The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1881-09-03

In these midsummer udySs WucH JnO
/ social aspects of American life come
most plainly into view, marriage is
probably. if the truth were known, the
! foremost consideration in all classes.
n Is considered, but not talked of. 1t
is the basis Of every mans future. good
or had. 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 a 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
orr will. There were, too, larger fam
lilies in those days. Now, whether it
argues that the social condition wa
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 degeneration which
went before US. Marriages made after
the first flush of early youth is past are
less likely to prove at middle age uE-
congenial. Especially is this true of
the upper grades of men and women.
Your intellectual plebian, man of the
mass, the commonplace, unreasoning,
grained husband or wife, is much
more likely to be a creature of habit
than the man of finer nerves and higher
mental calibre. He OF she picks out a
mate by violent sudden impulse;
CHEEKY lip, pleasant smile, becom-
ing dress -prestop The thing is de-
cided- Love and marriage are ma
terial matters, because they themselves
are chiefly matter. This impulse graf
flied, other material wants come to the
front in their life-food, clothes, the
bringing UP of children; the man and
woman go to work, precisely from the
same physical needs which drives the
hawk atield after he has chosen his
mate and built a 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
the young ones, and, barring an occa-
sional squabble they are happy. There
is the history of eight-tenths of married
people.
There Is 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
from, or beyond, each other. and be-
meath the ever-increasing gap hes
soundless hell of human misery. The
structure of American society opens
the way to this especial sort of domes-
tic tragedy. The man of force and in
tellect has every opportunity to rise;
but he cannot drag his wife up with
him. We all know the pair. We have
seen them in every condition and class.
He married her twenty years ago,
pretty delicate young thing, ignorant
and Inbred as himself. He has pushed
his way into different social level;
summed and broadened his life and hab-
its of thought in the society of books
and of men of culture and refinement;
she has grown more narrow, more ig-
norant, more weak than before in
drudging in the kitchen and nursery.
There are thousands of such cases in
the country to-day, and the husband in
such strait is as much to be pitied as
the wife. God has not joined them to-
gether. ivi
The number of marriages among
very young and immature people is not
only smaller of late years, but those
between men and women considerably
past their middle age have increased.
Nobody but school-children to whom
love is dream which belongs solely to
the giggling age, now feels inclined
to laugh at such alliances. They are
often matters of convenience, founded
on motives of respect, comfort or suita.
bility, which usually result as happily
as any action of grave import, carefully
weighed and resolved upon by expert
enced people, is likely to do. WHY
should not an intelligent, home loving
man and woman, left companionless
in middle age, form a partnership of
mutual help and comfort for their old
aagep Often, however they are sincere
love-matches, founded on that real pas.
sion which grows more profound, if less
sensitive, with the strengthening of
other faculties. Another change in the
statistics of married life II wa con ell