S
o high and holy a title as mother cannot fall too reverently from man's lips. That he might live the mother has gone down into the valley of the shadow of death; that he might thrive she has fed him with willingness from her own weak body, and grown spectre-like as he grew strong and importunate; that he might go among his fellows on an equal footing, she has toiled with his small weak brain teaching him the beginning of his education and tilling "a rank unweeded garden;" that he might have everlasting life, she has instilled into his mind that saving fear of God, which, though he think himself an atheist, will claim the mastery when Death grins by his couch, and grant him a stay of the awful judgment till he may make his peace with a Creator whose mercy endureth forever. Everything a man is he can owe but to his mother; everything he may be in future life has possibly come from her fond intercession, her gentle admonitions. "Unhappy is the man for whom his own mother has not made all other mothers venerable," says Richter. "The future destiny of the child,"
SAYS NAPOLEON,
"is always the work of the mother," and it is certain that he had ample reason in his own remarkable career for making this important admission. He inherited from his mother all those attributes which made him great, and owed his sudden downfall to none of her teachings. She was noted for her sagacity and prudence, but possibly it required more than human sagacity and prudence to balance the mighty impulses which moved Napoleon Bonaparte. "A father may turn his back on his child," says Washington Irving, "brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands; but a mother's love endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world's condemnation, a mother still loves on, and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; still
SHE REMEMBERS THE INFANT SMILES
that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of his childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy." "There is in all this cold and hollow world," says Mrs. Hemans, "no fount of deep, strong, deathless love, save that within a mother's heart." "Even He that died for us upon the cross," says Longfellow, "in the last hour, in the unutterable agony of death, was mindful of his mother, as if to teach us that this holy love should be our last worldly thought—the last point of earth from which the soul should take its flight for heaven." Who ever saw
A MOTHER ROMPING WITH HER THREE-YEAR-OLD
that did not look upon her as one of the happiest, therefore, necessarily, one of the best of God's creatures? O, in that peek-a-boo, that capturing of that last squealing "pig," the little toe, that paddy-cake opera, is there not the one great bliss of life, to be happy in making others happy? And how the laughter rings through the house! And then the toil and self-denial for the stocking and the tree
AT CHRISTMAS!
Is it any wonder that the child is so easily deceived, and credits all his joys to unseen ministers? It would not be hard to convince the philosopher himself of the dual earthly character of the mother, visibly a woman, invisibly but not the less really to her child, an ethereal spirit of mercy and goodness! What gnaws her cheek and cheats Death into the belief a flag of truce summons him to the final parley? Has not her babe, her hope, been fevered and in pain, and should she sleep lest it should leave her on this world behind, that then would need her not? "Canst bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades?" No more can her anxiety be
FETTERED INTO SLEEP;
no more can her quick ear be deafened to the little wail that echoes pitiful within the chambers of her heart! When we remember the great passion of motherhood, the intensity of the drama, the prolongation into years of its deep interplots, we cannot marvel longer at the perennial, lasting character of the mother's love. Given, the marvel, there is no further marvel. Given life, the scientists say, there is no other problem on this narrow world. And thus the marvel and the mystery never grow less.
MAN ENTERS THE WORLD,
of all animals the most pitiable and weakly. Left to himself he would immediately perish. Extinguish the mother's love and he would at once perish. His growth is by far the slowest of that of all animals, therefore the wisdom of God in so lengthening the tenure of the mother's solicitude. The mighty man who wields the iron halberd which no two people can lift was still a helpless infant, unable to put his own chubby fist into his own mouth! The autocrat who sweeps whole communities into Siberia with a stroke of his pen was ill when his mother was alarmed, was in agony when she was indiscreet with her food! She cannot forget this. It is but yesterday she dried his flesh to keep it sound. It is but yesterday she let him bite his aching gum upon her finger, wishing the ache might go from him to her—hoping that if he gave her pain he would have less. One can well pardon the vanity that would lead a son to insist that his mother should accompany him to
THE EXECUTIVE MANSION OF THE GREAT REPUBLIC,
that she might behold him enter upon the Chief Magistracy of fifty millions of freemen, gained by the first choice of a majority of those freemen, yea, by the unanimous first and second choice, for none so ready to fight for his right to rule as he who yesterday voted for an honored opponent—the very summit of true political ambition—the apex of the mother's boldest hope! "The mother's love is indeed the golden link that binds youth to old age," says Bovee; "and he is still but a child, however time may have furrowed his cheek, or silvered his brow, who can yet recall, with a softened heart, the fond devotion, or the gentle chidings, of
THE BEST FRIEND
that God ever gives us!" I knew an aged woman, who interested me very greatly in tales of "her boy"—that good son who had so often proven his gratitude for her long love. One day, chancing to consider her great number of years, I inquired how old "her boy" was, and found that he had been a grandfather for twenty-three years, and had lately had the satisfaction of holding a great grandson in his arms. Still he was her curly haired-boy—she could remember him in no other condition of life with so much satisfaction.
