The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1883-11-07

happy unions, IL the law would only I'M
loose the bonds. There is another side to
the moving picture. The curse of society
is indiscreet, Eighty, mercenary mar
riages. Men and women marry for
money; o woman marries man whom
she knows, or may know, is unchaste, in
temperate, brutal or marked by some OF
the other distinguishing frailties which
bode only evil to her married life. She
takes the risk. There is no deception in
the case. In such wedlock she may en-
dure lifelong suffering or may ask the
courts for relief. The probabilities are
that the most deserving will suffer on in
silence, enduring all causes, even the most
heinous, while the more brazen, or less
feminine, will be deferred by no sensitive
feelings of delicacy from exposing her
broken household gods to the public case.
Humanity might dictate that in such
cases a separation be granted, but for
bid that the whole social fabric be i'm
periled by decreeing divorce with the
right to make other ill-considered ALI
ances. Laws must be general. In rare
individual cases prudent woman may
be grossly deceived or defrauded in
entering wedlock. Unless the law can be
framed to do full justice to this one case
without admitting ninety and nine which
have not her good cause, it is better that
the one also should have only legal sepa-
ration. And it is not improbable that in
true woman's nature this view of the
matter would harmonxe with a deter
mination to which blighted hopes had
irrevocably led her. Rev. H. W. Beecher
is quoted as saying that man can 60 and
commit adultery, and, with witnesses, OBJ
tain divorce. Precisely what this shows,
beyond the depravity of human nature,
does not appear. Possibly the Plymouth
pastor commiserates the wanton, and
would make other things legal causes for
divorce, so that, if he is tired of the old
love, by getting drunk. by brutality, or by
being hog, he might shufH . her off for the
new. From the schemes of these lachry-
NOSE philanthropists, "Good Lord de-
liver u.s." For them and for the commu-
nifty at large there is wholesome food
for thought in the pastoral letter put
forth at the close of the late triennisl
Episcopal convention at Philadelphia :
"In every class the springs of all moral
ity are tainted by the dissertation of mar
riage vows. To defile the homes of a
nation is to barbarize it. The purity of
family life and thence of social life sub
sisting only in the sanctity of wedlock,
the true obligations of that covenant are
found only in the teaching which presents
the rule of its nature in the mystical
union between Christ and his church.
Whatever may be accomplished by secu.
lar alarm or policy in checking divorce,
there must be more searching remedy.
1t must be profounder force that regu-
lates the passions and judgment in form
ing and protecting the marital tie itself,
Christening not only its form but its
spirit. Wretched households and broken
matrimonial pledges come of Eighty en-.
gagements, an absence of all seriousness
| from the most solemn of all human steps,
immodest publicity in the lives of boys
and girls in streets and public houses, the
abnegation of parental control, or the re-
lection of it by juvenile characterization
In nearly all our cities and large towns
the sidewalks after nightfall are alive
with gay but ominous presages of social
| degeneration. There can hardly fail to
be before long general effort to supplant
with pure but entertaining reading the
ruinous publications that are poisoning
readers of all ranks-a literature of di.
vorce, of seduction, of adultery, of mora
death. The pulpit has its responsibility
special combinations may do something
but far more is to be done by breeding
pure manners and guarded thoughts in
young children through the instructions
of mothers and fathers in dwellings where
daily domestic prayers quicken the con
science and cleanse the heart"