The New Orleans daily Democrat. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1877-1880, 1877-12-23


and sensible remarks TO make against wha
1t styles sacrificial marriage. The ancients
used TO mdlre poetic sacrifices to Hymen. the
god Of marriage. We, to-day, make human
sacrifices to him, and offer up yearly young
women as an atonement for the sins of Their
bridegrooms. How often do we hear the re-
mark: Eyes, he's wild, somewhat dissipated
hut when he is settled down and married to
some true and noble girl, she will win him
from his past ways, reform and purify him. y
Such is the honest belief Of thousands oil
kind-hearted and intelligent persons who con-
sent to such alliances thinking that the
truth and virtue Of the girl can win her hus-
hand back to proper paths; that vice will be
purified and virtue remain untarnished.
Under this mad, this criminal belief that a
yuung man OF bad habits can be benefited by
i marriage with sweet and spotless girl,
Thousands Of unions are each year permitted,
nay encouraged, that are destined to bring
forth only misery, shame and sin. Few APP
preciate the cruelty of such q marriage. A
Rlrl, modest, unacQuainted with the world
md It's wickedness, Is left to battle with the
worst passions Of the husband, and expected
10 overcome and vanquish them alone and
unassisted lis such contest equal and fair ?
Not once in ten thousand cases is the wife
nucoessf,ll for 1t requires such combination
tf gentleness and strength to succeed as is
but seldom met with.
When young mans parents and friends
80 him going on steadily from bad to worse,
sinking deeper and deeper into dissipation
and riotousness, when they have proposed
I'D tried every remedy to reform him, but
III lii vain, they look calmly around for a
sacrifice IN some pure-minded girl, who shall
reform him by taking him as husband. His
Wild oats have been sown, they tell her, his
xIiasipation ID but small fault. that marriage
will cure.
Mature BIS made woman an Iphegenia,
willing always to sacrifice herself; and what
woman can resist the appeal made to her to
save wrecked and sinking man. Flattered
into the belief that she alone can be the mans
saviour, wholly ignorant of all his vices and
1aults-for what can she know Of them-she
s,os1sents 10 become q sacrifice to save him,
and thus darkens her whole life and happi-
mess.
Such Is sacrificial marriage, and the sooner
II Is altogether abolished the better. We
al, look around us to-day at thousands of
these marriages. and find only misery and
,inhappiness as their fruit. Hymen feels
himself insulted by this union of vice and
virtue, becomes Nemesis, an ayenging deity,
and Furnishes the wife relentlessly for her Of
Tense. It is safe to say that man who can
not save himself, cannot be saved by woman
after marriage. If q woman has influence
enough with man of wild and bad habits to
win him to proper mode of life, she can do
IL before marriage. She should not trust her
self to him until she sees him thoroughly re-
formed.
It is useless to preach this sermon to the
women, however. They are determined on
themselves; nothing can persuade
khem to do otherwise. It Is the fathers.
bruthers, relatives, that ought to prevent
~ moral suicide. Too often do they stand
~ ~, refusing to interfere, to step In and
'reyert the crime and sin Of this sacrifice. II
40 would but exert their authority. how
uany yves could be saved from wreck and
ain,