The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1871-08-03
HoYT & CO., Proprietors.
MARRIED LIFE.
IT'S ROMANCE AND REALITY.

IT'S ROMANCE AND REALITY.
Marriage, which most girls consider the sole
aim of their existence and the end of all their
anxieties, is often the beginning of a set of
troubles which none among them expect, and
which, when they come, very few accept with
the dignity of patience or the reasonableness OF
common sense. Hitherto the man has been
the suitor, the wooer; it has been his to make
love, to utter extravagant professions, to talk
poetry and romance Of an eminently unweara-
Bile kind, and to swear that feelings which by
the very nature of things it is impossible to
maintain at their present state of heart will be
as lasting as life itself, and never know subsi.
dence or dimunition. And girls believe all
that lovers tell them. They believe in the abb
sorption of the mans whole life in the love
which, at the most, cannot be more than part
Of his life; they believe that things viii 60 on
forever as they have began, and that the lire
and fervor Of passion will never cool down to
the more manageable warmth of friendship.
And in this belief of theirs lies the rock on
which not few make such pitiful shipwrecks
of their married happiness. They expect their
husbands to remain always lovers. Not lovers
only in the best sense, which, of course, all
happy husbands are at the end OF time, but
lovers, as in the old fond, foolish, courtlng days.
They expect continuance of the romance, the
poetry, the exaggeration, the microscopic at
tentions, the absorption of thought and inter-
est, the Capitalization of his happiness in her
society, just as in the days when she was still
to be won, or little later, when being won,
she was new in the wearing And as we said
before, wife's first trial, and her greatest. is
when her husband begins to leave off this kind
of fervid love-making and settles down into
the tranquil friend instead.
It is in the nature of most women to require
continual assurances, Just as it is with Children
and very few believe in love which is not fire.
uuently expressed while the ability to trust in
the vital warmth of an affection that has lost
its early feverishness is the mark of higher
wisdom than most of them possess. To make
them thoroughly happy man must always be
at their feet; and they are jealous of every
thing-even of his work-that takes him away
from them, or gives him occasion for thought
and interest outside themselves. They are
rarely able to rise to the height of married
friendship; and if they belong to a reticent
and quiet-looking mana man who says Il
love you" once for all, and then contents him
self by living life of loyalty and kindness,
and not talking about it-they fret at what they
call his GOODNESS, and feel themselves shorn OF
half their glory and more than half their dues.
ly repeated they want the incense of fattery,
the excitement of love-making and if these
desires are not ministered to by their husbands,
the danger is that they will get some one else
to understand" them, and feed the sentimen-
tality which dies of inanition in the quiet SER
entity of home. Moonlights, and bouquet OF
the earliest flowers carefully arranged and ten
derly presented and the changing lights on the
mountain tops and the exquisite song of the
nightingale-at o'clock in the morning-and
ali the rest of those vague and suggestive de-
lights which once made the mecting-places OF
souls, and furnished occasion for delicious ra-
wings, become, by time and use, and the wear
ing realities of business, and the crowding
the ordinary man, who is not poet by nature.
<sWhen all the world was young" by reason of
his own youth, and the fever of the love-ma-
king time was on him, he was quite as roman
tic as his wife. But now he is SOLDERING down;
life is fast becoming very prosaic pleasure,
diyested of romance he pooh-poohs her fond
remembrances of bygone follies, and prefers
his pipe in the warm library to station by the
open window, watching sunset because it looks
as it did on that evening, and shivering with
incipient catarrh. All this is very dreadful to
her; women, unfortunately for themselves, re-
manning young and keeping hold much longer
than men do.
The first detection of this kind is pang the
Young wife never forgets but she has many
more, and yet more bitter ones, when the de-
fection takes personal shape, and some pretty
little attention is carelessly received without
its due reward ofloving thanks. Perhaps some
usual form of caress is omitted in the hurry OF
the mornings work, or some gloomy anticlpa-
ton of professional trouble makes him oblivious
of her presence, or, fretted by her importunate
attentions, he buries himself in a book, more
to escape being spoken to than for the books
own merits. Many woman has gone into her
room and had "good cry' because her hus
band called her by her baptismal name, and
not by some absurd nickname invented in the
days of their folly; or, because pressed for
time, he hurried out of the house without go
ing through the established formula of leave
taking. The lover has merged in the husband;
security has taken the place of wooing; and the
woman does not take kindly to the transforma-
zion. Sometimes she plays dangerous game,
and tries what flirting with other men will do.
If her scheme does not work, and her husband
is not made jealous, she is reyolted, and holds
herself that hardly ly-used being, aneglected wife.
She cannot accept as compliment the quiet
trust which certain cool-headed men of loyal
Kind place in their wives and his tolerance of
her flirting manner-which he takes to be man
ner only, with no evil in it. and with which,
though he may not especially like it, he does
not interfere to her Indifference rather
than tolerance. Yet the confidence implied in
his forbearance is, in point of fact, compli-
ment worth all the petits soins ever invented,
though his hearty faith is just the thing that
annoys her, and which she stigmatizes as neg
lect. If she were to 60 far enough, she would
find out her mistake. But by that time she
would have gone too far to profit by her expe-
Nothing is more annoying than this display
of affection which some husbands aud wives
show to each other in society. That familiarity
of touch, those halfconcealed carcsses, those
absurd names, that prodigality of tender cpl
thets, that devoted attention which they flaunt
in the face of the public as kind of challenge