Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1878-05-17
Interested Marriages.

1t is rather curious that while people
and newspapers are always talking about
girls who marry for wealth, title, position
and the like, holding them up, justly o.
unjustly, to the scorn of pure, honora
BILE and disinterested world, nothing is
ever said in regard to men who sell them
selves for anything they will fetch in hard
cash or expectations. Now, this seems tt
me infinitely more contemplate in men
than in women. Men have opportunities
for carving out career that women have
not; married or single, the world is open
to them. They can 60 where they please
do what they please, night or day, while
women are hampered by thousand re-
straints. If she has money, every man she
knows wants to borrow it, or manage it
and her; she cannot stir out of doors
without an escort. and she cannot go with
one without being subject to reports OF
calumnies. If she has not money she is
worse than nothing She has no business
to exist at all; nobody wants her; every
body wants to get rid Of her, and a mar
riage which opens the door to an apparent
ly free, happy and independent life beyond,
is a temptation which is very great, almost
| too great to be resisted, for it is the differ
ence I'm seeming, at leasl) between life
and death.
Without these inducements, uninfuenc-
ed by any motives save those which are
purely the offspring of idleness or greed,
men deliberately commit perjury and
bind themselves to perpetual falsehood.
1t is true they do not sell themselves in
the same way that woman does, for the
reason that they are not so conscientious.
A woman who marries for money tries re-
ligiously to perform her part of the COM
pact, but man considers himself bound
to nothing when he has once secured the
money or the social advantage for which
he exchanged his name-Peter Jones or
Thomas Robinson, as the case may be-
and the way he will strut and talk about
''giving you my name, madame" if his
wife objects to his management of her af-
fairs, is funny to all but the parties con-
| cerned.
The great difference between men who
marry from an interested motive, and wo-
men who do the same, is this--that men
do it deliberately, women desperately.
The former make business of it, calcula-
ting to nicely just how much their good
looks, or their talent or their entree of So
ciety, or their hereditary or acquired posi-
ton ought to be worth to those who know
how to estimate these advantages at their
full value.
A poet, if he is presentable, stands per-
haps first on the list, women putting a
higher pecuniary estimate on poets than
publishers are apt on their productions. Ed
itors are also in demand, and literary men
of any stripe fetch pretty good price,
some women having sort of reverence
mixed with their curiosity concerning the
fourth estate.
Middle-aged men Of means marry Ito
please themselves and generally young
woman. There are cases, however, where
men of middle age have formed purely dis
interested unions with women nearly their
own age, and led such happy lives as we
are apt to associate with youth and youth
full affection alone.
1t is becoming a rare thing for young
men to marry without at least a prospect
of gaining in some way by the ''opera-
tion." The slang of the street is carried
into affairs of what is technically called
the heart, and perhaps uneonsciously in
fluences them. Women who are single
and in position to make money, even
though no longer young and never beauti-
full, could tell many strange stories of the
efforts made to induce them to change
their state, and pay the board of two in
stead of one, or, at least, form partner
ships, in which the liabilities at least shall
be equally divided.-Jeqoqaie June.
I A SHORT STUDY FOR BoYs.-The life
of Charles O'Connor, the eminent lawyer,