The Arizona sentinel., 1889-01-19

| cooking or a couple or hearts Sk6Wered together on dart borrowed from the | culver of his friend Cupid, under the
 portico of temple of the Euston-road | order of architecture Could we once
 more popularize the myth of the
 beautiful youth of Argos who, sailing
 along the coast of Attica, delivered a
 number of lovely maidens from the
 violence of the Pelasgian pirates, and
 was afterward praised by them in their bridal or hymeneal songs, the aspira-
 tiOns of the late Mr. Wright might ap
 pear far less absurd than they proba- ply do to a cynical and matter-of-fact
 generation. who are too apt to regard
 marriage only as a financial transac- tion or as a convenient means of set
 ting down into housekeeping without
 paying the lady -hOusekeeper her prop
 CT wages. If the maidens, not of At
 tica, but of England, could only be
 brought to regard the single gentle
 men, even to the most callOw young
 curates among them, as so many pos
 sible sons of Dionusos and Aphrodite,
 and favorite of Appollo and Calliope,
 they would naturally do their best to
 render themselves in every way worthy
 of semi-celestial patronage. Of course they would be early-risers; the Dryads
 and the Hamadryans were always
 astir by sunrise; and, as for cold
 bathing, if we are to believe
 the imaginative artists who contribute
 to the exhibition of the Paris salon,
 the nymphs of antiquity passed at least
 half their time in the water. The vo- taries of Hymen would be sedulous
 students of vocal music, else how could they become proficient in 4inging the songs to which Hymen loves to listen? But whether those ditties should be warbled to the accompaniment of the grand pianofOrte, or the violin, for which lovely woman has of late years manifested so pronounced penchant, or of the banjo, which is making such brilliant headway in modern boudoirs, must be left to aesthetic taste and in- tellectual perception of Hymen's grace ful pupils. It is, nevertheless, obvious that, were the maidens to live up to the poetic idea of hymeneal choris- ters, the youths of the period must on their side live up to the poetic idea of Hymen in its nOblest and purest sense. MT. Swinburne would surely not be re- 111o fn fol hof ho rNn followed the coy nymph to Eleusis, and in vain impOrtuned her to dance with him at the festival of Demeter but who eventually won her hand and heart, was a type of all that should be held refined, unsoiled, high-minded and self-sacrifcing in manhood. The terrestrial Hymen had to prove him. self worthy of his adored one ere she consented to become his bride. Like the knight in Coleridge's lyric, ''he saved from outrage worse than death the Lady of the Land;" but his end was happier than that of the preux chevalier whose untimely fate caused Genevieve to shed such piteous tears; for Hymen married the Lady of the Land, and the pair lived happily ever afterward.
 To be perfectly consistent, the we'll meaning but, as it has been shown, wholly impracticable Vicar of Harbury should have proposed to endow a train ing college for intending Edwins as well as one for potential Angelinas. It would, no doubt, be an excellent thing, although the idea is wholly UtOpian, to have a college or seminary in which girls could be trained for the manifold duties and re- responsibilities of matrimony. There are plenty of textbooks on the subject, from which well-qualifed pro- fessOrs could deliver most edlfying lect- ures. The exemplary Hannah More, the excellent Mrs. ChapOne, Mrs. Bar bauld, Miss EdgewOrth, Mrs. Ellis, have all had their say on the duties of wives, mothers and mistresses, while the mother of the Wesleys drew up for the benefit of her son John a wonder ful code for the management and edu- cation of children, conspicuous in the rules of which were that child so soon as it had attained the mature age of twelve months was to be made ito fear the rod and to cry softly" and that it was not to be taught its letters be- fore it was five years old. It would be feasible to instruct the wives, mothers and hOuse-mistresses of the future in all the mysteries of cooking and the other branches of domestic economy, and to give them valuable hints as to shopping and engaging servants. It would not be very difficult to teach them how to take care of their own health and that of their children, and a supplementary course of instruction might be added touching music, danc- ing, novel-reading, play-goir.g, hirta- tion, lawn tennis and the writing of amatOry epistles. Supposing, however, that such hymeneal training school passed out of the do- main of fancy into that of fact, would it not be possible that the domestic ac- complishments which Angelina had acquired, might be neutralized by class ignorance on the art of mat rimOny on the part of Edwin, and his utter incapacity or stolid unwillingness to bear his allotted portion of the con- iuOal burdenp PrOnerlv tO recinrO-