Semi-weekly south Kentuckian. [volume] (Hopkinsville, Ky.) 1883-1889, 1886-09-03
sIsTERLY ADVICE.
some well-Known women's Views on the
Marriage Question.

some Well-Known women's Views on the
| Marriage Question.
Recently the Brooklyn Magazine
asked several of the best-known woman
writer's in America for their views
respecting the age when young women
should marry. To this important ques.
ton Louisa Nj. Alcot. replied, "from
twenty-three to twenty-five" as before
then few girls are ready for the duties
of married life, either physically or
mentally. She thought, however, that
the question "When shall our young
men marryP' still more important
one.
Rebecca Harding Davis wrote tha,
she thought the time for girl to marry
is when she meets man who heartily
loves her and whom she heartily loves,
II she is old enough to be helpmate
to him and not dead-weight.
Madeline Vinton Dahlgren thinks
that young woman Of twenty must
have seen enough of the social atmos-
phere in which she lives to be able to
discriminate wisely in the choice of a
husband.
Lucy Stone does not believe in early
marriage, so she put the suitable age
at from twenty-five to thirty years. To
her mind the divorces which come
from want of age and the death rate
among children of inexperienced
mothers are "danger signals" against
early marriages.
Helen Campbell is down on the girl
who dreams of lovers from the timo
she can walk and marries at seventeen.
She believes no man is fit to marry be-
fore thirty and no woman before twen-
ty-five.
Eunice White Beecher takes issue
with nearly all of her literary sisters.
She believes that there are many rea-
sons why marriage of girls from
eighteen to twcnty-one would seem to
promise the happiest results. Young
people more readily conform their
habits to those of each other than
when individual habits become fixed
by independent lives.
Mary l.. Booth avoids figures. but
regards immature marriages as fruit
full source of unhappiness. She deems
it desirable that young women should
have an opportunity to see something
of the world and to partake of the
amusements Of her age before marry
ing, that she may not afterward be
pursued with regret for having been
defrauded of the enjoyment Of her
youth,
Lucy Larcom says the old adage,
"MaTy in haste and repent at leisure, !"
reserves its keenest barbs for many OF
those who have embarked early and
thoughtlessly upon the voyage matri-
monial. She admits that early marri-
ages are sometimes the happiest, and
that in delay ayoung woman may learn
to love her self-reliant lot so well that
she will not marry at all. But she
thinks that early marriages tend to rob
women of the most delightful period
of their lives-the interval between the
experience of child and that of a
wife-the period of beautiful, delight
full and gradual development. "Let
girls marry young if they will" she
tsays. "but not 50 young as to lose the
sweetness of gazing quietly into life
through the fresh dews of maiden med
itation fancy free"
Louise Chandler Moulton thinks that
more girls are capable Of wise choice
at twenty-five than at twenty, and that
nine-tenths of our girls would be hap
pier should they wait until the maturer
period. The two happiest marriages
she can call to mind were of one wife
at twenty-eight, the other at thirty.
Country girls and daughters of the
wealthy classes may venture into mat
rimony at early ages with less danger
of mistake than the great body of we'll
to-do and working Americans. To her
mind unshared aspirations, unshared
tastes, unshared acquisitions are the
fatal rocks before early marriages.
| CHICAGO NeUs. f