Litchfield enquirer., 1871-07-13
From the Boston Journal.l GETTING MARRIED,

We are led to condemn this custom o1 society which requires woman to scheme and to manueuver when she would enter up. on marriage. not only because of it's injustice but because of it's pernicious effects upon hel character. Nearly all the follies for which our sex suffer ridicule and contempt are more directly tracable to this one cause than to any other, The charge of igno. rance, invalidism and extravaganza, so of ten made against women, and especially young women of the so-called higher class es must indeed be admitted to be true. It would be strange if anything else should result from the existence to which they are doomed in early life. In order to win a husband at all hazards, if only as a means of support, and to win him in the indirect, unacknowledged way which society pre- scribes, these girls must waste the best years of their youth in frivolity, affectations and display.
 Of course they are ignorant when con- pared with intelligent men, for at school the limited education that is allowed them has to be curtailed of many solid and inn portant branches that room may be made for fimsy accomplishments which are to be discarded as soon as the desired "catch" is made. After entering society they have not only no taste for serious mental occu- patton, but no time to indulge it if they had. The varied facts that fill the daily papers, questions of social morality and order, all the topics that stir the graver thoughts of men are to them as if they did not exist. Hay must be made when the sun shines, and the sun will shine only during few short seasons. Minds well trained and stores of general information mt VI ho 1rh %hnS,s but they are not helps to the main object that they keep in view. Indeed, they would rather be hindrances than otherwise, as they believe.
 Endowed with good intellects and ear. nest hearts they become, therefore, yapid in discourse, silly. excitable and shallow. And this. not from any innate folly or triv- iality of character. as men are so ready to 1 infer, but from true Yankee shre wdness, which brings to the matrimonial market whatever appears most attractive. It is the demand that creates the supply. The girl is as shrewd and keen witted as her broth. CT, and has as clear vision for the but tered side of her bread. She is fashion. able and silly as matter of business, and giggles and chatters nonsense from policy. To be pretty and to be stylish proves the surest way to win notice and attentions and pretty and stylish she must first of all become. In her own circle she finds dash. ing young men of means weakly prejudiced against woman's true dignity, and she min
 isters to that prejudice; she finds them car
 nal.minded and coarse, insensible to fne1 graces, and she exhibits before them hel physical attractions, she entangles then in her floating tresses, she ensnares then
 with her eyes. In short, she stoops to con
 quer, and becomes at length what she &
 long affects. Throughout life her sex art
 made as dependent upon the favor of mar
 for their means of support as the courtiel
 is upon the king. and like the courtie
 they must put aside all individuality o l thought and conduct, and copy the caprice
 of the sovereign. m This ignorance of women extends tt
 household avocations. The daughter sup
 poses them to be essential to good wife
 but were she to devote her time to learnin. their mysteries with anything like an ar dent and continued effort, she would los, the chance of becoming wife at all. Eld ;l erly men yaunt their importance in be- hearing, but she knows that she may mak,
 bread as light as sea-foam, sweep carpet, of every shred and atom of dust, toss egg. and four into marvellous puddings, anl
 that in the gay drawing room, where tn,
 the conquests she looks for are to be made
 all this will go for nothing. Any little chi at the piano, with crimped fy-away locks lcoquettish ways and some knowledge O Isentimental love songs, will step in before
 her and leave her. with all her domesti, { aptness. to play the wall-fower to the enl of her days. It cap be no consolation t her to forsee that ten years hence the en I tranced hero who is thus taken captive vii
 have secret regrets that he had not choser her enduring charms, instead of those O the helpless little noodle who once on time sang his senses away. By that time