"I WOULD DESIRE FOR A FRIEND,"
says Lacretelle, "the son who never resisted the tears of his mother." "Love droops, youth fades, the leaves of friendship fall; a mother's secret hope outlives them all," sings Oliver Wendell Holmes. "At first," says Beecher, "babies feed on the mother's bosom, but always on her heart." "Stories first heard at a mother's knee," affirms Ruffini, "are never wholly forgotten—a little spring that never quite dries up in our journey through scorching years."
"AN OUNCE OF MOTHER,"
says the Spanish proverb, "is a pound of clergy." "The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom," says another writer. "Men are what their mothers made them," says Emerson, in study of Napoleon's idea; "you may as well ask a loom which weaves huckabuck why it does not make cashmere, as expect poetry from this engineer, or a chemical discovery from that jobber." "It is generally admitted," says Theodore Hook, "and frequently proved, that virtue and genius, and all the natural good qualities which men possess, are derived from their mothers." "It is well for us," says Bishop Hare, "that we are born babies in intellect. Could we understand half what mothers say and do to their infants, we should be filled with
A CONCEIT OF OUR OWN IMPORTANCE
which would render us insupportable through life. Happy the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to him before he is old enough to know the sense of it." Perhaps the praises of our mothers tarry in our brains too long anyway. It may be a provision of nature that woman shall inspire her child with sufficient self-esteem to take him through the world with a first-class ticket, a cabin passage, that he may escape the poor accommodations of excessive humility, the steerage of the ship of life. It seems incredible that our mother was mistaken in thinking her boys the brightest, best, and most creditable in all the region roundabout! Let us by our lives, marvel rather at the correctness of her vision than the blindness of her love.
"SHE WHO HAS LOST AN INFANT,"
says Leigh Hunt, "is never, as it were, without an infant child. Her other children grow up to manhood and womanhood, and suffer all the changes of mortality; but this one alone is rendered an immortal child; for death has arrested it with his kindly harshness, and blessed it into an eternal image of youth and innocence." The mother teaches us the one grand lesson of
UNALTERABLE FIDELITY.
"Nothing is more noble," says Cicero, "nothing more venerable." One of the most beautiful tributes to an aged mother was written by Lamartine. "The loss of a mother," he says "is always severely felt. Even though her health may incapacitate her from taking an active part in the care of her family, still she is a sweet rallying-point, around which affection and obedience, and a thousand endeavors to please, concentrate; and dreary is the blank when such a point is withdrawn! It is like that lonely star before us; neither its heat nor light are anything to us in themselves; yet the shepherd would feel his heart sad if he missed it when he lifts his eye to the brow of the mountain over which it rises when the sun descends."
THERE ARE MEN WHO FORGET THE CLAIMS
their mothers have upon them. Of such ungrateful wretches, though clothed in outward excellences, the pen can write nothing too harsh in justice. As old Dr. South says, "the greatest favors are to such a one but the motion of a ship upon the waves; they leave no trace, no sign behind them. All kindness descend as showers of rain or rivers of fresh water falling into the main sea; the sea swallows them all, but is not all changed or sweetened by them. If you look backward and trace him up to his original, you will find that he was born so; and if you look forward enough, it is a thousand to one that you will find that
HE ALSO DIES SO.
The thread that nature spins is seldom broken off by anything but death. I do not by this limit the operation of God's grace, for that may do wonders." Be glad, if you are ungrateful, that a wise man has given you so good counsel to pray—and pray as you do when you think yourself in extreme peril!
IF YOUR MOTHER IS YET YOUNG,
you have many years of her great friendship before you. Try and pattern after her boundless affection. Let it melt into your heart and make it warmer. If "age has snowed white hairs" upon her head, treasure her the more fondly during the few swift years she will be left to you. Soon she will go to her reward, and you will be without the only friend of man whose love seems to be inalienable—whose esteem he cannot barter away, either in greed or in vice.
THE MOTHER OF MOTHERS.
In almost every community there is "a mother in Israel," a mother of mothers, whose great heart is like the ocean, and claims the outpourings of every stream of life. To these grand souls of virtue and goodness let every man bow in reverence, for they are mothers to the motherless. When the Reaper came forth to reap he aimed to take the richest sheaf, but lo! the mother in Israel gathered the orphans together, and poured out her tenderness upon them.
picture
love
Had we never loved sae kindly,Had we never loved sae blindly,Never met or never parted,We had ne'er been broken-hearted!—Burns.Dear as remembered kisses after death,And sweet as those for others; deep as love.Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;O Death in Life! the days that are no more.—Tennyson.
