Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1856-12-24

Why LEAP YEAR is FAnURR-The statisti
clans of Boston report that Leap Year has been 8
failure" in the Modern Athens There has beer
twenty per cent less of marriage there this yea,
than the last The fact is by no means one to
be joked over.
Funnily, however, the modern Atbenian Stats.
ticians ascribe it to the passions and exnense, O,
the recent Presidential election They view
wedlock from afar. If they came quite ND to
the Boston Hymenial altar they would be in the
way of an explanation of the lamentable fact
they publish. That shrine to Love and Mar.
riage is crushingly draped with silks at from
three dollars to fifteen dollars yard-it is fes-
tooned with laces at prices to cause lock Jaw to
hear of-expensve jemmed jewelry flashes
through the meshes of the point PAliencons at
every part--silver plate, paved thick upon leas-
es of 'gentee residences" supports the altar
and mlliners' bills for every purchasable luxury
and necessary, more terrible than the bills Of
vultures litter the base Of it as yotive leaves to
the Frost Spirit circle the oak in autumn. What
effect has this proclamation OF the shrine of Mar
riage on the young men of Boston, who would
fain bring to it their personal offerings2
Those statistcians can see it and hear it, The
current of masculine manageable humanity sets
right by without stopping. Great signs, heaved
from the bottom of prudent but hopeless hearts,
are all that is given to Hymen. Young artists,
young artizans, young doctors, merchants clerks,
lawyers of more youth than clientage yet all out
of debt and earning comfortable and honorable
subsistence for one, according to the scale of
1910, pass by quickly, alarmed by the evidences
of the inexorable conditions attached to reputable
marriage in these evil days of competition in So
cial display.
Marriage is becoming luxury to men in the
United States The cost of provisions, the wa
ges of labor, the rent of dwellings, the cost Of
necessaries, and of luxuries added to the unre-
lentng pressure upon people in respectable soci-
ETY. to dress richly and furnish showily, make
the inevitable price of family far out of the
reach of the salaries and incomes of most of the
Young. OF the effect on the morals and charac-
ter of state in which wedlock is prohibited, it
is unnecessary to enlarge BY reading or by
travel we are all familiar with it in France and
in Austria. Prudence and custom forbid mar
riage in the former country, where there is not
an assured income sufficient to maintain its wants
and social pretensions. In the latter the armed
law holds asunder from the relations OF husband
and wife couples who do not possess property,
that their children shall not become
o burthen to the state In all ranks OF its socie-
ty income is the marriage cement of love.
Marriage may as etfectually be prohibited by
the expenses of millinery ware and house fur
nishngas by police regulation. If those mod
ern Athenian statistcians will stand with their
note books beside their marriage altar for two
years to come, they will have to record steady
worship at the shrine. fold maid
hood be, as many say, an evil, the penalty of
general population of cotton dress goods and a
scoru of ginghams, will be paid in every house
where there are daughters. Does it not behoove
Ill mothers-to initiate individually, if not in
concert, the wise conduct ofthe women of Brus-
sells upper Tendon? Their "Retrenchment
Society" has been organized to make economy
fashionable Its weekly meetings report Of SUI
periuites dispensed with and discuss the feast
bility of further curtailments in household and
personal expenses. Its members are mothers,
and these their laoors are for the purpose of sa-
wing marriage to their grown up daughters, by
making it practicable forthose young men whose
capital is disproportoned to their Industry and
integrity.
Oh for restoration of gingham and prints
Is thare no deliverance from the slken web of
evil which French looms weave for us?-Atbany
Journal.