The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1869-06-24
From late Plymouth Church Summons
Beecher on Early Marriage.
Good Effects Of tie Practice, and Bod
Effects of a Boarding. House Life


taous love and the sympathy of compan
ion in their selfdenying toll as wher
they first enter the battle for their own
support. Early marriages are permanent
morals, ana deferred marriages are temp
tations to wickedness. And yet every yea,
it becomes more asa more difficult
concurrent with the refgning ideas of So
ci&ty, for yoRng men to enter upon that
matrimonial state which is the proper
guard of their virtueas well as the source
Of their courage and enterprise. The
battle of life is almost always at the be-
ginning. There it is that a man needs
wedlock. But a wicked and ridiculous
public sentiment puts man who is in
society, or out of society, for that matter,
largely on the ground of condition, and
not of disposition, and character. The
man that has means wherewith he can
Visibly live amply, is in good society, as a
general rule. The man that has virtue
and sterling manliRess, but has nothing
withal external to show, is not considered
in good society. Ambitious young men
via not, therefore, Marcy until they can
lseet their expenses; but that is deferring
for years and years the Indispensable vir-
tue, Society is bad where two cannot live
cheaper than one! And young men are
under bad influences who, when in the
very morning of life, and better fitted
than at any later period to grow together
with one-their equal and mate are de-
barred from marrying, through scores of
years, from mere prudential considera-
tions. The heart and life are sacrificed to
the pocket They are tempted to sacrifice
ambition for love, when at last, over the
ashes and expiring embers of their early
romance, they. select their wife. It is said
that men who wait till they are forty
or forty-fye years of age select prudent
". Alas for the wife that was NOT first
sweetheart Prudence is COED; but is
prudence servant or queen? Prudence is
good; bat what is prudence? Is it the
dry head leagued with the pocket? Is
there no prudence IN taste, nor prudence
ia the inspiration Of a generous love? Is
taere no prudence in the faith by which,
banded, two young persons go down into
the struggle Of life, saying; Come veal,
come woe, come storm, come calm, love is
a match for circumstances, and we will be
all to each other" Woe be to thatsociety
in which the customs and manners Of the
times put off, beyond the, period of ro-
nance and afiancing, the wedding. You
have adjourned the most important secu
lar act Of mans life You have adj
journed it out of Eden into the wilder
ness The girl, next infected (and even
women fall} with the public spirit, too
often waits to be, Yooed by those who can
place her again, in the very beginning of
M el,o VINE, oh
was broken off as a branch from the par
ental tree, But a graft should always be
willing to be a graft, and wait, till it can
make its own top by legitimate growing.
And woe is the day when every girl says:
ct will not marry until my husband in
the beginning has as much as my father
had at the end of his life" For She
what is she? Who was it that Jupiter
won in a shower of gold Whoever it
was, that is the type. She whose heart
is won by abundance; she who is brought
into matrimony by house and land she
who marries for genteel wealth-she it is
that Jupiter seduced by gold.-For all
wedlock is adulterous in which it is not
tue heart that inspires marriage. Noble
is the young spirit which, seeing and low
idg and choosing, and silently biding her
choice, is won and chosen, and giving her
self freely Economically, if you will, GOD
be thanked for the romanceD goes down
to the level Of her husbands nothingness
and poverty, that she and he may, with
willing hands, from the bottom build up
their estate, Blessed is that woman who
sees that in going down she is going up,
and that it is. the losing of life that. saves
it. Blessed is that woman who carries
with her into married life all that she
learned in the refinement of her fathers
family; who proves that she is weman
in this; that gentleness, and praise, and
abundance and luxury even, ministered
to the better part of her nature, and pre-
pared her to 60 forth and minister earn
estly and permanently in the midst of diff
iculties Thousands there are who, wher
once they are called, and know their mas
ter, Love, go cheerfully out with th'
young man and take part and lot will
him. Oh, that young men would trust
them more, and prove them better, ant
see if this is not so. How noble thine
II is to see the cultured, the polished, anG
the refined go down to the very beginning
Of things, led by love, fed by love, anc
at last rewarded by love! el
Live together alone if you have to g
into the desert for it, and feed on herbs
Abhor Soddom and Gomorrah- or board
heusesl Men sometimes speak of the
n1eagre and pinched fare. These are no
worthy of notice. It is not these. It i
that men learn self-indulgence there
Men learn there not to be householders
And all that various discipline, all tina
H&nistratfon of care, all that drill of con
tstTance, all that social independence, al
that social atmosphere, Undesirable and
unavailable, which belong to t-s solitar,
household, they miss. No man and wo
-, lvx,ol-o I,,,abopd o,d WI F6fbo-