The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1882-02-24
The Deceased Wife's sister.

men whose chief object In life is to
marry their deceased wife's sisters. They
have formed society for the cultivation
of this peculiar sport, and annually at
tempt to induce Parliament to abolish
the law which now interferes with their
singular passion. They denounce this
law as relic of the Roman Catholic
dominion, and insist that . deceased
wife's sister Is not Daalunl in sc, and that
it is disgrace to an enlightened age
that she should be NAHUM pr0hi-
6itum. So far Parliament has refused
to listen to them. fhe majority of Eng
lishmen do not wish to marry dect ased
wife's sisters, and naturally think 1t alb
surd that any one else should wish to;
aud inasmuch as Mr.. Gladstone has
never written pamphlet denouncing
the deceased wite's sister as the giant
evil of the age. there is no reason to sup
pose that he will suddenly become her
champion.
1t is curious illustration of the unin-
ventive character of the British mind
that there should be, say 1000, Eng
lishmen who are vainly striving to marry
their deceased wives sisters. In a really
enterprising community these men
would have avoided al trouble an5
lopged-for sisters instead of the original
deceased wives. Simple and easy as
this expedient Is, no Engishman APP
pears to have Thought of it. When one
of the thirty thousand wishes to marry n
girl, he apparently thinks it necessary
first Of all to marry her sister; then to
wait until his wife dles-which is in most
cases a trying, tedious and uncertain oc-
cupation-and then to spend the rest of
his life in vaiply trying to obtain the re-
peal of the law which stands between
him and the object of his affections. All
this trouble and unhappiness could be
avoided were the man to marry the
coveted sister in the first instance; but
such is the obstinate conservatism of
the British mind, that it will probably
be half century before Englishmen avail
themselves of this simple remedy.
There is another way in which the al
most national English desire to marry a
deceased wife's sister may be looked at,
but it similarly requires us to note the
characteristic En9l sh lack of enterprise.
1t would occur to most men In this coun-
try that wife's sister lacks the element
of romance. II q man 's wife has AN un-
married sister, and she is not an objec-
tionable girl, she is very certain to be on
familiar terms with him. She is the one
to whom he naturally looks for help
! when his wife is sick. She comes and
takes care of the children and temper
arily superintends his buttons. She
pours out his coffee In the morning and
meets him when he comes home Mt night
| from business. Thus she knows him
| thoroughly. If he is cross and unrea-
sonable in the early morning, as many
men are said to be, he cannot conceal 1t
from his wife's sister. III he come home
Mt night too tired TO try to make him.
| self agreeable, she discovers what diff
ference there is between a brother-in-
law aud au unattached young man who
! exhibits himself to ladies only at his
most agreeable moments. She knows
! the condition of his shirts and stockings;
she sees him without his wig, and she
learns the precise number of his false
! teeth. On the other hand, If she is ever
irritable in the morning, he suffers from
! it if she wears false hair, she cannot
! keep it secret from him, and it is morally
certain that mt some time he will meet
her dressed in way that will destroy
any illusions he may have cherished rs &c
the beauty of her figure and her entire
! physical genuneness.
How can there he room for romance in
the intercourse of two such familiar nc.
quaintances? In the nature of the case
there can be none. When the American
widower determines to marry again, he
naturally desires to renew the romance
of his earlier courtship, and so seeks his
new wife among women with whom his
acquaintance is so slight that he can as
sumo that they possess all imaginable
projections. That the Englishman, in.
stead of taking this course, prefers to
marry his wife's sister, simply shows
that he lacks enterprise to search for Q
wife. He prefers to save himself the
trouble of search, pursuit and capture by
requesting his sister. in-law, who, in that
capacity, has sewed on occasional but
tons for him, to sew on perpetual but
tons in the capacity of his second wife,
Nothing more utterly prosaic than the
courtship of deceased wife's sister car
be imagined, and it could only take