The Lancaster ledger. [volume] (Lancaster, S.C.) 1852-1905, 1852-07-21
A Daughters Marriage.

without claimant. 1t is one Of the pu,
rest gems we have ever met with full of
truth and feeling:
The departure of son from beneath the
parental roof does not present any specta-
Gle of desolation. Masculine life has, from
infancy, an individuality, an independence,
an exotism, 50 to say, which is essentially
wanting to female existence. When son
nbandons his parent, to create for himself
a separate interest, this separation causes
but little interruption in their mutual rela-
tions. A man marries, and still maintains
his friendships, his habits, and his filial af-
tcctions. Nothing is changed in his life :;
1t Is only an additional tie. His depar-
ture IS consequently mere simple sepa-
ration while the departure of young
girl, the wife of a few hours, is real de-
scrtion-a desertion with all its duties and
feelings still fresh about it. In one word
the son is a sapling which has always
grown apart from the trunk while the
daughter has, on the contrary, formed an
essential portion of it, and to detach her
from her place is to mutilate the tree it.
self. You have surrounded her youth
with unspeakable tendemess-thee exhaust
less tenderness Of your paternal and ma
tcrnal hearts; and she, in return, has ap-
pcarcd to pour fourth upon you both an
equally inexhaustible gratitude; you low
ed beyond all the world, and she seemed
to you with proportionate affcc-
ton. But one day, one ill-fated day, a
man arrives, invited and welcomed by
6
choice carries off to bis domestic cvric
your gentle dove, far from the soft nest
which your love had made for her, and to
which hers had clung.
On the morrow you look around YOU,
you listen, you await, you seek for some
thing which you cannot find. The cage
is empty, the tuncful linnet has flown; 81
lence has succeeded to its melOdious war
bhngs; it does not come rs it did only on
the previous morning, fluttering its perfu-
med wings about your pillow, awakening
you by its soft carcsscs. Nothing remains
but painful calm, a painful silence,
painful void. The chamber of the absent
darling offers only that disorder which it
Is so melancholy for a mother to contem-
plate; not the joyous and impatient dis
order of occupation, but that of abandon
ment. Maidenly garments scattered here
and there; girish fancics no longer lrizcd;
chairs heapcd with half worn dresses
drawers left partially open, and ransacked
to their remotcst corners bed in which
no one has slept; a crowd Of charming
trlties, which the young girl loved, but
which theyoungwife despises and which are
Uttered over the carpet like the feathers
dropped by the hnnet, when the hawk made
the timid bird his prey. Such is the de-
pressing sight which rings te the
mothers heart.
Nor is this all-from this day she oc-
cupies only the second place in the affect
ions of her departed idol; and even that
merely until the happiness of maternity
shall have taught her whom she weeps to
assign to her one still lower. This man,
this stranger, unknown few months, it
may be few weeks previously, has as
sumcd right over affections which were
once almost entirely her own; few hours
of fleeting, and it may be of assumed
tenderness, have, in great degree, sufficed
to etface twenty years of watchfulness, of
care, and ofself abnegation; and they havo
not onl y rent away her right to be the first
and best beloved, but they have also de-
prived her Of the tilial caresses, the atten-
ton, and the adored presence of the hearts
idol, whom she has herself given to him
for life. Nothing is left to the mother but
the attachment ofrespect. All the warmer
emotions are engrossed by the husband,
to whom his young bride owes alike obed-
icnce and devotednesc.
If she loves him, she leaves her home
without regret, to follow his fortunes to
the end of the world if she does not love
him, she will perform the duty with re-
signatiOn. Nature and law alike impose
the obligation on her, and her own heart
must decide whether it will constitute her
JOY or her trial but in either case the re-
suit to the mother is the same. Nor
can that mother reproach her with this
painful preference, for she has reaoed her
in the conviction of the necessity of mar
riage; she has herself offered to her its ex-
ample in her own person; Heaven it.
self has pointed it out as duty whose
omission is culpable; and, therefore, far
from vcnturing to W ish that the lost one
should restore to her all the tenderness
which time and habit may enable her to
withdraw from her husband, the mother
is bound, on the contrary, to pray that
they may every day become more dear
to each other, even at the expense of her
own happiness. This misfortune is the
mothers last blessing.
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