L
ove, says Cowley, "is a great passion, and therefore I hope I have done with it." I think most people will agree with this sentiment. Love is such a tyrant, it leaves common sense so little to say, that the majority of people are heartily glad when reason returns to her throne and the thrilling lunacy is a remembrance instead of a fact. The remembrance is sweet, and has no angry thorn, no peremptory mandate. The young man is going along in the full enjoyment of his life, when suddenly a huge coiled spring, the existence of which has not attracted his notice, is loosed in his breast, his whole intellectual forces centre on the attainment of one object, and a mental strain begins which is of the exact nature of madness, and has ever been termed so by people who have looked at things merely by what they have seen. In the highly-feverish state of the brain the nerves of the whole system soon become involved, the stomach refuses to perform its functions, and physical emaciation and deep melancholia rapidly ensue. The obvious reason is the insane state of the brain. Nature has suddenly impressed that organ with the one idea that a certain fair maid is actually without the faults of her associates. She is the prize of the whole world! Had the world the information of her perfections which is lodged in this young man's secret brain, there would be a war of extermination for her possession—a second sack of Troy at the very least. Deep pity for other men with wives, who cannot marry this maiden, and pity for young men who have seemingly preferred other maidens, intermit with joy that all the world has been so blind.
CAUTIOUSLY THE YOUTH ADVANCES
toward his prey. The expedition is one of tremendous importance, therefore his exceeding amount of thought. When he is in the ineffable presence, he is there as an actor in a tragedy, or as a tenor in an opera. He has almost counted his hairs; he certainly counts the winkings of his eyelids! Can any detail be unimportant in an undertaking of such measureless risk? It is no wonder, then, that a young man who is giving as much thought as this to a young, thoughtless girl is not worth much in his business for the time being! In fact, it is a miracle to him, after
SOME DOOMFUL FROWN
from his queen, that he has survived the night and goes to his work at all! He is confident that it is base habit. "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt!" he cries, as his dissatisfied employer, or father, requires some reasonable action and fails to get it. In after-life this same young man is glad the "grand passion" will never come to him again. He feels that it has not heightened him in his own regard. His love may have been smooth or it may have been swallowed in the quicksands of adversity—the difference is small. It is not creditable to the human brain to be so hoodwinked and purblind as Cupid makes his victims. But
LOVE RULES THE UNIVERSE,
having its climax in God himself, and its earthly ideality in the mother's affection. We should not complain that when the potent essence is first administered to us it shakes us seriously. Without this passion, selfishness would triumph, and man would not take on the cares of wedded life. Society and religion would wither. The world would be a howling den of chaos and deep crime.
HOW HAVE THE SAGES LOOKED UPON LOVE?
I think they are inclined to praise it, as a whole—to indorse it merely as a sensation, a passing gratification. It has always, on the contrary, seemed to me like an exquisitely painful means to an exquisitely beautiful end. The warm genial love of the home—the love which is as an open grate, cheerful, and which is without those thunderstorms needful to clear the heavily charged atmosphere of youthful love—pleases and repays me for "the dangers I have passed." "The greatest pleasure of life is love," says Sir William Temple. "Love is like the hunter," says Ralph Waldo Emerson, "who cares not for the game when once caught, which he may have pursued with the most intense and breathless eagerness." This is true of only a minority of the hunters. I have more frequently bought additional fish than thrown away those I have caught. Why? Because the weariness and difficulty of catching two or three rock bass had impressed me with the value of a whole string of fish. You have seen
THE ANXIETY OF THE CAT
to make the captive mouse believe she is not on guard. She walks away with the utmost indifference. But let the mouse so much as move its crushed little body, she is upon it with the ferocity of the greatest members of her agile tribe. So it is with us. Let our possession escape us, our consternation is complete. Again the spring uncoils, and again we are madmen. "A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon than love that would seem hid; love's night is noon," says Shakspeare. "It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all" sings Tennyson. "Nothing but real love," says Lord Lytton, "can repay us for the loss of freedom, the cares and fears of poverty,
THE COLD PITY OF THE WORLD
that we both despise and respect." "Love," says Sir Thomas Overbury, wittily, "is a superstition that doth fear the idol which itself hath made." "To reveal its complacence by gifts," says Mrs. Sigourney, "is one of the native dialects of love." "Love is never so blind as when it is to spy faults," says South. "Love reckons days for years," says Dryden, "and every little absence is an age." "Where love has once obtained an influence," observes Plautus dryly, "any flavoring, I believe, will please." "That is the true reason of love," says Goethe, "when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could either have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way after us."
"NO CORD OR CABLE CAN DRAW
so forcibly or bind so fast," says melancholy Burton, "as love can do with only a single thread." "Where there exists the most ardent and true love," says Valerius Maximus, "it is often better to be united in death than separated in life." "A man of sense may love like a madman," says Rochefoucauld, "but not like a fool." Says Addison, who was a bachelor, and knew little about the heart: "Ridicule, perhaps, is a better expedient against love than sober advice; and I am of the opinion that Hudibras and Don Quixote may be as effectual to cure the extravagance of this passion as any one of the old philosophers." "Love lessens woman's delicacy and increases man's," says Richter. This accords with common observation. "It makes us proud when our love of a mistress is returned," says Hazlitt, in a rambling manner; "it ought to make us prouder still when we can love her for herself alone, without the aid of any such selfish reflection. This is the religion of love." All such argument proceeds on the theory that love is a sawing of wood, a digging of potatoes, or some such "emotion," to be entirely controlled by the will and regulated by the decencies. "Loving," says Shakspeare, "goes by haps; some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps." "The accepted and betrothed lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden, in her acceptance of him," says Emerson, again; "she was heaven whilst he pursued her as a star—she cannot be heaven if she stoops to such a one as he." I do not think Emerson has got exactly the right idea of the way a lover feels just there. Here it is and nearer the truth—I do not know the author's name:
I've thought, if those dumb, heathen gods could breathe,As shapeless, strengthless, wooden things they stand,And feel the holy incense round them wreathe,And see before them offerings of the land;And know that unto them is worship paidFrom pure hearts, kneeling on the verdant sod,Looking to helplessness, for light and aidBecause by fate they know no higher god:How their dull hearts must ache with constant pain,And sense of shame, and fear to be flung downWhen all their weakness must one day be plain,And fire avenge the undeserved crown.And reading my love's letter, sad and sweet, I sigh,Knowing that such a helpless, wooden god am I.
