The Valley Virginian. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1865-1895, 1881-06-02


ready to make indiscriminate condemnation
of club houses. believe that many of them
have their uses. If I had an unhappy home
or no home at all, | would seek out the best
club house / could find, buy admission, and
spend all my evenings there in conversation
and reading. But it has always been mys-
terry TO me how a man going to business at
or 8 O'Clock in the morning, and not getting
home till about the evening fepast, & or in
the evening, can find much time for a club
house. 1t seems to me that from 6 to in the
evening, man ought to be able to stand it
with his family or take some of them out foT
purposes of recreation Inever knew man
ruined by being too domestic in his habits and
spending his evenings at home, while l could
| give you the roll of a thousand who lost their
morals and their fortunes and their souls by
just the opposite course When man likes
any place more than his home, look out for
breakers. How can you tell whether he likes
his home better than ether places? BY this
rule-a man stays the most where be likes it
the best. One man out OF a hundred has will
so strong and his morality SO confirmed that
he can spend every night away from home and
keep pure and honest and sober. But the
ninety mine out of the 100 by such absenteeism
! from home are depleted in moral strength, and
the years are pair of stairs to let them down
to immortality and DEATH Ask the
GOOD, HONEST, CHRISTIAN WOMEN
| of Brooklyn, what they think of the institu-
tons which take the husband and father and
son away night after night and for months and
for years. There are club houses no doubt
very polluted | speak of neither the 'frst-rate
nor the worst, but Of the average club house
when say it is the worst foe Of Christian life
| in New York and Brooklyn.
But who build most Of the club houses of
our great cities I answer; in many cases,
the women. A woman complains that the
same attentions are not paid her now, since
the marriage day, that were paid her while
yet the man was a supplicating candidate for
her preferences. Perhaps the retort might be
made that you do not take as much pains to
make yourself attractive now as you did then.
That wife makes an awful and eternal mistake
who, after marriage, resigns usefulness of
attire and all those little arts which are unde
| scribable, but which help to make up Womanly
attractiveness. When you greet him at nig htfal
on his return from the store or banking house
or Office are you as careful to meet his adm-
ration as during the first week of your ac-
quaintance. The ample fact is that many
women make their charms net for one haul
and then throw the net away. You played the
| piano like Thalberg or Gottscha1k before mar
riage and now you cannot play at all. If you
live sixty years together you ought never to
cease to be the bride adorned tor your hus-
band. But perhaps you spend the evening
fretting about the servants or decrying the fact
| that you had it worse than your neigbbors, Or
picking at his faults, putting him in sort
of infant class over which you are the supervi-
sor, instead of making the house small heav-
en- for his perturbed spirit. | believe that
unWise and fretful and jealous women build
one-half the club houses. If woman would
read newspapers and books, though but ten
minutes, and become intelligent enough to
hold stout political argument as between Han
cock and Garfield, and be awake to all the
stirring questions of the day, they would make
their homes a club house, to which outsiders
would flock One intelligent woman has more
attractiveness than twenty intelligent men.
The law suit has begun. The attorneys on
both sides are ready The witnesses are in
the court room The next case on the calen-
der is club house VS.. the domestic circle.
Another enemy of the domestic relation is
EASY DIVORCE.
People get reckless about entering this rela-
ton because they think that if at any time
they desire the knot united, the law will unite
it. France declared by law that people might
unmarry as they please. In Paris in one year
10000 divorces took place and in one year
$4,000 children were sent to the foundling hos
pitfalls. When the law lets down the bars all
the cattle Of moral beastliness break into the
gardens Of home In the prosperous days of
Rome, there was only one divore recorded in
500 years. She changed her laws, and then
the deluge. Divorce is too easy in this coun-
try. The town of Lacrosse Wisconsin, had
seventy-four cases of Divorce sud in one year
Philadelphia had 282 suits for divorce in one
year. sDivorce cases in New York have in
creased five per cent. To get rid of your obi
CATION you have only to absent yourself
short time in Illinois or Indiana. If marriage
be civil contract merely, then all this is right
and you part with a conjugal companion as
you do with a store or farm, Or a horse. IF
it be divine union then let those legislators
or judges of courts who have to do with these
matters beware that on no grounds, except
those announced by the God of Heaven, this
relation be unlocked. Whom God hath
joined together let no man put asunder' When
the people Of this land are taught that mar
| rage is divine contract from which their
named will not, erased, except on the marble
slab of the sepulchre, more deliberation and
common sense and prayer will be exercised
before this stupendous step is taken. Instead
of being lassoed with curl, or risking their
hearts in philorena, or marrying just FORUM,
| they will realize that between the cradle and
| grave there is no place SO tremendous as the
marriage altar And while before it the pair
are joining hands in betrothal, standing be-
tween them all unseen is either the white
winged angel of blessing or.the horned and
hoofed and fired nostril of the demon of des-
pair.
Again count corrupt literature as the foe
of the marriage relation-the siushy books and
pamphlets that tell how impossible men were
married to impossible women and got into i'm
possible difficulties with impossible conse-
quences. The fact is that some of our young
married people, through such literature, get
so filled with sentimental and false ideas about
this plain, serious and old-fashioned institu-
ton of marriage that they are untitled for the
humble duties of every day life Better, when
you 60 home to-day, gather up all the French
and internal stuff and fling it into the kitchen
CRATE otherwise it will corrupt you and your
children after you. Now | want to make yori
enemies of everything that antagonizes the
marriage relation. The most of you born OF
honorable parentage, want to swear you by
the cradle in VIII ich you were rocked and the
family altar at which in childhood you knelt
and the graves of your Christian father and
mother if they have laid down beside each
other in the last sleep to
SET YOUR FACES AGAINST
the influences which would bring MARRIAGE
into disrepute. Remember the best euogy
that you can pass upon the institution is to
make your own home relations right and beau
tiful. Do not take offense too easily from each
other. Remember that unkind words OF I'M
happy treatment is often but matter of the
nerves. husbands at the store and wives with
the household anxieties have their equipoise
unbalanced. But few men and women in
America have any nerves that are worth
speaking of. These delicate telegraph wires
OF the body are damaged by storms, and so let
the lightnings of the temper rnn over them
irregularly. Know that these relationship at
the longest will be brief. Spare all the
harsh words you can, and all severe retorts
as tar as possible, for before long a
hearse will drive up to your door and from
your presence will be taken out the best friend
you have in all the world, and the richest
worldly boon that God has in his omnipotence
and intinity to bestow-a good wife When
child is taken, that desolates the home But
a wite's departure desolates all the house and
all the heart and all the earth The silences are
so appalling after her voice is STILL the vacan-
cies so CHASTITY, the gloom, as thou gh the mid
night OF fifty years hustled A child wander
ing from room to room with hurt finger,
crying for drink. saying mo, want moth.
pr tn brine If - "Reminiscences ;pfr ,,,,on