The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1886-08-14

LII late uuIuDcI OI Inc DTOOREVH
Magazine several well known literary
ladies hold a symposium on the ques-
tion, when should girls marry2' Among
others, Louise Chandler Moulton writes:
A certain sense of embarrassment at
tends any attempt to give my views as
to the age at which girls ought to marry,
from the fact that know of no subject
on which it would seem to be more i'm
possible to lay down a hard and fixed
rule or even to generalize with any de-
gree OF satisfaction You remember the
famous recipe for hare soup, First catch
your hare | should be inclined, in
answering the question, to say, First
show me your girl, for there can be no
doubt but that some girls are mentally,
morally and physically better fitted to
marry at 20 than others at IS.
If indeed one must generalize as to
whether early or late marriages are pref
cradle, should certainly say that more
girls are capable of wise choice at IS
than at 20; and that nine-tenths of our
girls would doubtless be happier should
they wait until the maturer period. Two
considerations would influence me to a
preference for marriage later than
early. In the first place is the certain
ty that girl of any brains would know
a great deal better what she needed, by
way of companionship through lite, at
IS than she could possibly know at 20.
In the second place l would fain secure
to girls the natural, healthful delights
OF girlhood; that time when the bud
has not quite opened to the sun and
holds at heart the morning freshness.
And yet the remembrance of certain
girl brides, full of hope and trust, and
entering on the new life with the fresh
enthusiasm of girlhood, constrains me
to wonder whether something may not
be lost from the glory of love when the
glory of youth is passed.
In the two very happiest marriages l
can just now call to my mind one wife
married at the age of 28, the other at
that of 80. And these marriages seem
to me ideally perfect. To these happy
pairs would apply my favorite quotation
from Jane Eyre, where Jane says, after
her marriage with Rochester, For US to
be together is to be as free as in soli-
lude, as gay as in company But l
would be very far from deducing from
these two ideal marriages the conclusion
that young woman should not marry
under the mature age of 28.
The terrible danger is in the early
marriages of people in state, when,
before the wings have sprung from the
shoulders of Pegasus, he may be mated
allunknowingly with the plodding plow-
horse. Unshared aspirations-these are
fatal to conjugal happiness, l know, for
instance, man in high official position,
educated largely by contact with the
world, by the very duties that have de-
volved on him and the attention of every
days experiences, whose petty, 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
bo AAPpisr with a dIHozont- wiEe F.
Louisa M. Alcott writes as follows:
my reply to the question, when shall
our young women marry1 is from 20
to IS, as few girls are ready for the
duties of married life before them, either
physically or mentally. Many are never
fit, owing to the serious defects in our
modern education and inherited ills.
when shall our young men marryF
is still more important question to my
mind, because the sins of the father Wis
tied upon the children are too often the
cause of that feebleness which is usually
attributed to the mothers. Wnen young
people are wisely prepared for marriage
and taught its sanctity it will cease to
be a leap in the dark it is now to both
parties and the beauty and vigor of
youth will make it what it should be
safe and happy. As teacher, nurse, au-
thor and confdant to both young and
old, | have had many opportunities of
looking behind the curtain, and am
convinced that books on the health of
our boys are much more needed than
any addition to the library of advice
our poor girls are supplied with. Begin
at the right end, gentlemen, and do not
visit upon Ewes daughters the sins of
Adams sons, making it unsafe to marry
at all.