"The comparison of love to fire holds good in one respect," says Henry Home, "that the fiercer it burns the sooner it is extinguished." "Love me little love me long" says Marlowe. "The plainest man, that can convince a woman," says Colton, "that he is really in love with her, has done more to make her in love with him than the handsomest man, if he can produce there is a silence in it that suspends the foot; and the folded arms and the dejected head are the images it reflects." "Love is but another name for that inscrutable presence by which the soul is connected with humanity," says Simms. "The beings who appear cold," says Madame Swetchine, "adore where they dare to love." "Man, while he loves, is never quite depraved," says Charles Lamb. "It is possible," says Terence, referring to the unquestionable temporary insanity of the passion, "that a man can be so changed by love that one could not recognize him to be the same person." "Solid love, whose root is virtue, can no more die, than virtue itself," says Erasmus, who was probably talking about a requited affection.
THE CASE OF THE POET PETRARCH,
who loved another man's wife all his life, simply because he fell in love with her before she married the other fellow, does not strike me as exactly the proper thing, or exactly the manly thing. I like better the Sensible Shepherd of George Wither, who sang jauntily:
Be she fairer than the day,Or the flowery meads in May,
If she be not so to me,What care I how fair she be?
Kill off your love if it be not returned, as though it were a condemned felon. The execution is a painful scene, but the effect on your manhood is good. "True love were very unlovely," says Sir Philip Sidney, "if it were half so deadly as lovers term it!" "There are few people," says Rochefoucauld, "who are not ashamed of their loves when the fit is over." "In love we are all fools alike," says Gay. "We that are true lovers" says Shakspeare, "run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly." "O love," cries LaFontaine, "when thou gettest dominion over us,
WE MAY BID GOOD-BY TO PRUDENCE."
"Love can hope where reason would despair," says Lyttleton. "O love, the beautiful, the brief!" exclaims Schiller. "Love at two-and-twenty is a terribly intoxicating draught," says Ruffini. "At lovers' perjuries they say Jove laughs," smiles Shakspeare. "Where love and wisdom drink out of the same cup, in this everyday world, it is the exception," said Madame Neckar. "The poets, the moralists, the painters, in all their descriptions, allegories, and pictures," says Addison, "have represented love as a soft torment, a bitter sweet, a pleasing pain, or an agreeable distress." "O how this spring of love resembleth the uncertain glory of an April day!
ADIEU, VALOR! RUST, RAPIER!
be still, drum! for your manager is in love; yea, he loveth!" says Shakspeare. "I do much wonder," says the King of Thought, again, "that one man, seeing how much another man is a fool when he dedicates his favor to love, will, after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in others, became the argument of his own scorn, by falling in love."
"LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP EXCLUDE EACH OTHER,"
says DuCoeur. "Love begins by love, and the strongest friendship could only give birth to a feeble love." "Love, which is only an episode in the life of man," says Madame DeStael, "is the entire history of woman's life." "Love is a spaniel," says Colton, "that prefers even punishment from one hand to caresses from another." "A man loved by a beautiful and virtuous woman, carries a talisman that renders him invulnerable," says Madame Dudevant; "everyone feels that such a one's life has a higher value than that of others." "There are no little events with love," says Balzac; "it places in the same scales the fall of an empire and the dropping of a woman's glove." "There's nothing half so sweet in life as love's young dream," says Moore. "Where there is love in the heart," says Beecher, "there are rainbows in the eyes, which cover every black cloud with gorgeous hues." "The greatest happiness of life," says Victor Hugo, "is the conviction that we are loved for ourselves—say,
RATHER IN SPITE OF OURSELVES."
"Love makes its record in deeper colors," says Longfellow, "as we grow out of childhood into manhood; as the Emperors signed their names in green ink when under age, but when of age, in purple." "The heart of a young woman in love is a golden sanctuary," says Paulin Limayrac, "which often enshrines an idol of clay." This thought, the reader can see is a close neighbor of the Boston poet's idea of the "base wooden god," spoken of a while back. "We forgive more faults in love than in friendship," says Henry Home; "expostulations betwixt friends end generally ill, but well betwixt lovers."
