Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1871-10-18
CHOOSING HUSBANDS.
One WOman's Experience Interesting
Reading for Young Ladies'.


b From the Baltimore Sun.
'.When a girl marries, why do people talk
of her choice? In ninety-nine cases out of
a hundred, has she any choice? Does not
the man (probably the last she would have
ehosen) select her?''
A very clever correspondent has sent us a
letter containing this query; and she makes
out her case ably. Sne says: 81 have been
married many years; the match was con-
sidered a very good one, suitable
in every respect-age, position and
fortune. Every one said / had
made a choice. Why, my dear Mr.. Editor.
loved my husband when | married him
because be had by unwearied assiduity sue
ceeded in gaining my affections but had
choice been my privilege / certainly should
not have chosen him. As / look at him in
his easy chair, a huge dog at his
feet, pipe peeping out of one Of the
many pockets of his shooting coat, /
can but think how different he is from
what would have chosen. MY first
penchant was for a fashionable clergy
man, perfect Adonis he was fat
terer, and he cared but little for me,
though have not yet forgotten the pang of
his desertion. My next was barrister;
young man Of immense talent, smooth, in
sinuating manners; but he, too, after talk
ing, walking, dancing and flirting, left me
in the lurcn. Either of these would have
been my choice had | so chosen; but nv
present husband chose me and therefore /
married him; and this cannot help think
ing, must be the way with half the married
folks Of my acquaintance.
There is both sound sense and truth in
this; but is it not better that men should
choose than they should be chosen? And
is not our correspondent probably much
happier with her present husband, shooting
jacket, pipe and dog inclusive, than she
would have been with either the fashiona-
bic clergyman or the clever barrister? Men
are proverbially inconstant, and after mar
rage, when the trouble and inconvenience
of children are beginning to be felt, and
when (the most trying time of alb the wife
begins TO neglect her husband for her chill
dren, unless there was originally very strong
attachment on the husbands side, there Is
little chance of happiness. A wife's afec-
ton, on the contrary, always increases after
marriage; and even if she were Indifferent
before, no well-disposed woman can help
loving the father of her children. Children.
on her side, are bond of union. and
though she may appear, for them, to neglect
some of those little attentions which men
naturally seem to expect, it is only because
the child is the more helpless being of the
two, and the true women always takes the
side of those who are most feeble.
1t is strange but melancholy fact that
when young girls fancy themselves in love,
they are seldom if ever happy if they marry
the object of their choice. The fact is, in
the most cases, they find the husband they
have chosen quite different person as an
individual from the imaginary object he had
appeared as lover. The imagination in
most girls is stronger than the judgment;
and as soon as the first idea of love is awal-
ened in female heart, the imagination is
set to work to fancy lover, and all possible
and impossible PROJECTIONS are assembled
together in the young girls mind to endow
the object of her secret idolatry. The first
man whose appearance and manners attract
a girl on her entrance into society is gener-
ally invested by her with the halo of these
secret thoughts, and she fancies herself yio-
lently in love without the least real knowl-
edge of the the man she supposes herself in
love with. No wonder, then, that if she
marries she is miserable. The object of her
love has vanished, never to return; and she
finds herself chained for life to a man she
detests, because she fancies she has been
deceived in him.
On the other hand the man who, with
very pardonable vanity, fancied himself
loved for his own merits, and who was per-
fectly unconscious of the secret delusions Of
the girl, becomes, when he finds her changed
after marriage, quite indignant at her cap
rice. The friends and relations on both
sides share in the same feelings-awhat
would she have?" they cry-"she married
for love, and see the consequence"
The consequences are, indeed, in such
cases, generally sad enough. When the
first delusion is dissipated, and the truth, in
all its hard and stern reality, comes forth
from the veil that has been thrown around
it, both parties feel indignant of the false
position in which they find themselves.
Mutual recriminations take place, each ac-
cUsing the other of deceit and ingra.itude;
while the apparent injustice of these accu-
stations, which is felt by each party alter
nately, first wounds the feelings, and then,
if repeated, rankles in the wound until it
becomes incurable. - -..-...-. go