The weekly Thibodaux sentinel and journal of the 8th Senatorial District. [volume] (Thibodaux, Lna. [i.e. La.]) 1875-1898, 1888-05-26
Runaway 1ATiases.

0AAO AsOAAS MNA W. AOOOs
Runaway Aarases.
There have been given seoently in the
newspapers accounts of runaway match.
"a In which the brides are school girls
under sixteen years of age. The cir.
cumstances OF the ~elopements as a rule
have been dramatic enough to figure in
. dime novel, and have certainly lost
nothing of their sensational character,
As they have been copied from n pa
per to another throughout the country.
For example. here is one:
The daughter of q worthy farmer,
aged fifteen, fell in love with one of the
workmen on the farm. Of whose charac.
ter her father strongly disapproved.
The man was discharged. The girl was
hidden to go to her school books and t.
dismiss the thought of a husband until
increasing years should give her uore
sense and Judgment.
But the young lady had received
from novels, ideas quite different from
this. Sc correspondent secretly with
the young man, and laid her plans. The
next week she became apparently very
i'll, and was seized with commissions.
Her poor father. in an agony of terror.
started to the nearest town ior the doc
tor.
On his return, taking a short side
road to reach home sooner, he met his
daughter and her lover on their way to
the railroad station. The lover took
the feeble old man from his carriage,
bound him hand and foot with the leath-
er relns, and drove away triumphantly,
leaving him lying on the ground b. the
roadside.
Another story is that of a child of
fourteen from Cincinnati, who engaged
herself to marry man whom her pa
rents had forbidden her even to know.
She was sent to school in the hope
that the folly would fade from her
mind; but she escaped from the school,
placed q bit of paper with SIS" on it in
her shoe. in order that she might tell
the clergyman that she was lover 49,"
and was married.
Her parents took her home, but she
ran away again, took the conductor and
passengers into her confidence, and
when the man she had married found
her, threw herself screaming into his
arms, while the crowd cheered loudly.
Now the important point in these
stories is not that these young girls sue
ceeded in carrying out their own fool
ish wills. Having succeeded, they will
some time pay the wretched penalty
that ine1orably follows such reckless
conduct.
Young girls who can play sharp
tricks on %clergymen. allow a fee
BILE old father to be cruel
~ m~altreated, and at sixteen give way
TO their uncontrolled Wills, are not the
kind of girls that make happy, helpful
wives and mother. But their fate only
concerns themselves, and they must
meet it.
The point which interests the public,
Is the low tone OF American newspapers
that leads their editors to applaud these
children, and to approve acourse which
every thoughtful man knows is suicidal
to their happiness for life. No girl of
sixteen IS competent, mentally or NOR
ally, to choose a man who shall be her
second self for life. No girl of sixteen
is fit in brain. body or education to
marry.
If she persists in a marriage against
the wishes of her parents, she is urged
to it, not by true love- as the news
papers assert, but by a false passion or
fancy, that will be as short-lived and
balcful as the swamp fires that lure
travellers to destruction.-ToutA's
Communion.