"Gold," says Deluzy, "does not satisfy love; it must be paid back in its own coin." "The platform of the altar of love," says Jane Porter, with great accuracy of metaphor, "is constructed of virtue, beauty, and affection; such is the pyre, such the offering; but the ethereal spark must come from heaven that lights the sacrifice." "This passion is," says Dr. South, "the great instrument and engine of nature, the bond and cement of society, the spring and spirit of the universe. It is the whole man wrapped up into one desire, all the power, vigor, and faculties of the soul
ABRIDGED INTO ONE INCLINATION."
"Samson was so tempted," says Shakspeare, "and he had an excellent strength; yet was Solomon so seduced; and he had a very good wit." There has always been one time in a man's life when he felt poets should sing only of this one act in the drama of life. Here is the idea—the same idea we have all had, only dressed in better raiment, for Alexander Smith took great pride in the children of his brain: "Methinks all poets should be gentle, fair, and ever young, and ever beautiful; I would have all poets to be like to this—gold-haired and rosy-lipped, to sing of love." Finally, said the Great Napoleon: "Love is the occupation of the idle man, the amusement of the busy one, and
THE SHIPWRECK OF A SOVEREIGN."
Thus, if we will turn through the pages of our books, we will see everywhere the marks of love upon men's minds. It is a rude bath, which when we have grown more accustomed to the waters, delights and satisfies, and in our sleep our dreams are beautiful. It is natural, and therefore need not be called laudable—though if it were not a part of our development, schools of love would be a necessity, to teach men how to love without scandal in the sight of God.
THE FIRST ATTACK OF LOVE IS RIDICULOUS
to those not acting one of the two parts, yet it is well to remember our own experience. "Love is the fulfilling of the law," says the Bible; "many waters cannot quench it, neither can the floods drown it." Neither can the selfish aim nor the cruel jest of the parent whom it discommodes do aught but fan the flame if God and not folly have truly lighted it. The danger of handling carelessly the fire of the heart is one of the gravest which confront the guardians of younger lives. The switch is fixed; the train is approaching; if you attempt to turn the train you must not only know where it is going after it shall be turned, but you must have the skill to see whether there yet remains time to make the movement with success. A wreck by a switchman is a fearful thing!
courship
"Their Love was like the lava-floodThat burns in Ætna's breast of flame."And when with envy Time, transported,Shall think to rob us of our joys,You'll in your girls again be courted,And I'll go wooing in my boys.—Percy.
O
n flies time, and thus the tale goes on. You are in love with an amiable maiden, and she is pleased. If you could see further into her heart you would find she was idolatrous. But this matter of courtship must have shown you how careless you have been with your money through all those years you might have been hoarding it for this great need. But you did not save your wages, probably, or if you did you are an exceptional young man. You now need money. You should work about fifteen months before you marry. It will be a long, tedious, unpleasant pull, trying to the affections, and it is generally very trying to the health; but it is necessary, and if you have not the persistence to save money for fifteen months, in the meantime quarreling and making up, with all the quarters of the moon, you have not the solidity of citizenship, and will be better unmarried. "Successful love takes a load off our hearts, and puts it upon our shoulders" says Bovee. Square up your shoulders! Get under the load so that you can carry it! The days of responsibility have come. The larger the responsibilities look, the deeper the young man usually loves. The day of the Chicago fire a man put up a pine shed on the ruins of a marble palace, and on his sign he painted
"ALL GONE BUT WIFE AND HOPE!"
People who thought those two things a small capital were greatly mistaken, for that same man is now rich again. When you hear of a man being ruined by getting married, ask for names and dates. The name will usually settle it. Along the front of the lake at Chicago is a breakwater. In hot weather this pier is nearly covered with men of leisure, taking midsummer-night dreams. They are the so-called "harvesters" who start out in droves into the country after something to do—"forced to search for work and not find it!" Marriage has not ruined them. You will find that the men your adviser shows you who has been ruined by marriage, was a born wharf-rat, fit only to be shot with a gun big enough to save the expense of any further funeral.
THERE IS NO POSSIBLE CHANCE
of a man being worse off married than single. As a married man, he is on the right path. As a single man, there is no anchor for him. He may be here to-day, in San Francisco next week. Then, in two or three years, he will be back, as poor as ever. You will have to work, of course. But you have never before done your share of the work. If you are a smart man, you can do your share and more too. You will have a home of your own. You could never get one as a single man, perhaps, because you would not need one.
YOU WILL BE SAFER
as a married man. It seems to me that a virtuous, sober, christian, unmarried man should have twice the credit of a married man, for he is certainly exposed to thousands of extra temptations. Everything is natural in marriage. The builder has "builded wiser than he knew." At thirty-five he finds himself well along on the successful journey of life. His bachelor friend who has lived a selfish existence is poorer, has lost the charm of youth, and is skurrying around to get a wife who will be a queen and slave at the same time. His bachelor friend is
A LAUGHING-STOCK
among the last crop of young girls, who can recollect how he went with their married sisters, and he will be satisfied with nothing above eighteen, though his hair is dropping out, or frosting like a cold night in September. If he had not been so selfish he would have been married eight or ten years ago. Now
NATURE BEGINS TO ASSERT HERSELF.
