Wilmington journal. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1844-1895, 1857-01-09
Too Expensive a Luxury.

In prudent Boston, says the Home Journal for the
last year, (and it was Leap Year, y there have
been twenty per cent less of marriages than for the
year before and on this fact the Albany Evening
Journal talks thus sensibly:
That shrine to love and marriage is crushngly drap-
ed with silks at from three dollars TO fifteen dollars
yard-it is festooned with laces at prices TO cause
lockjaw 10 hear Inexpensive diamond jewelry fash
es through the meshes of the point dAlencoms at
every partsilver plate, paved thick upon leases of
genteel residences" supports the altar-and ml-
ners bills for every purchaseabe luxury and necessa
ry, more terrible than the bills of vultures, litter the
base OF it, vove leaves to the fossprit circle the
oak in autumn. What effect has this proclamation of
the shrine of marriage on the young men of Boston,
who would fain bring 10 it their personal offerings?
Those statisicians see it and hear it. The cur.
rent of masculine marriageable humanity sets right
by without stopping. Great CHS heaved from the
bottom of prudent but hopeless hearts, all that is
given to hynfen. Young artists, young artisans,
young doctors, merchants clerks, lawyers OF more
youth than clienage yet all out of debt, and earning
comfortable and honorable subsistence for one,
cording to the scale of 1885, pass by quickly-alarm-
ed by the evidences OF the inexorabe conditions at
tached to reputable marriage in these evil days of
competition in social display.
Marriage is becoming luxury to men in the Uni
ted States. The cost of provisions, the wages OF la
bor the rent of dwellings, the cost OF necessaries and
of luxuries, added to the unrelenng pressure upon
people in respectable society," to dress richly and fur
nsh showily, make the inevitable price of family
far Of reach of the salaries and incomes of of
the young OF the effect on the morals and character
of State in which wedlock is prohibited, it is
ce,sary to enlarge. BY reading by travel. we are
| all familiar with it in France and in Austria Pru-
dence and custom forbid marriage in the former coun-
try, where there is not assured income sufficient to
maintain its wants and social preensions. In the
latter, the armed law holds asunder from the rea-
lations of husband and wife, couples who do not pos
sess property guarantees that their children shall not
become burthen to The State. In all ranks of its
society income is the marriage cement of love.
Marriage may as efectually be prohibited by the
expense OF military-ware and diminishing, as by
a police regulation If those modern Athenian sta
tscians will stand with their note books beside their
marriage altars for two years to come, they will have
to record steadily diminishing worship at the shrine
If old madhood be, many say evil the penal
y of general reputation of cotton dress goods and
a scare of gngham, will be pain in every house
where there daughters. Does it not behoove all
moihers-all good mothers-to initiate Individually,
if not in concert, the wise conduct of the Belgc wo-
men of Brussels" Upper Tendon % The " Rerench-
ment Society," has been organized 10 make economy
fashionable. Its weekly meetings receive reports of
superfues dispensed with, and discuss the feasbli-
ty OF further curtailments in household and personal
expenses. It's members mothers, and these their
labors for the purpose of saving marriage their
grown up daughters, by making it practicable for
those young men whose capital is dsproportoned to
their industry and integrity.
for restoration of gingham and prints Is there
no delverance from the silken web of evil which
!! French looms weave for US!