one most likely to result happily? Try it.
15. THE YOUNG WOMAN"S CAUTION.--And, especially, let no young lady ever once think of bestowing her affections till she is certain they will not be broken off--that is, until the match is fully agreed upon, but rather let her keep her heart whole till she bestows it for life.
This requisition is as much more important, and its violation as much more disastrous to woman than to man, as her social faculties are stronger than his.
16. A BURNT CHILD DREADS THE FIRE.--As a "burnt child dreads the fire," and the more it is burnt, the greater the dread: so your affections, once interrupted, will recoil from a second love, and distrust all mankind. No! you cannot be too choice of your love--that pivot on which turn your destinies for life and future happiness.
[Ill.u.s.tration: AFTER THE ENGAGEMENT.]
LOVE-SPATS.
Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth.
--SHAKESPEARE.
"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor h.e.l.l a fury like a woman scorned."--CONGREVE.
"Thunderstorms clear the atmosphere and promote vegetation; then why not Love-spats promote love, as they certainly often do?"
"They are almost universal, and in the nature of our differences cannot be helped. The more two love, the more they are aggrieved by each other"s faults; of which these spats are but the correction."
"Love-spats instead of being universal, they are consequent on imperfect love, and only aggravate, never correct errors. s.e.xual storms never improve, whereas love obviates faults by praising the opposite virtues. Every view of them, practical and philosophical, condemns them as being to love what poison is to health, both before and after marriage. They are nothing but married discords. Every law of mind and love condemns them. Shun them as you would deadly vipers, and prevent them by forestallment."--O.S. Fowler.
1. THE TRUE FACTS.--Notwithstanding some of the above quotations, to the contrary, trouble and disagreement between lovers embitters both love and life. Contention is always dangerous, and will beget alienation if not final separation.
2. CONFIRMED AFFECTIONS.--Where affections are once thoroughly confirmed, each one should be very careful in taking offense, and avoid all disagreements as far as possible, but if disagreements continually develop with more or less friction and irritation, it is better for the crisis to come and a final separation take place. For peace is better than disunited love.
3. HATE-SPATS.--Hate-spats, though experienced by most lovers, yet, few realize how fatal they are to subsequent affections. Love-spats develop into hate-spats, and their effects upon the affections are blighting and should not under any circ.u.mstances be tolerated. Either agree, or agree to disagree. If there cannot be harmony before the ties of marriage are a.s.sumed, then there cannot be harmony after.
Married life will be continually marred by a series of "hate-spats"