The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1871-11-09
A FEW WORDS ON MARRIAGE.
BY OLIVE HENRI.
From The Rural New Yorker

YOUR fair, youthful face-I want you to
listen to me for one moment; have
something to say to you. So recall your
thoughts from the land Of day dreams,
aud lay aside your hemming and tuckjng,
and patchwork, and give me your atten-
tion. Youscan afford to cease your stitch
ing for short time, If it is so near to
the day of your wedding, when what !
have to say to you is about that event III
your life so fill of portance-that event
upon which the future of two beings de
ponds.
OF course you love the man with whom
you are SO soon to stand before the altar
Il will not question that is it full,
deep, reasoning love? Is the love that
is given in return, a love that has its we'll
spring in true and thorough apprecia
ton of yourself? HARRY may be all de-
votlon now he may seem to Ste in you
little less than that which is angelic. But
you know that you are not an angel, only
an ordinary young lady, and sooner OF
later he will discover that you have lost
your wings-that, in fact, you never had
any and yOu-yOu have invested MIN
with every ChivalrOus attribute, ana your
find fancy has woven charms and thrown
them about his mind and person that be-
long No more to him than wings do to
you. And what are you to do when all
these romantic hallucInallo IONS melt away
in the realities which d few months or
wears OF married life bring ?-when you
have learned to know each other only as
Won can, after you have each become
part of the other?
Doubtless you each have an honest de
sire to make the other happy, and to be
happy yourselves; but thousands before
you have had the same intentions, and
have failed in their endeaVOrs,-sO there
are chances that you, too, may miss your
happiness. ] do not want to fill your
mind with forebodings, to give the future
a tinge of gloom, to make you distrust
yourself; but do want to question you,
that you may know yourself whether or
not you have thought earnestly OF the
step you are about to take,-ify you under
stand one half of the weight of response
bIity YOU are about to assume, and have
any confidence in your own strength to
meet and perform we'll and efficiently the
duties you will find awaiting you in the
path OF the years which lie before you.
Unless your affection for the man you are
about to marry transcends every other at
fection-unless deep down in your heart
you feel that his is the hand Of all others
in which you are to place Your own, to
rest there evermore,-y0u ar" committing
an act for which, some time, You will weep.
Unless you feel that in his being are ele
ments which call forth your souls sweetest
music, that in his nature ale chords to
which respond all that is harmonious and
best in yours, do not unite your life with
his. If you do, feeling that between you
there is nothing comm IN, nothing in sym.
pathv, can you reasonably expect to DC
happy9
LARRY may be wholly unlike you, and
possess traits of character which would not
make you happy as his companion, and
yet some other woman might find her JOY
therein. And SO it may be with you.
Have you never been with people who
seemed to Call out every discordant ele
ment in yonr nature? aud with others at
whose touch all that is lovely and harmo
NOUS awake? Unless you feel that you
can sympathize with the man whose wife
you are to become, that you can help him
to a development of all that is best and
noblrst in him, and that your own powers
will brighten and expand under his touch !;
yoH are falling far short of securing your
highest good appiness-falling far short
of making the matrimonial state what God
designed it to be.
Oh, my dear girl, I want you TO find
much OF sunshine and brightness in the
years that lie before you but unless you
fully appreciate the man with whom your
future years are to be spent, and be fully
appreciates and understands you, you
will find many rough and rugged places,
and gloomy clouds where sunshine might
have been have seen men and women
who have lived together for a decade of
years, longer perhaps, who have not as
just an appreciation OF each other as the
person may have who has spent one day
in their society. 1t is sad thing, yet
nevertheless it is true. They married,
perhaps, without reason or judgment, and
&c have missed their happiness.
They may love each othsr well, as well
as 1t is possible for persons to love whose
mental organizations are wholly unlike,
but that love was not by any means sui
hclent to secure life from sorrow and riet
arising from association with each other.
| think | know yonng girls heart. 1t
is so easy to forget caution-so easy to let
love overmaster prudence and judgment
so easy to omit to look beneath the sur.
face when the heart is held in bondage
when youth and Joy and gladness are
smiling upon you. Would that one half
OF the romance and poetry that lend their
charm to courtship were carried beyond
the altar
PERHAPS HARRY will come tonight,
and while seated by his side you will
think it the most. impossible thing in the
whole world for his eyes ever to look into