Complete. From “Ourselves and Our Neighbors.”

I HAVE spoken of the only true and right motive for marriage, and venture to air my own opinion that marriage should not be too eagerly sought by either sex, but rather waited for until the certainty has come that one loves worthily and well. I mean that for a man to say to himself, in cold blood, that it is time he should marry, and for that reason to look about for a wife,—instead of being aware that he loves and therefore desires to marry the one beloved woman,—is to my thinking as unwise and in almost as poor taste as for a girl to discover that it is time she were settled in life, and in consequence to set about trying to attract a husband. In neither case is happiness in marriage likely to be the result of such a quest.

  But let us suppose that a man’s heart has really been touched, and he honestly believes that he has seen the one woman who could insure his happiness and make his life complete,—then I think he may still be in danger of imperiling his success by too great rashness. It is true that a girl does not like a timid or cowardly wooer; but if she be the “perfect woman, nobly planned,” whom the poets have taught us to desire, she is not to be taken by storm, and a man must give her time to know her own mind. She must have found in her own girlish heart the “yes” he craves before he question her too rudely; or he may receive, instead, a “no” which might have ripened into “yes” under fostering and delaying suns.

  There is no danger that he will not show what he feels without direct words, even were he ever so much resolved to keep silence. There is an atmosphere about love which makes itself felt. “All the world loves a lover,” wrote Emerson; and, by the way, no one has more fully expressed the beauty and mystery of love than this same philosopher of Concord, who stands to so many for a sort of severe incarnation of abstract thought, instead of what he was,—a lofty human soul instinct with the fullest life of humanity. “All the world loves a lover”; and our lover, whose lips are still silent, speaks none the less eloquently in a thousand varying ways.

  As a rule, a delicate woman does not think of a man as a lover, or even know whether she could care for him in that capacity or not, until she has received some impression of his special interest in her. Then she begins to consider him. Does a long talk with him bore or delight her? Does she find herself talking to him freely, or entertaining him with an effort? Is the festive occasion from which he is absent robbed of some portion of its brightness? Does she “see his face, all faces among”—catch his voice, though a dozen are speaking? Then, unconsciously, do her cheeks begin to glow at his coming. In her eyes smiles a welcome, timid yet sweet; and the reverent, waiting lover may speak safely, for his time has come.

  He has a theory, perhaps, that he should first ask her father’s consent to address her, but it is one of those theories mostly kept for show and seldom acted upon. The man who really loves is most likely to be surprised by some unexpected opportunity,—to speak before he quite knows what words are on his tongue. Then, should fortune have favored his suit, he goes to the dreaded paternal interview strengthened for the ordeal—the bad half-hour that it means to most men—by the knowledge that he is beloved.

  It is a debatable question how far a father has a right to refuse his consent to a prayer to which his daughter has said Amen. If she is too young to know her own mind, he may, surely, insist on delay. If there is anything really wrong and ignoble in a suitor’s character, he will point it out and use his influence and even his authority—so far as authority in such a case can avail—to prevent the marriage. But if it is a mere question of personal prejudice or of worldly policy, and a girl is old enough to be quite sure of herself, it seems to me that a parent has hardly a right to interfere, and that a daughter is not compelled to accept a decision based upon prejudice or ambition.

  On the other hand, a girl cannot too carefully consider the objections made by her father. It is not probable that a parent who has filled his daughter’s life with proofs of love and devotion will seek to cross her in the dearest wish of her heart, without what seem to him good reasons; and to an unprejudiced mind it seems quite possible that a man of fifty should be as good a judge of character and of mutual suitability and the chances for happiness as a girl of twenty.

  Yet, when all has been said, “the soul has certain inalienable rights, and the first of these is love”; and where love is true and strong, I do not believe that any parent has a right to cross it save on account of some grave defect of moral character. “Gods and men” would justify a father who should refuse his daughter to a gambler or a drunkard, or a man of known evil life in any direction. She herself would doubtless live to be grateful; or if she died, it were better to die unstained by such an association.

  Let us consider the happier cases, in which the course of true love meets with no such formidable obstacles, where parents have consented and friends approved and all goes merry as a marriage bell.

  Then let the betrothed pair beware lest love should become what a French cynic has called it,—“selfishness for two.” Surely the influence of a great and holy joy should be to enlarge the heart and ennoble the life. Surely to be very happy should make one more tender to the sorrowful. There is a great temptation to lovers to withdraw themselves from other interests, to make the parents and brothers and sisters who have loved a girl all her life feel that they are no longer necessary to her; that her heart is gone from them while her presence is in their midst. But it would be a nobler love, and one that, to my thinking, would promise more for future happiness, which should only hold the old ties more nearly and dearly because of this new one dearer than them all; which would be sedulous to spare the home circle any slight, any sense of loss, beyond the inevitable one of parted presence. Love is the best gift of God, but it should be crowned with honor,—a sovereign who exalts his subjects, not a tyrant who debases them. If I were a man I would prefer to marry a girl who would be careful in no least thing to hurt or slight the home hearts she was leaving, who could afford to wait a little even for her happiness rather than grasp it with unseemly eagerness.

  I am old fashioned, you think? No, even now I know of such a love in two young lovers for whom every wind blows good fortune, yet who pause on the threshold of the new, bright life to leave tender memories of their sweet thoughtfulness in the life behind them.