Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1889-07-13

The cottage overlooking the water at Nara
gansett justified its name Of witheden or some
such pretty composite. 1t was the fashionable
two shades of dark red outside, with q deep
porch half octAgon at the corner. making an
outside summer room, hung with roses and vir-
ginia creeper, banked with all the midsummer
flowers, tuberoses showing white against the
brilliance of monthly carnations. foxgloves and
lychnis. The windows blossomed with gay
italian awnings, red and gray, or green and
white, the Japanese fringe-curtains trembled in
the doorways, and the mats of ginger grass,
which kept the windy corner, had been freshly
| sprinkled at shutdown and gave their faint
aromatic fragrance as they moved Bamboo
lounges and rockers with cushions in red or
blue linen held such OF the party as were not
at the piano within, and the handsomest woman
OF all sat apart and talked either the most
daring sense or artistic nonsense. Her age
was unguessable. In her white wool batiste,
with the wild white roses Of Narragansett at
her throat, she looked in her teens, yet tall
girl at the piano, listening to admirer. called
her mother" and few of the pursuits OF women
| failed to find her their mistress Practical in
AFFAIRS, thorough housekeeper. gifted in So
clety, artistic to her finger tips, there remained
a dominant idealism Of thought and feeling to
enrich her life and Others
Some one had spoken lightly of Mona Cards
question, lis marriage a failure?" which set
both worlds talking year or less ago, and the
New YORK woman took up the word.
RELATIONS OF THE SEXES.
whether marriage is a failure is not the
consideration for the times. The question is
related to others We so often hear, why young
men do not marry and is the want Of marriages
the fault of men or women. All the gliding at
the extravaganza Of one side or the other, the
sarcasm at matchmaking mammas and angling
girls spring out Of the great mistake under
which the world labors-that matrimony is any
longer necessity for the better part of So
| ciety. Please understand from the beginning
that ignore and repudiate all license, or. il 1t
must be, we will consider all relations of the
sexes as sort of matrmony, licit or Illicit, the
latter being more stupid and burdensome than
the former People forget that the world moves
socially as well as around the heavens. and
that there is a moral procession of equinoxes
gradually shifting and developing the relations
OF things. To my mind it is a great conven-
lent, natural working of law that there should
| be falling of In the sentiment of marriage
| among educated persons, and that the more
thoughtful and gifted feel no leaning toward
| Its bondage and its obligations.
MARRIAGE HAS SERVED lis PURPOSE
| in populating the earth, and its best acres are
crowded now. 1repeat, it has served its time
the crowding of the population is such to
shorten the individual life and rob it of the
finest pleasures. 1t is well that the sentiment
falls into disuse, and with the higher portion
of humanity first. The intellect and emotions
OF the race expand and dominate its propensi-
ties just as they have overcome the money
making sentiment or the thirst for self-will and
greed of power.
MAN AND WOMAN.
"Ask any thoughtful man if he would like for
year to step into the position held by the
happiest wife, with the loss of freedom to come
and go daily, suits him with the multitude
OF petty cares and restrictions, the obligation
| to consult another's taste in every detail of
| dress and behavior, or be the loser Six months
of a woman's life would send him insane |
often think of what one of the brightest authors
OF the time used to say to me when earning her
| limited income by daily toll with pen and
housekeeping. i never look at any of the
| married women of my acquaintance without
thanking God that He has Kept ME free to fol-
low my own tastes and principles at the cost of
loneliness and hard work. 1t would be far
harder to follow the line of submission and
cajoiery these women must affect to get along
at all Professional women are not anxious to
,ersr for their life gives them plenty Of in
are slow to marry, and generally repent the
step before the honeymoon is over. Women of
genius learn too late that they Of all others
never should marry, and divorce themselves
practically If not formally. The finest men
avoid marriage and entangling ties, from full
ness Of other pleasures, social and intellectual
Macaulay was not the only educated English
man Of his time who found no SAVIOR in the
idea OF wedlock, nor was Allen Thorndike Rice
the sole young man Of fortune and brains to
whom 1t had no attraction beside the calls of
high ambitions and noble aims.
WILL SOCIETY CHANGE?
81 can't help thinking society will change its
tone. as it surely does its practice" said the
lady, "and in place Of urging foolish boys and
girls, men and women indiscriminately into
marriage, to repent forever, it will see the
loftier, sweeter nature of refined celibacy Not
the austerity of the man who never looks at a
woman for fear he may be pleased with her, or
the nun who never glances beyond the rim of
her poke bonnet, and who are twice as likely to
fall into snare to pay for it, but Of those wise
enough not to deny affection because they pre-
fer to do without passion. Men who half know
the world may sneer at the idea an impossi-
bility, but those who know it best know that
sweeter, purer things are possible and actually
existing than common human nature dreams.
Men have outgrown the impulse of old robber
knights when they saw pretty womanto carry
her OH by force, and the finer Of them can adj
mlre peerless woman, feeling her witchery in
their very souls, without finding it indispensa-
BILE to either marry or ruin her. The sooner
this is recognized and society adjusted to this
new privilege and freedom the better There
Will always be fools enough to carry on the
race, and the increasing proportion of men
and women not DESTROYS Of marriage is some
thing to be grateful for and to encourage It
means health, leisure, devotion to large in
terests for good Of society. 1t means longer
life, larger means, more room and opportunity
for the rest of humanity, more happiness for
the individual, and for the world
PLAToNIC AFFECTION.
"Give men and women more liberty to make
friends Of each other, and you will find less
vice, fewer marriages and sounder ones. The
license is not half SO likely to be abused as that
Of love-making, as it exacts decorums which
our courtship does not The duenna, the dis
Greet friendly third, is essential to such inter-
course, and renders it possible for such intimacy
to defy misconstructiOn. Say the picture is too
fine drawn, impossible, and will show you in
stances, scores Of them, when such friendships
are carried on without harm or cavil in the
heart Of the most conventional society in the
world.
are known and memorable in society, notably
Horace Greely's regard for Alice Cary, which
was the solaoe and support of two generous
spirits as long as gossips kept their tongues
OF. No feelings finer or more honorable to
human nature can be imagined than the SYM
patty which drew the sorely harrassed poll
tician to the recluse poetess, or intercourse
more free from reproach than that which
soothed the world-worn man and brought the