The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1881-09-22
One or Two Aspects Of Marriage.

ooCidl dSpecIS VI AIucIACdl lio cOIu6
most plainly into view, marriage is
probably, if the truth were known, the
foremost consideration in all classes.
1t IS considered, but not talked of. 1t
is the basis of every mans future. good
or bad. Yet nobody, oddly enough,
discusses it except the young people,
who know nothing of it but by hearsay.
Their CONCENTRATIONS and arguments
upon it are interminable.
There are fewer early marriages in
this country now than in any previous
generation. One reason for this is that
women are more self-supporting now,
and less likely to marry young and
without due consideration, for main
tenance. The other is that the style of
living in each class is so much more
costly than it was forty years ago that
young men will not venture to marry
on as small incomes. Our fathers
brought up families of dozen boys and
girls, educated and started them in life
on an income which will now barely
dress or feed clerk or medical student.
But our fathers were not members of
clubs, and our mothers knew little or
nothing of high or low art; the word
aesthetic will not be found in. any die
tionary of those days-a fact which
closed several currents of expense that
drain our incomes now, with or against
our will. There were, too, larger FAM
lilies in those days. Now, whether it
argues that the social condition was
healthier then, when the dwellings
were poor and bare, the table was plain,
and the heads of the household were
rich in nothing but sturdy, hard-work-
ing sons and daughters, than now,
when the luxurious homes have but few
tenants, who have more leisure and
ability to scan and understand different
and wider outlooks into life than that
of labor, is matter for discussion.
More can be said, however, on each
side of the question than is at first
sight apparent.
In one respect, we undoubtedly have
the advantage over the generation which
went before us. Marriages made after
the first flush of early youth is past are
less likely to prove at middle age ur-
congenial. Especially is this true of
the upper grades of men and women.
Your intellectual plebian, man of the
mass, the commonplace, unreasoning,
coarse-gra:ned husband or wife, is much
more likely to be a creature of habit
than the man of finer nerves and higher
mental calibre. He or she picks out q
mate by violent sudden impulse;
CHEEKY lip, pleasant smile. a becom-
ing dress preston The thing is de-
cided. Love and marriage are ma
terial matters, because they themselves
are chiefly matter. This impulse graf
lied, other material wants come to the
front in their life--food, clothes, the
up of children; the man and
woman go to work, precisely from the
same physical needs which drives the
hawk afieid after he has chosen his
mate and built nest. The hawk does
not concern himself about an intellec-
tual sympathy with his mate; he does
not outgrow her mental limit or feel
immortal longings of which she knows
nothing. He feeds her. She tends
she young ones, and, barring an occa-
'ional squabble they are happy. There
s the history of eight-tenths Of married
people.
There Is a smaller class in whose love |
mental Development and spiritual |
needs are of much more momentous
IMPORT than physical needs and money
making. Such men and women, if they
marry unwisely, are apt to grow away
rom, or beyond, each other. and be-
leath the ever-increasing gap hes a
oundless hell of human misery. The
tructure of American society opens
he way to this especial sort of domes-
ic tragedy. The man of force and in
elect has every opportunity to rise;
nut he cannot drag his wife up with
lin. We all know the pair. We have
cen them in every condition and class.
lie married her twenty years ago,
,retty delicate young thing, ignorant
nd ill-bred as himself. He has pushed
lis way into a different social level:
unned and broadened his life and hab-
IS OF thought il the society of books
nd of men of culture and refinement;
he has grown more narrow, more To-
lorant, more weak than before In
lrudging in the kitchen and nursery.
here are thousands of such cases in
he country to-day, and the husband in
UGH strait is as much to be pitied as
he wife. God has not joined them to-
ether.
The number of marriages among
cry young and immature people is not
My smaller of late years, but those
etween men and women considerably
asst their middle age have increased.
aobody but school-children, to whom
oye is dream which belongs solely to
ne giggling age, now feels inclined
. laugh at such alliances. They are
ften matters of convenience, founded
n motives of respect, comfort or suita-
ility, which usually result as happily
any action of grave import. carefully
Eeighed and resolved upon by expert
need people, is likely to do. why
lould not an intelligent, home loving
IAN and woman, left companionless
! middle age, form a partnership of
lutual help and comfort for their old
yep Often. however they are sincere
founded on that real pas
on which grows more profound, if less
,nsitive, with the strengthening of j
Bher faculties. Another change in the
atistics of married life, II we can call
lem so, is that, while regard for the
'nctity of the marriage VOW is each
EAR less respected in our fast and fash