Complete. From “Ourselves and Our Neighbors.”
I HAVE been turning over the leaves of an old book, written before I was born, and which was familiar to my childhood, and I have come upon the following extremely sensible remark:—
| “What a pity it is that the thousandth chance of a gentleman’s becoming your lover should deprive you of the pleasure of a free, unembarrassed, intellectual intercourse with the single men of your acquaintance.” |
The pity of it is that the Girl of the Period so often has no desire for this unembarrassed and sensible friendship, and values the men she knows only in proportion as they minister to her pleasure or her vanity. And this superficial and unreal valuation prevents her from getting honestly and thoroughly acquainted with any man,—from seeing him as he is seen by his own womankind, or as he would show himself in the stress and strain of real life, with its vital interests and stern realities, when the heydey and playday of youth should be over.
That any other motives should enter into marriage than that noble and well-founded love which can safely promise to be faithful unto death—because to be unfaithful would be as impossible to it as for a mother’s heart to turn from her child—is one of the saddest features of our boasted civilization; but we see interested and mercenary marriages every day, and it would be idle to say they were the rare exception. If all girls and all young men could be impressed, not only with the sacredness of marriage, but with a profound sense of its importance in the growth of character, its influence, for good or evil, on their whole natures and their whole careers, they would be less ready to enter into its obligations carelessly, and we should see less of the frivolity of flirtation, the vulgarity of husband seeking.
To my thinking, Love is the most sacred of heaven’s gifts, and should be waited for as reverently as the descent of the Holy Ghost. Matrimony may, indeed, be a means of grace, even when it is as unhappy as was the marriage of that pair on whose tombstone, in a New Hampshire churchyard, appreciative neighbors sculptured, for epitaph:—
| “Their Warfare Is Over,” |
Some blunders will, of course, be made in the purest good faith. Plenty of foolish girls will mistake for love their own enjoyment of admiration and pleasure in being loved, and plenty of young men will mistake for something sacred and eternal the transient stir of fancy awakened by a pretty face or a taking manner. If marriages are born of these delusions, the error is to be pitied and not despised; yet from the lifelong penalty of such a blunder can no man or woman hope wholly to escape. Though the best joys of life may thus have been lost, its burdens can still be borne with dignity, while self-respect remains unchallenged. But can that girl respect herself who deliberately, and of set purpose, tries to attract a man simply because he is a good match; or that young man who seeks a girl because through her he hopes to add to his own resources by some gain in family, or wealth, or political influence?
It is to the “marriage of true minds” that Shakespeare bids us to “admit no impediments”; and it is only such a marriage—born, on either side, of the perception of and love for the inmost soul of the real human creature to whom one is drawn by force of spiritual and mental attraction—that has any claim on our admiration, however we may accord to a more imperfect bond our pardon or our pity.
Were this lofty ideal of marriage constantly kept before the minds of young people as the only desirable thing, I think society would be immeasurably dignified by it. A girl with Una-like purity and that sensitive perception of truth and refinement which belongs to purity would never be sufficiently attracted by a false and evil man to be in danger of harm from the association; and the young man, however unskilled in the world’s wiles, who held in his heart a shy and sacred worship for that “not impossible she,” who could really command the homage of his mind and soul, would be as safe as Sir Galahad from any Fay Vivian of them all.
But what of the undeveloped and unaspiring minds and souls who have hardly discovered that they have any mental or spiritual needs, but who know very well that they have human hearts to need comfort, human longings to fulfill? Shall they be shut out from love and marriage because they cannot talk about ethics, and are hardly aware that they have any intellects at all?
By no means. As Browning says in “Evelyn Hope,” “delayed it may be for more lives yet, ere the time be come” for them to live completely, but at least it is in their power to live sincerely. They know the difference between love and interest; they know whether this woman or this man is honestly nearer and dearer than all the rest of the world; whether they are seeking a mate by reason of absolute, inherent attraction, or for any worldly, and therefore unworthy, motive whatever. There have been noble and honorable and faithful marriages often enough among people who could not write their own names, but whose hearts were absolutely loyal and sound to the core.
Marriage, it seems to me, should be waited for, not sought. Who knows round what corner his destiny may be hiding,—at what unexpected turn he may come upon the face above all the faces for him? To put aside as far as possible the thought of marriage until compelled to think of it by some strong and special attraction toward some special person is wiser than to be seeking in every chance acquaintance the possible husband or wife. “We shall meet the people who are coming to meet us,” no matter in what far-off land their journey toward us begins.
Perhaps parents are more to blame for worldly marriages than we are apt to think. How constantly we hear the term “married well” applied, not to character or congeniality or true fitness, but to a comfortable income. And yet there is something to be said for “the stern parent” of the novels, with his “hard facts.” The old adage that “when Poverty comes in at the door Love flies out of the window” is true only of small and poor natures,—natures incapable of a great love; but it is nevertheless true that to be loved it is necessary to be lovely, and that it is far more difficult to be lovely when we are hard pressed by want and rendered fretful by care and overwork. Human creatures cannot build their nests as inexpensively as the birds do; and not even the scant hospitality of homestead eaves or orchard boughs awaits their fledglings. To marry for money, or for any object whatever save and except immortal and all-powerful Love, is to perjure and debase the human heart; but to marry without some provision for the future, such as money, or money’s worth in a well-furnished mind and a capacity for skilled labor, is to defy common sense and invoke the evil fates.