The friends of his youth have formed the new ties that have come with the march of the years. The trees have their leaves, and cast a grateful shadow, cool and sweet. The bachelor is bare, and under his branches the hot and withering sun pours down unpleasantly. You are lucky to have escaped such a lot, for it is O, so lonesome and unsatisfactory to man! It is not good for him to be alone. Now,
IN TALKING TO YOUR SWEETHEART,
there is one bearing alone which will bring forth good fruit. Be honest and sincere. Remember that the philosophers and sages of the centuries have been studying and marveling over the thing called Truth—why it is that it always asserts itself—why it is that its parts always coincide with each other, as though they had first been put together! When you see cut stones unloading before the site of a building, you know by the marks on them that, when they are put together, they will make a fine-looking front, for the architect has copied them from the front of some building which has, sometime or other, been erected just as this projected structure will be. But here is
THIS QUARRY OF TRUTH;
you enter it without a human architect, hew out a stone, hew out another, and another, and soon a beautiful edifice arises, in the walls of which there is not a single peep-hole or blemish. Everything fits. So bear yourself toward your future partner for life that when you enter the quarry of your brain for her information, you also enter this quarry of Truth. The stones you now cut out will stand as the buttresses of the walls!
HOW SHOCKING IF THEY ARE LIES!
Tell her, when you tell her anything at all, the exact truth. Be very careful about this. Tell her particularly about your money affairs. Your happiness depends more on food and clothes than you are now able to understand. But if you put in solid blocks of truth for the basement, the finer developments of your life will join on with precision and effect. I know a young man who went in debt for a fine span of horses and wagon. His bride supposed they were his own, and he "let her suppose."
A WHOLE AFTERLIFE
of the veriest toil and the most honorable career never wholly expunged the blame which attached to him in both her mind and the minds of her people. It was so foolish in him! One little speech, and long years of bitter pride-wounding would have been averted. The young woman would have married him, just as quickly, for it is easy to make terms before marriage in this country. Do not promise to do things which depend more on events than on yourself. Do not promise to love your future wife always. She may prove unworthy of it. You may prove incapable of it.
INWARDLY MAKE UP YOUR MIND
to ennoble yourself so that your affections will solidify. The companionship of a woman will do much to help you. Promise little by word of mouth—everything by actions. Then, as your days come and go, your character constantly comes more fully into the light, and that light is one of broad, pleasant, humanly love. Your wife will be sure to live happily, for you have built within her mind no extravagant expectations.
LOOK AT A CIRCUS POSTER!
See the absurd and ridiculous promises made upon it! Why do they dare so to humbug the people? Because, in no other way could they get people to ride ten or twelve miles through a summer drouth to hand over their money to the man who is anxious to get it! Here is a man in a chariot, with tigers plunging under his rein like the rays from the sun.
courtship
COURTSHIP.
"New hope may bloom, and days may come.Of milder, calmer beam,But there's nothing half so sweet in life,As love's young dream."
Here is a pyramid of elephants four elephants high! Here is the acrobat in the midst of the smoke and blaze of an Armstrong cannon, beginning some flight to a far-off trapeze, or swing, in the air! It is somewhat different inside.
THE CHARIOT OF TIGERS
is an enlarged rat trap with two sleepy, disgusted overgrown cats in it—cats which do not thrive well in this cold land, and which do not smell any too sweet and clean. The pyramid of fine-looking picture-elephants is an ugly live elephant or two standing on a beer-keg or two, which is a wonderful feat for elephants, of course, but not an entertaining one to human sight-seers; and as a final swindle, the cannon act is a man on a spring disguised as a wooden cannon, who is thus hoisted a few feet into the air, where he catches hold of his swinging bar and completes the usual act of an "aerial acrobat." "Fi on't!" as Hamlet says; "reform it altogether!"
DO NOT "BILL YOURSELF TOO STRONGLY"
before your divinity. She would love you if she thought you were just a common man, like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln; so, if you tell her you are poverty-stricken and prodigal, and it be true, then she will think that she had rather have a demi-god, poor as Job's turkey, than a common young man, like your brother or your friend, with all the gold of King Plutus! Bring to her an honest heart, and you will, indeed, bring treasures before her, and she would have no right to complain, even were she so inclined. Love does not seem to be a matter of volition—
OF "WANT TO, OR DON'T WANT TO."
"No man or woman," says Arthur Helps, "was ever cured of love by discovering the falseness of his or her lover. The living together for three long rainy days in the country, has done more to dispel love than all the perfidies in love that have ever been committed." Just think of that during all the time of your courtship. Dread the "living together," and when you come to stand the test, the test will not be too great for you. A young man, truly, doesn't need to be married, as a full-grown one does. But
IN ORDER TO REAP WE MUST SOW.
Our bachelor friend of forty wants to reap just as badly as you, but his fields will be waste while yours will be growing. When you get your life insured at twenty-one they charge you about ten times what the risk really is. Why? Because, although they have not the least idea that you are going to die now, they know the mortgage is on your life, and the dues, when you pass fifty, would, in justice, be higher than mortal man would pay. Therefore they even it up.
