Wichita eagle., 1888-11-10
MARRIAGE A vExATloUs FAIL
URE"
MAGNOLIA, Kans.

MAGNOLIA, Kans.
To the Editor OF the Daily Eagle.
All England, and large part of Amer
lea seems to be completely storm up" SO
cially over statement made by Mrs
Card in the Westminster Review, thai
Marriage is vexatious failure"
If marriage is failure, then life itsell
is failure; and we can no more avoid
one than we can the other.
We come into this wonderful and un
explainable existence which we call life
with no desire or knowledge on our OWE
part. We leave it, if with knowledge
at least without desire, or the means Of
preventing our exit. And the same
power which called us into existence,
and which hurries US into the great un-
known, commands that man shall be
the husband of one wife. He also says
that man shall be fruitful and multiply.
We have no other standard of NOR
atty than the Bible. Nature teaches
nothing of morals. The law of in
stinct in the lower animals teaches
them to reproduce of their
kind. The birds build their nests
in the spring, hatch their young and fly
forth to seek another enate, happy for
aught we know, but God did not so Or
dain with man.
In the beginning was one man and one
woman, fit type of the home life which
He intended should be built up and sus-
tanned until the end of time. Until the
devil, in the form of a serpent, crept in
that marriage was not considered a vex-
atious failure. Ever since that time he
has been assuming one form or another,
usually that of a man, this time of a
woman, in which he might the better
disseminate his noxious doctrines.
Every blow at the home life is a blow
at the purity of mankind and the secur-
ity of this nation. No nation can stand,
care not how OVERLOOKING may be its
exchequers, how powerful are its armies,
which has not for its very foundation
stone the comfortable, happy homes of
its people.
l have no intention in this paper to
discussing Equal Rights in any form,
either in the form of suffrage or more
extended intellectual sphere for women,
but simply to set forth the absolute
necessity of the home life, and woman
the center around which its whole intri-
cate machinery revolves.
God has set his eternal seal upon
the female and says she shall be the
mother OF all created things. No fine
spun theories about womans sphere can
do away with this fact of nature.
How then can woman's mission be best
fulfilled? How can she best subserve
if not the only object, at least the great
est for which she was created! l answer
unhesitatingly, only by the security and
purity of the home How may the home
be made secure and kept from those
vices which shun the light of day and
stalk forth at night, with their pestilen-
tial breath, blighting everything in their
path: | answer again, by marriage.
Cali it a vexatious failure or success,
and marriage alone-the union
of two persons, male and female. in a
high and holy bond to reproduce of their
kind and train to lives of usefulness, and
happiness. those beings
committed to their care. That marriage
is in many cases a complete failure, fall
ing far short of its mission, shall not
attempt to deny. But that marriage is
a failure in its entirety | do assert is
basely untrue.
The causes of it's failure in many cases
are SO numerous that it would take val
liable time to mention a hundredth part
Of them, but one serious cause arises
from the fact that people enter into mat
rimony as lightly as they would pur
chase an article of clothing.
Many men marry because they are
tired of boarding, or have become
and purchase a wife as they
would lay figure upon which to display
their riches to a gaping world. Many
marry for far less worthy motives
than these.
Women marry for homes; for a sickly
sentimental feeling which they child
SHY fancy love, but has no more resem-
0lance to that divine passion than the
east star in the armament on high has
% the glorious orb of day. A few weeks,
u months at best, fit by; they begin to
see faults in their companions and to
;igh for their old life of single blessed
ness, as they are now inclined to call it,
| do not say where people find them
selves married to persons SO lncongenial
hat no thought is in unison that there
S any chance for happiness. But who
has said that they shall be happy? Not
Tod. for he says by a prophet, "Man's
lays are few and full of trouble" There
yet remains a work for them to do; life
S full of stern duties. Duty seems a
larsh word to a young, bleeding heart,
1ut it is the path which leads straight to
1od and his eternal home.
Mrs. Card advocates the "Obvious
light of every woman to possess herself,
,ody and soul, and to give herself body
md soul, exactly as she wills"
That is not new; but an axiom as old
IS woman herself. But is it any more of
surrender, either body or soul-nay, as
nuch-to give herself in marriage than |
is to give herself to man without mar
iage?
She does not, as understand, advocate |
! life of confluence; it is simply giving |
lerself away, without any bond or Sc |
urity that her children shall be fed, |
clothed and educated; that they |
hall have warm home nest to which !
hey may fly when the sorrows and |
of life are pressing down
lpon their young and tender souls with |
weight almost too strong to be resisted. |
\ hat is there about such life of liberty |
so termed-that would make a wo- |
mans instincts more acute in choosing a |
nate or that would bring into greater
twospirits entirely uncongenial?
suppose her reply would be, eff too I'M
ongenial she can seek another mate"
Nh; that is the insidious poison which |
he serpent whispered in the ear of Eve
n the garden of Eden.
How many men or women of renoun |
ave sprung from homes founded upon |
but legal marriage?
| wonder how much time the mothers