The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1881-07-08
Choosing Husbands.

When girl marries, why do people
talk of her choice? In ninety-nine cases
out of one hundred, has she any choice?
Does not the man probably the last she
would have chosenl select herr
A clever correspondent. while making
the above query, says: | have been
married many years the match was
considered very good one, suitable in
every respect-age, position, and for
tune. Every one said | had made a good
choice. [ loved my husband when |
married him, because he had, by I'M
wearied assiduity, succeeded in gaining
my affections ; but had choice been my
privilege | certainly should not have
chosen him. As | look at him in his
easy chair, ashuge dog at his feet, a pipe
peeping out of the pocket Of his shoot
ing coat, can but think how different
he is from what | would have chosen.
My first penchant was for a fashionable
clergyman, a perfect Adonis he was a
hatterer, and he cared but little for me,
| though l have notyet forgotten the pang
of his desertion. My next was barrister
"a young man of immense talent,
smooth, insinuating manners but he,
too, after talking, dancing and flirting
left me in the lurch. Either of these
would have been my choice had I so
chosen; but my present husband chose
me, and therefore | married him and
this, [ cannot help thinking, must be the
way with half the married folks of my
acquaintance"
There Is both sound sense and truth in
this: but is it not better that men should
choose than that they should be chosen?
And is not our correspondent probably
much happier with her present husband,
shooting jacket, pipe and dog inclusive,
than she would have been with either
the fashionable clergyman or the clever
barrister? Men are proverbially mcon-
slant, and after marriage, when the
trouble and inconvenience Of children
are beginning to be felt, and when (the
most trying time of ALL the wife begins
to neglect her husband for her children,
unless there was originally a very strong
attachment on her husbands side, there
is little chance Of happiness. A wife'S
affection, on the contrary, always in
creases after marriage and even if she
were Indifferent before, no well-disposed
woman can help loving the father of her
children. Children, on her side, are a
bond of union, and though she may APP
pear for them to neglect some of those
little attentions which men naturally
seem to expect, it is only because the
child is the more helpless being Of the
two, and the true woman always takes
the side of those who are most feeble.
1t is a strange but melancholy fact that
when young girls fancy themselves in
love they are seldom if ever happy if
they marry the object of their choice.
The fact is, in most cases, they find the
husband they have chosen quite diff
ferent person as an individual from the
imaginary object he had appeared as a
lover. The imagination in most girls is
stronger than the judgment and as soon
as the first idea of love is awakened in
a female heart the imagination is set to
work to fancy a lover, and all possible
and impossible projections are assembled
together in the young girls mind to en-
dow the object of her secret idolatry
The first man whose appearance and
manners attract girl on her entrance
into society is generally invested by he1
with halo of these secret thoughts, and
she fancies herself violently in love with
out the least real knowledge of the man
she supposes herself in love with. Nc
wonder, then, that if she maries she is
miserable. The object of her love has
vanished, never to return ; and she finds
herself chained for life to Il man she de
tests, because she fancies she has beer
deceived in him.
On the other hand, the man who, with
very pardonable vanity; fancied himself
loved for his own merits, and who was
perfectly unconscious of the secret de
lusions of the girl, becomes, when he
finds her changed after marriage, quite
indignant at her caprice. The friends
and relations on both sides share in the
same feelings" what would she have p
they cry-"s she marries for love, and see
the consequence ~
The consequences are, indeed, in such
cases, generally sad enough. When the
first delusion is dissipated, and the truth
in all its hard and stern reality, comes
forth from the veil that has been thrown
around it, both parties feel indignant at
the false position in which they find
themselves. Mutual recTiminations take
place, each accusing the other of deceit
and ingratitude while the apparent III
justice of these accusations, which is felt
by each party alternately, first wounds
the feelings, and then, if repeated, rankles
in the wound till it becomes incurable.