YOU LAY ASIDE A SURPLUS
for your old age, and, until lately, the courts held you could collect that surplus, if your contract were not completed to the end of your existence. Thus, in marrying, you are following the wise ordinance of God. You are choosing a blooming, healthy young woman while you are yourself fresh enough to attract her love and hold it. You are living as a married man while you might, probably, live with more strictly selfish personal comfort up to thirty-five as a single man; but you are,
AFTER THIRTY-FIVE,
immensely better off than the single man, and you will, besides, always be given a better place in society than he, because society likes to see every member in its ranks doing his duty like a man and helping to bear the burdens as well as reap the benefits which our system of living deals out to those who participate in it.
IF YOU HAVE THE CONSUMPTION
and the young lady also have that disease, consult the physicians of your families. A very learned man, in a series of papers in theAtlantic Monthly, some years ago, refused to forbid such marriages entirely. Put yourselves especially under the care of your doctors, and follow their advice implicitly. If the young lady, alone, is consumptive, extend your engagement and wait for events. If you yourself are thus tainted with disease, I have little hesitation in saying that it is not manly to get married until you are entirely out of the reach of pecuniary want without your labor, and even then there are other considerations of nearly equal importance which should lead you to frequent conferences with your family doctor.
YOU THUS SEE THAT "LIFE IS REAL,
and life is earnest." If you are healthy, thank God for it, and sing merrily while you build the nest which will hold the mate in warmth and comfort. After the harbor of refuge is built, the ship will find a pleasant and ever-welcome anchorage during the big storms outside.
Take the daughter of a good mother.
picture
marriage
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men;A thousand hearts beat happily; and whenMusic arose with its voluptuous swell,Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,And all went merry as a marriage-bell.—Byron.
Q
uotation of this verse is made, not because it celebrated a marriage—it, rather, commemorated the frightful carnage of Waterloo—- but because it very faithfully represents the fashionable beginning of wedded life, to which it alludes. There seems to be in woman an inherited, instinctive desire for this kind of thing at her marriage. It is cruel to deny her, therefore man usually goes through with it like a martyr. My prejudices are so heartily enlisted against "blow-outs" of this kind that I feel the compunctions of an honest judge at sitting in such a case. Nevertheless, I may relate some things I have seen, to show how badly a couple may start in life. Here is one instance: The dust has filled the air for six blocks around some stately church. The "hacks" and private barouches and coupes have been packed together so that any movement was entirely impossible; the bride has come like a queen of the orient; she has walked on flowers to the vestibule; there she has passed under an arch of tuberoses; half-way down the aisle a gate of jessamines and smilax has opened with a smothering sense of richness; at the altar she has actually knelt on a pillow of camellias (fifty cents apiece); and a fifty-dollar organist has put on his full instrument, as though he were proclaiming the glory of God most mighty, instead of the folly of man most miserable. Into the church have thronged the elect, proud and disdainful; on the outside has stared the vulgar multitude, too ignorant for anything but rapt wonderment. From the temple of high-priced worship the celebrants have passed, in a still more exclusive body, to a residence where a banquet has been prepared by a man who generally makes ice cream for a living, and where a dazzling display of wedding presents has been uncovered to the careless gaze. Then the train bears away the twain of one foolish flesh, and the farce is over.
OF COURSE IT WAS A FARCE.
The elect read the newspapers next morning with a smile. None but he of the vulgar multitude was hoodwinked. The man and the woman have spent all their money to purchase a "swell wedding." The presents were hired, so were most of the "hacks." The florist has got part of his money. The couple, six months afterward, are "beating" some poor landlady out of their board, and the man, in all likelihood, will never again be heard of. But the women have been intensely agitated by the event. They have never thought about the subsequent aspects of the case.
NO ONE OF THE SAME "SET"
would be willing to spare a single "hack" or one double camellia. Why did the young man and the young woman do it? They did it principally out of vanity, in imitation of some rich person who desired to distribute his money among hard-working folks and at the same time create a feeling of envy among his fellows and "please the women folk."
LET US HAVE THE MANHOOD AND THE WOMANHOOD,
if we have five hundred or a thousand dollars, to buy those necessaries of life which will enable us to live without debt after we are settled for life. We are sailing out of the harbor. Would it not be ridiculous for us to heave into the water our provisions, as a symbol of our delirious joy?—would not our ship be a ship of death when we reached the middle of the sea? There is just as much joy in a simple wedding which has properly shown our respect for the event as the third in importance of all which will punctuate our history. We have been born; we will die;
WE NOW MARRY.
"A man finds himself seven years older, the day after his marriage," says Lord Bacon. "Men should keep their eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut afterwards," says Madame Scuderie. "Marriage is a feast," says Colton, "where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner." "Mistress," cries Shakspeare, "know yourself; down on your knees, and thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love. For I must tell you friendly in your ear,—sell when you can; you are not for all markets." "To love early and marry late," says Richter, "is to hear a lark singing at dawn, and at night to eat it roasted for supper." "Marriages are best of dissimilar material," says Theodore Parker.
