Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-05-11

years of residence among us, and settle
ment for life in the role of social critic
in the principal metropolis of the conti-
nent She is equally severe upon the
wives who assume the obligation ignorant
of domestic service, and the relation that
exists between domestic felicity and well
cooked meal; who fail to realize that food
is "the nerve force of our social affec-
tions :" who are insensible to that domestic
who make jealousy the food of the divorce
court, and fall into the deplorable error of
forgetting or never know that s'the best
love, like the best wine, flows without
pressing" those also, who are beset with
the craze for excitement and sensation
and those who marry reckIessly, with the
divorce court in mind if the venture
should happen to be failure. But more
blameworthy than all others are the wives
who force living beyond income, and the
husbands of whom, if they save themselves
from ruin and dishonor, do so at the sacri-
fee of their happiness. As for men, while
Mrs. Barr holds that every man is Just
what some woman has made him, she ex-
cuses them for nothing that is error on
their part, and palliates none of their
offenses she counts them among the
especially guilty when they marry imma-
ture women, girls in their teens, who
have all the crudeness and tartness of sour
fruit" The judgments of such are harsh
their prejudices stiff, their sympathies mar
row, and their self-assertion abnormal. A
few years more of maidenhood would have
mellowed or ripened such into reason,
knowledge of human nature, accord with
human sympathies.
The justification for referring so extend
edly to expressions of prominent women
upon the question of marriage, who have
had special opportunities to study men and
women in many lights, and who have
attained position as social analysts, is
found in the interest of the subject in the
first place, the strong contrasts of views.
and lastly in the evident truths in which
each, to some extent, deals. But to
Mrs. Barr must be conceded the approval
of the calm-t thinking, and those who look
upon the purpose of marriage as something
above and beyond and infinitely superior
to the ideal of passionate youth, as some
thing too holy for calculating avarice or
sickly sentimentality. Marriage without
love is proclamation of the most sacred rela-
ton of life marriage for convenience is a
social crime; marriage in anticipation of
an unending honeymoon is folly that
will reap tears for unreason sown; mar
riage without full contemplation of its
obligations, the demand for concessions
inseparable from the life partnership of
hearts and without the resolution, coupled
with the ability to keep it, to forbear and
to deny self-these are the unions that
make it possible for the question to be
asked, '1s marriage failure?' and that |
other moving upon the same unwor-
thy level, "Who is to blame when there is
apparent failure?" Marriage is not a fail |
ure. As an institution of civilization it is
the chief of its successes. Those who !
doubt are either incompetent to answer
the question from lack of knowledge of the
history of the race, or are soured optimists,
a new and apt designation some wit has
given to pessimists. If it may be granted
with Mrs. Barr that for domestic infelicity /
women are most to blame, there must be
concurrence with Mrs. Terhune marian
Harland), whose first and one of her most
successful papers was entitled marrying
Through Prudential Reasons" that the
blameworthiness is chargeable to our sys-
tenn of educating women, and for which |
man must hold himself most largely |
accountable.