Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1867-03-21
THE DAY AFTER A MARRIAGE

fact, will find a ready echo in the hearts
of most parents. 1t is from the Wid'
World:
The departure of son from beneath
the parental roof does not present any
spectacle of desolation. Masculine life
is from infancy an individuality, an in
dependence, an exorcism, so to say,
which is essentially wanting to female
existence. When son abandons his
parents to create for himself a separate
interest, this separation causes but little
interruption in their mutual relations.
A man marries, and still maintains his
friendships and his flial affections.
Nothing is changed in life; it is only an
additional tie. His departure is conse-
quently a mere separation while the
departure of a young girl TO become a
wife in a few hours is real desertion-
a desertion with all its duties and feel
ings In one word, the son is sapling
which has always grown apart from the
trunk; while the daughter has, on the
contrary, formed an essential part Of it,
and to detach her from her place is to
mutilate the tree itself. You have sur
rounded her youth with unspeakable
tenderness-the eyhaustless tenderness
Of your paternal and maternal hearts (;
and she, in return, has appeared to pour
forth upon you both an unexhaustible
gratitude you loved her beyond all the
world, and she seemed to cling to,you
with proportionable affection.
But one day, an i'll omened day, man
arrives, invited and welcomed by your
selves; and this man of your own choice
carries off to his domestic circle your
gentle dove, far from the soft nest which
your love had made for her. On the
morrow you look around you, you wait,
you seek for something you cannot find.
The cage is empty; the tuneful linnet
has flown; silence has succeeded to its
melodious warblings, it does. not come,
as it did only on the previous morn
ing, huttering its perfumed wings about
your pillow, and awakening you by its
soft caress. Nothing remains but a
painful silence, painful void. The
chamber of the absent darling offers only
that disorder which is so melancholy tor
mother to contemplate; not the joyous
and impatient disorder of occupation,
but that of abandonment. Maidenly gar
ments scattered here and there, girlish
fancies no longer priced, chairs heaped
with half worn dresses; drawers left par
tally open and ransacked to their reno
test corners; bed in which no one has
slept; crowd of charming triaes, which
the young girl loved, but which the young
wife despises, and which are Uttered over
the carpet, like the feathers dropped by
the linnet when the hawk made the timid
bird its prey. Such is the depressing
sight which wrings tears from the moth
er's heart Nor is this all; from this
day she occupies only second place in
the affections Of her departed idol; and
even that merely until the happiness of
maternity shall have taught her for
whom she weeps to assign to her one still
lower.
This man, this stranger, unknown a
few months, may be but a few weeks
previously, has assumed right over
those affections which were almost en-
tirely her own; q few hours of heeting
and it may even be of assumed tender
ness, have in a great degree suficed to
efface twenty long years Of watchfulness,
of care, of self.abnegatiop, and they
have not only rent away her right to be
the first and best beloved, but they have
also deprived her of the ilial caresses,
the gentle attentions, and the adored
presence of the hearts idol, whom she
has herself given to him for life. Moth.
ing is left to the mother but the attach
ment Of selfrespect If she loves him
she leaves her without regret to follow
his fortunes TO the end of the world; if
she does not love him, she still performs
the same duty with resignation Nature
and law alike impose the obligation on
her, and her own heart must decide
it will constitute her joy or her
rial; butin either case the result to the |
mother is the same. Nor can that mother
-eProach her with that painful preference
for she has reared her in the conviction
)f the necessity of marriage she has
herself offered TO her its example in her
)wn person; heaven itself hns pointed il
,ut as a duty whose omission is culpable
md, therefore, far from venturing to wish
hat the lost one should restore TO her all
he tenderness which time and habit may |
enable her to withdraw from her husband,
he mother Is bound, on the contrary, to
,ray that they may every day become
learer to each other, even at the expense
If her own happiness. This missortune
S the mother last BLESSING.