"TO BE A MAN
in a true sense," says Michelet, "is, in the first place, and above all things, to have a wife." "It is in vain for a man to be born fortunate," says Dacier, "if he be unfortunate in his marriage." "When it shall please God to bring thee to man's estate," says Sir Philip Sidney, "use great providence and circumspection in choosing thy wife. For from thence will spring all thy future good or evil; and it is an action of life, like unto a stratagem of war; wherein a man can err but once!" "We are not very much to blame for our bad marriages," says Ralph Waldo Emerson;
"WE LIVE AMID HALLUCINATIONS,
and this especial trap is laid to trip up our feet with, and all are tripped up, first or last. But the mighty mother nature, who had been so sly with us, as if she felt she owed us some indemnity, insinuates into the Pandora box of marriage some deep and serious benefits and some great joys." "It is a mistake to consider marriage merely as a scheme of happiness," says Chapin; "it is also a bond of service. It is the most ancient form of that social ministration which God has ordained for human beings, and which is symbolized by all the relations of nature." "Marriage" says Selden, "is a desperate thing;
THE FROGS IN ÆSOP
were extremely wise; they had a great mind to some water, but they would not leap into the well, because they could not get out again." Why were they wise? They were not wise at all. I have seen frogs in wells who are more contented than they would be outside. "Men are April when they woo, December when they wed," says Shakspeare; but he also says that "maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives," so it is an even tilt between two forms of human nature. "If idleness be the root of all evil," says Vanbruch, "then matrimony is good for something, for it sets many a poor woman to work." "In the opinion of the world," says Madame Swetchine, "marriage ends all; as it does in a comedy;
THE TRUTH IS PRECISELY THE REVERSE.
It begins all. So they say of death, 'It is the end of all things.' Yes, just as much as marriage!" "Humble wedlock," says St. Augustine, "is far better than proud virginity." "Never marry but for love," says William Penn, in his will; "but see that thou lovest what is lovely!" "Strong are the instincts with which God has guarded the sacredness of marriage," says Maria McIntosh. We cannot bear this remark too constantly in mind. You would not dare shut off your supply of water, because you know you will need it. But you are sometimes tempted to shut off your supplies of love; and men do sometimes do it, and
AFTERWARD GO MAD
from clear soul-starvation. "Up to twenty-one I hold the father to have power over his children as to marriage," says Coleridge; "after that age he has authority and influence only. Show me one couple unhappy merely on account of their limited circumstances, and I will show you ten who are wretched from other causes." "He that takes a wife takes care," says Ben Franklin. "I chose my wife," says Goldsmith, "as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would wear well." "Before marriage," says Addison,
"WE CANNOT BE TOO INQUISITIVE
and discerning in the faults of the person beloved, nor after it too dimsighted and superficial. Marriage enlarges the scene of our happiness and miseries.
A MARRIAGE OF LOVE
is pleasant; a marriage of interest easy; and a marriage where both meet, happy. A happy marriage has in it all the pleasures of friendship, all the enjoyments of sense and reason, and, indeed, all the sweets of life." "It is the policy of the Londoners," says Thomas Fuller, "when they send a ship into the Mediterranean Sea, to make every mariner therein a merchant, each seaman venturing somewhat of his own, which will make him more wary to avoid, and more valiant to undergo dangers. Thus married men, especially if having posterity, are
THE DEEPER SHARERS IN THAT NATION
wherein they live, which engageth their affections to the greater loyalty." "Matrimony hath something in it of nature, something of civility, something of divinity," says Bishop Hall. "Though matrimony may have some pains, celibacy has few pleasures," says old Dr. Johnson, a bachelor. Again says he: "Marriage is the best state for man in general; and every man is a worse man in proportion as he is unfit for the married state." "Marriage is an institution," says Sir Richard Steele "celebrated for a constant scene of as much delight as our being is capable of."
ONE THING KEEP IN MIND!
When the sages, the critics, and the people who love to say smart things, paint the infelicities of marriage, they as often paint simply the general troubles of life, which are common to all people. The bachelor is more apt to be kept awake by the crying child in the next chamber than is the father in the same room with the child. The young man quarrels with his landlady as often as the young husband quarrels with his wife. The young man notoriously finds his wants as lightly resting on the memories of those he hires to attend to them as does the husband of the most careless wife. He cannot escape the sickness of life with even the good fortune of a married man, according to the statistics of the Government. The married woman is also healthier than the maid. So, then, get the critics of the married state to specify its various unhappinesses; then subtract from that schedule all that come alike to the single state, and you will find that marriage, for its separate joys, has not a separate set of troubles in as great proportion. The very highest evidence of the usefulness and agreeableness of marriage is gathered from the well-known haste in which both men and women, when death takes away their companions, seek, in a second marriage, a renewal of those relations which, in their opinion, lend additional charm to the drama of life.
wedded life
You are my true and wedded wife;As dear to me as are the ruddy dropsThat visit my sad heart.—Shakspeare.
She's adornedAmply that in her husband's eye looks lovely—The truest mirror that an honest wifeCan see her beauty in.—John Tobin.