North Iowa times. [volume] (McGregor, Iowa) 1867-current, 1868-10-28

perplexed, as it were, with sense OF ad-
ded being. He has evolved out OF
something more. He is surprised at
finding the people in the streets jog by
him with the same stolid indiffer cntism
that they manifested before he was mar
ried. He imagines that everybody must
have seen the announcement of his mar
riage in the papers. Then, again, doesn't
he look like married man? Hasn't he
considerably altered within the last few
days7 He may be wrong, perhaps, but it
seems to him that marriage is deserving
Of more attention than it gets. It's a
queer world, he knows; but not so queer
as not to allow marriage to be very queer
institution amidst all its queerness. Yet,
nobody seems to think anything of it, and
particularly Of him. His friends have
collected round him, and after their first
expressions of congratulation and hopes
for the future, have laid no more emphasis
upon the subject than if he had been
married thirty years. He can't understand
it, he confesses. The world in its non
cha,ance seems to lay no significance at
all upon marriage; but were the world to
feel like he feels, he guesses pretty truly
that it would contemplate him with in
6nitely greater curiosity than it now
evinces.
Well, it will be found no hard task to
sympathise with a newly-narried mans
feelings. The world has been likened by
Thackeray to looking glass: and for
some time it must be source of consider
able astonishment for man to find two
faces reflected where he has been in the
habit of contemplating only one. Besides,
life wears such an astonishingly modified
aspect when surveyed through the circle
of a wedding ring. The Kaleidoscope has
turned, and an array of old colors has
been adjusted into new picture. The
relation of things has visibly changed
To begin with, a man is no longer one, but
two. He is no longer himself; he is him.
self and somebody else. There is no addi-
ton of bulk or of statues and yet there is
upon him q constant sense of enlarge
ment. AS to any feeling of responsibility,
that does not come upon him until some
time afterwards. His cares so far, are
chiefly poetic; he has not yet had time
enough to experience those which have
not the charm Of sentiment.
Would you have newly married man
not feel keenly that he has been just born
into completely new world? Let the
servant happen to range pair Of his
wife's boots alongside of his own: what
curious emotions the sight must inspire
If his wife happen to have little foot and
he big one, no spectacle can be more
suggestive. How dependent the little boots
look Once having seen the little boots
ranged alongside the big boots, it would
be hard to imagine it possible for the big
boots ever to be able to stand alone again.
After all, the details that 60 to make up a
young married life are full of poetry =
Let there be but love as nucleus, and
you will find the nebulous surroundings
very beautiful and very pure. Still, the
life of newly-married couple is very
dream-llke. The circumstance Of Young.
loveable creature hanging on his arm and
calling him husband may make the fact of
matrimony very actual; but there is so
much of what is visionary in the new ex-
istence, SO much of what is new in the
present life when eontrasted with the life
Of only few weeks before, that man
had need to possess, indeed, the widest
perception of the real, not to suffer him
self frequently to sink into kind of
wonder and doubt as to whether things be
really as they seem.
discovery, made by Scotch usurer--that
become married man. Now, as bache-
Tor, it is inevitable that he should acquire
certain habits and forms of thought which
it is the business. or, rather, the mission
of wife to modify or to put to flight. 1t
is the abrupt subversion Of an accustomed
state of being that makes a newly-married
man look upon life for time as dream.
10 find himself being constantly reproduc
ed in the presence Of his wife may inspire
him with much such emotion as may be
supposed to have animated the tabled
gentleman, who, having accustomed him.
self to a shadowless existence for some
time, suddenly found his shadow restored
to him. Oddness may perhaps character
ize the aspect with which life presents
itself to him. 1t is odd for him, for in
stance, to find himself seated face to face
with a companion at breakfast; to find the
teapot being employed by some other hand
than his own; to find food set before him
Of which he had not the ordering; to find
the servants no longer appealing to him;
setting him aside, in short, as if he were
grown suddenly inconceiyably inconsder-
able. 1t is odd for him to hear people
asking after his wife in his own name, as
if the contingency of Mrs. ever entering
into his share of the family name had
remained wholly uncontemplated. Then
nothing can be more odd than the consid-
Grafton he meets with, at the hands of his
wife's family--relations who had appar-
emily before despised him, and treated him
as if he had been an intruder ard a
robber. He is somebody now to them; but
he can recollect the time when, in their
eyes, he was the most emphatic nobody
that ever entered q house. And what is
very odd to him is the polite way in which
he continues to treat these relations who
had before abused him so warmly. He
cannot at all understand why he should,
and yet he is constantly doing so. lie feels
perfectly sure that were they to ask to
borrow ten dollar note he would lend it
to them; he would tell you his motive was
strengthening humiliates your enemy
more than to lend money to him, sir
forgettul that, as a rule, men do not give
away ten dollar notes to crafty little
personal malice, and forgetful, also, that
he has taken unto himself power which
is silently and surely working him into all
kinds of deeds-making him, in short,
fulfill the matrimonial theory with a re-
lentlessness Of which there is every chance
OF his remaining for long time ignorant.
We have considered newly married
people from mans point of view; we
have presumed to say nothing of the
emotions and sentiments with which a
newly-married girl may be inspired. At
all times man is a far easier study than
woman, but during the marrying period
hQ 10 fap
get at a woman's thoughts either before
or after marriage, especially after; you
will, perhaps, be able to tell that she is
happy or miserable, but to what extent
she is happy or miserable, it is given to
fa,,r 70