The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1868-09-17
MATRIM0NY.
The Sweetheart and the WIfe-The
Honeymoon.

DCtcUr DO ~ uioSuooOo
and his Disenchanter." 1t says:
He certainly has put his foot in 1T,
and yet it seems incredible that month
lean have done it all. There is strange
irony in the contrast between the hon.
eymoon of his fancy and the honeymoon
Of fact. There has been very little OF
the expected alienation of caresses and
romance. The angel has, from the very
eutset, turned into spoilt child. After
80 many months of compulsory good be-
havior, of unchecquered sunshine, IL Is
an immense luxury to find herself free
to live her natural little life of pouting
and petting. And so she brings to the
paradise of expected bliss the frowns
and sulks of the nursery. She takes
out her freedom in thousand caprices
and tempers and whins. But, after all
hope isn't killed in hour, and 1t
is possible to be patient. The real diff.
Guilty is to be entertaining. The one
thirst of the young bride is for amuse-
ment, and she has no notion of amusing
herself. If she yawns, if she feels sleepy
and bored, she looks on the breakdown
of the vague anticipations with which
she married as an injustice and wrong.
Ii is amusing to see the spouse of this
ideal creature wend his way to the
leading lending library after a week of
idealism, and the relief with which he
carries home q novel. But the novels
are last seasons novels, and life is soon
as dreary as before. How often in those
nights of expectation has he framed to
himself imaginary talks over the fire,
| . II lr;- on1 rrtfttar than that nf
the friends he forsakes! But converse
tion is difficult in the case of refined
creature who is as ignorant as Hot
tentot. He begins with the new Mil
tonic poem, and finds she has never
looked into paradise Lost" He plunges
into tho reform bill, but she knows
nothing of politics, and has never read
leading article in her life. He tries
music, and she kindles little at the
thought of hearing Nillson again next
season, at least if there is royal
princess in the house. Then she tries
her hand in turn, and floods him with
the dead chat of town, and oceans of
family tattle. He finds himself shut up
for weeks with creature who takes in
terest in nothing but Uncle Cross
patch's temper asd the scandal about
Lady Y. Little by little in that fatal
honeymoon the absolute pettiness, the
dense dullness of woman's life breaks
on the Olsen nchanted devOtee. His deity
is without occupation, without thought,
without resource. He has faint faith
left yet in her finer sensibility, in her
doetic nature, he fetehes his Tennyson
from the carpct-bag, and wastes
"In Memiorum" on critic who
pronouHces it "pretty." He still
takes her love of caresses as
sign of an affection passing the
love of men, and he unfolds to
her his hope that year or two more
may give him the chance of retreat
into the country and quiet life of con-
| liugal happiness. The confession star
ties the blighted being into real in
terest at last. She has not escaped from
the dullness Of the nursery to plHnge
into the dullness of home. She amuses
herself with her spouse's indifference to
all that makes life worth the living.
But then men are such odd creatures,
so Quixotic, so impractical, so roman
tically blind to the acual necessities of
life 1t is this idleness, this boredom
of the honeymoon, that begcts dreams
SO absurd, so fanciful. The dear, odd
creature must be got back to town, to
his business, to his books, and the
! iL..~y-.se. ord It ia TINA.
in fact, that il did end, for
boredom has done its work, and
the disenchantment of man is complete.
One sees dimly, as the honeymoon ends,
what an immense advantage this poetic
being has gained over her prosaic spouse
ia the completeness of her previous
study of the position. In the presence
of his confused dreams her practical,
well arranged plan Of life gives her a
lead that she means to keep. She is rea-
sonable, of course; ready to listen to
objections, if those objections are based
on plan not absolutely romantic and
absurd. But the hard, coarse, mascg-
line creature refuses to reason, and bur
les himself in the Times. Reasoning,
calculating ,planning-this was the very
life from which he had fled to fling him
self into the arms of his ideal. He is
mystitied, puzzled, indignant. His dim
conceptions of imaginative women float
sadly away, but they leave him no
formula to which he can reduce this hard
cynical being who has taken her place at
his fireside. Woman, on the other hand, is
| far from being puzzled or mystItied. 1t
| is part of her faith that she thoroughly
unders auds her husband. There is a
traditional theory of spouses that one
| feminine generation hands down to an
other, end into this theory he is simply
fitted. While lie was ilinging away his
last cigar, and confessing his worldli-
ness and unwOrthiness, she was taking
from mamma n series of practical in
structions in the great art of nanagin z
husband. The art is somewhat like
the Egyptian art of medicine: 1t Is
purely traditional, and it assumes a
certain absolute identity in the patients,
which the patients obstinately deny.
But woman clings to it with perfect
faith, and meets with 1t every problem
of domestic life. She knows the
exact temper in which her spouse
had better be induced to go to
the club; she knows the peculiar
mood in which he had better
be let alone. The same frivolous crea-
ture who lay sulking on a sofa because
the honeymoon was dull, wastes the
patience and skill of q diplomatist in
wheedliug her husband ont of his season
on the moors. For life is full of difficult
questions, which nothing but fact and
time can solve questions like the great
question of husbands friends or the
greater question of husbands dinners,
The exact proportion in which his old
acquaintances may be encouraged TO
relieve him of the sense of bedroom al
home without detaching him absolute
IN from it, the precise bounds within
which his taste for good dinner
may be satisfied, without detriment
to that little bill at the milliner's-
these are the problems which the
poetic nature is turning over as
she bids farewell to the honeymoon
The poor iron pot has no particular fea'
now of the possible consequences of a
collision with the fine porcelain. He
finds himself floating whichever way he
is guided; wheedled, managed, the wife,
He does his weary round of work
pumping up the means for carrying out
her admirable projects of social exist