The daily herald. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1886-1887, 1886-09-09
EARLY MARRIAGES.
CASES IN WHICH THEY SEEM RgAs-
oNABLE. AND DESIRABLE.


Unshared Tastes and Aspirations Fatal
60 Conjugal Happiness-nIalSingt the Best
ofan Unfortunate Bargain--The. Sadness
of Unequal Mating.
The one supremacy important thing In
marriage seems to mo TO be that the CON
tracing parties should be sufficiently adj
vanced to know what they are doing, and
to have reasonable ground for believing
that the judgment of their maturity win not
condemn the choice OF their youth. This
certainly would come earlier in some stages
of civilization than in others Quiet, un-
ambitious country folk, in districts remote
from innovation, may marry at a very
early age with safety. Such as they are,
they are likely to continue to be; and the
man who tills his own acres and has no
ambition beyond them, will be far happier
TO find some CHEEKY young helpmate in the
home to which he returns at nightfall; nor is
it at all likely that either husband or wife
will live TO regret such an early choice
At the other extreme of the social SCALE
also, early marriages seem reasonable and
desirable When people have been born
into an atmosphere of luxury and culture
when both parties to the marriage contract
have inherited the tradition Of gentle breed
ing, neither Is likely to shock or outgrow
the other as time goes on.
The terrible danger Is in the early mar
riage of people in transition state when,
before the wings have sprung from the
shoulders of Pegasus, he may be mated all
unknowingly with the plodding plough
horse Unshared aspirations, unshared
tastes, unshared acquisitions--thesea are fatal
to conjugal happiness. l know, for instance,
10. Lt..l ii.
largely by contract with, the world, by the
very duties that have devolved ON him and
the attrition of every days experiences,
whose pretty, empty headed wife must shock
him by her very accent every time she opens
her lips. He does his duty manfully, this
man-but does any one suppose he would
not be happier with different wifel
NOTHING sADDER OR MORE TRAGIC.
know women also, women Of keen in
tellect and OF both scholarly and social cul-
tnre, who are married to men whom time
has not improved or enlarged-women who,
think their own thoughts and live their own
solitary lives in a world of which the man
whom they married before they knew them
selves or their own needs does not even
know the language Short of crime think
the world holds nothing sadder or more
tragic than srch unequal mating. AS Amiel
says in his wonderful Journal Intime,p "an
irreparable evil brought about by ones self
"a rennciation for life Of liberty, of piece
of mind-the very thought Of it is madden
ing
1t Is perhaps mistake to pity most the
one who is generally most commiserated in
these Inflated unions; for the one who has
the highest range of possibilities, and the
most intimate and exquisite need of sym
pity, has also the most resources Friends
warm to him; books speak to him; the whole
world of ideal beauty is ready to help him
forget the unsatisfying real; but what shall
console the duller mate whose one hope of
warmth was In the nest of homel And yet
1t is no light thing for the man who aspires
and struggles and achieves, or the woman
who studies and dreams, to be bereft of that
keen sympathy, that blessed oneness in mar
riage, which, to the heart at once true and
tender, seems worth all other things put to-
gether. Louise Chandler Moulton in Brook
lyn Magazine