Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1857-01-28
LADIES COLUMN.

"Leap Year has been failure" in the
Modern Athens. There has been twenty
per cent. less of marriages there this year
than the last. The fact is by no means
one to be joked over.
Funnily, however, the modern Athe-
nian statisticians ascribe it to the pas
sions and expenses of the recent Presi-
Dental election They view wedlock
from afar. If they came quite up to the
Boston Hymenial altar, they would be
in the way of an explanation of the la
mentable fact they publish. That shrine
to Love and Marriage is crushingly
draped with silks, at from three dollars
to fifteen dollars yard-it is festooned
with laces at prices to cause lock jaw to
hear of-expensive jemmed iewelry
flashes through the meshes of the point
d Alencons at every part-siiver plate,
paved thick upon the leases Of ''genteel
residences" supports the altar-and
milliner's bills for every purchasable lux
ury and necessary, more terrible than
the bills of vultures, litter the base Of it
as votive leaves to the Frost Spirit circle
the oak in autumn. What effect has
this profanalion of the shrine of Mar
riage, on the young men of Boston, who
would fain bring to it their personal Of
ferings?
Those statisticians can see it and hear
il. The current of masculine marriage
able humanity sets right by without stop
ping. Great sighs, heaved from the
bottom of prudent but hopeless hearts.
are all that are given to Hymen. Young
artists, young artisans, young doctors,
merchants clerks, lawyers Of more youth
than clintsge, yet all out of debt and
earning comfortable and honorable sub
sislence for one. according to the scale
of 1916. pass by quickly, alarmed by
the evidences of the inexorable condi-
tions attached to reputable marriage in
these evil days of competition in social
display.
Marriage is becoming a luxury TO men
in the United States. The cost Of pro-
visions, the wages of labor, the rent Of
dwellings, the cost of necessaries and Of
luxuries, added to the unrelenting pres
sure upon people in respectable society
to dress richly and furnish showily,
make the inevitable price of family far
out ofreach of the salaries and incomes
of most of the young. OF the effect
OF the morals and character of state
in which wedlock is prohibited, it is un-
necessary to enlarge. By reading or BY
travel we are all familiar with it in France
and in Austria. Prudence and custom
forbid marriage in the former country,
where there is not assured income sufi-
cieut to maintain its wants and social
pretensions. In the latter, the aimed
law holds asunder from the relations Of
husband and wife couples who do not
possess property guarantees that their
children shall not become a burthen to
the state. In all ranks of its society,
income is the marriage cement of love.
Marriage may as effectually be pro-
hibited BY the expenses of millinery ware
and house-furnishing, as by a police
regulation. If those modern Athenian
statisticians will stand with their note
books beside the marriage altar for two
years to come, they will have to record
steadily diminishing worship at the
shrine. If old maid hood be, as many
say, an evil. the penalty of a general re-
pudiaton of cotton dress goods and a
scorn of gingham. will be paid in every
house where there are daughters. Does
it not behoove all mothers-all good
mothers--to initiate, individually if not
in concert, the wise conduct of the Bel
gic women of Brussels "Upper-Ten-
/ Dom !" Their " Retrenchment Socie-
ty" has been organized to make econo-
my fashionable. lis weekly meetings
receive reports Of superauities dispensed
with, and discuss the feasibility of fur
ther curtailments in household and per-
sonal expenses. It's members are moth
ers, and their labors are for the purpose
of saving marriage to their grown up
daughters, by making it practicable for
those young men whose capital is dis
proportioned to their industry and irteg-
rity.
Oh for a restoration of gingham and
prints! Is there no deliyerance from the
silken web of evil which French looms
weave for US? s?-Al5any Journal.
HINTS to a young mother By middle
aged bachelor:
Don't talk about your child.
Don't produce your child.
Don't let your child be heard.
Don't be listening for your child when
1 am talking to you.
Don't be always going up stairs to
your child.
Don't ask me to be godfather to your
child.
Attend strictly to these rules. and |
don't know that 1 would not as soon
dine at your house as anywhere else