Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-09-15
SOME WAYS TO CHECK DIVORCE,
Why Women Too Often Leap Before They
Look Into MatrimoDy.
NOVELS AS SUNDAY SCHOOL PRIZES
rwn1rrrr FOE ZEE prsrArcH.l

clergymen and Sunday school superintend-
ents should carefully examine before it
is placed upon the shelves of Sabbath
school Libraries, or is selected for
prizes for the little girls and boys
who recite tie most Bible verses or commit
to memory the most hymns and gospel
songs. "The Children of the Abbey"
1.-THE Scottish Chiefs" and 'Thaddeus of
Warsaw" which have lately been dug out
| of the dust of antiquity for use as such
prizes, are very, very midas novels 60 in
these days-but when published in q
former generation they were as vigorously
denounced, by the truly orthodox, as ''Rob-
ert Elsmere" or those of even the Amelie
Riyes, or Laura Jean Libbey school of to-
day. 1t availed nothing with the good old
brethren of that day that the" Children of the
Abbey" only illustrated the old proverb of
Shakespeare that ''The course of true love
never did run smooth, or that in life THE
sweetest JOY, the widest woe is love-" for,
Notwithstanding, all the good old mothers
| REGARDED IT WITH HORROR,
and put it in the hottest part of the fire with
the tongs, when they found it in possession
of their young daughters. 1t availed
| nothing with the fathers that "Thaddeus of
Warsaw" and "The Scottish Chiefs incul-
Gated the pure passion Of patriotism and
| gave to the world history in its most attrac-
| tive form; they were as unhesitatingly con-
demned as though they were in truth the
fruit of "the evergreen tree of diabolical
knowledge" by which name Sir Anthony
| Absolute condemned the circulating
| libraries
| The pulpit, even until late years, con-
demned novels, and hardly 20 years ago in
religious and respectable families they were
held in adherence aud duly con6scated and
burned wherever found, while young peo-
| pie were talked to and reasoned with as to
their deadly and unholy effect, with un-
tiring zeal. But mark the change.
Every Sunday school library is now
stuffed with novels, both standard and
| freshly written, while the old sentimental
| under the ban Of the Church and burned at
the stake by the forefathers-are now used
| as prizes by Sunday school teachers for
proficiency in Biblical knowledge and regu-
| lar attendance upon the means of grace.
But while novels in the olden time were
| considered great moral evil and a device
of the devil for the most powerful mischief,
| they are now showing-with all their ad-
| mitted influence and forces for good-that
| the fears then entertained were not wholly
| unfounded, in one respect at least, since
some novels are now becoming in certain
particulars antagonistic to the Church.
AIRS HER IDEAS.
In "The Wing of Azrael." Mrs. Caird
keeps to her special hne of attack on the
subject of marriage, though she airs her
notions very freely on other social difficult
ties. She distinctly, however, asserts in the
preface that "its object is not to convince or
| to convert, but to represent" If the pic
| ture she paints be true to nature, as shown
| in English society, it is a most repulsive
one to contemplate. 1t is blackly drawn
tragedy throughout, and might be pro-
nounced unreal and overstrained, if the
daily papers did not TEEN with just such
cases of marital infelicity, often ending in
murder, though it is usually the man who
murders and then commits suicide.
Most of these are doubtless from
the same cause-from the fact
that women rush blindly into marriage for
a home, for a living, or to please their
friends. They take upon themselves SOL
emn contract, and are then not prepared to
live up to its conditions. But it is not too
much to say that women who have attained
years Of discretion should be prepared for
the consequences, and grin and bear the
result of their folly as best they can, or get
out of 1t gracefully as best they may. Men
have to stand by their contracts under the
law, whether for better or for worse, and
women who 90 into a bargain with their
eyes open can hardly have the face to claim
exemption.
JUMPING AT CHANCES.
Women, through ignorance and the Gus
toms of society, are much more apt to enter
upon the solemn contract of marriage unad-
kbor
to them-"deluded souls who dream of
heaven" as the hymn goes-freedom, inde-
pendence, release from the sordid condi-
tions of their lives and an entrance upon the
promised land of love, with all its fond en-
dearments and sweet possessions. But, alas,
unless, not only love, but congenial compan-
ionsh1p exist, the many are disappointed.
The beautiful dreams of even the fondest
love vanish oftentimes before the stern real
tiles of life. House rent and taxes and gro
Ger bills have no poetry in them and have
tendency to send love flying out of the win
dow. But still, after all and amid all,
The heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as truly loves onto the close Il
As the sunfower turn on her god when he sets,
The same look which she turned when he
Mona Cards idea of reform in marriage
seems to be a social revolution-an out-and-
out change in the conventional accepted
terms of the matrimonial contract-an en-
tire revival of the marriage laws of En-
gland-and truly they need it. The very
use of the word "obey" in the church SER
vice is resented by intelligent women, as
suggestive of the condition of master and
slave. But most women, in this country at
least, regard such promise as merely form
of words, that like many obsolete laws,
society has outgrown, while men, on the
average are better than the laws. It is
only when a man gets very low down that
he calls on the law to regulate his matri-
monial affairs and enforce his power over
his wife.
A POSSIBLE REMEDY.
The remedy for the evil of the marriage
laws seems 10 lie in a recognition OF the in
dependence OF women, and their equal re-
sponsbility. When a man tries to main
tain the position of himself as master, and
his wife as subject, it is the same barbarous
appeal of the savage to force and coercion
that distinguished an uncivilized age. No
married couple stand more prominently be-
fore the world than grand old Gladstone and
Mrs. Gladstone, and his testimony as to
their so years of golden love and happiness
is that when she holds conviction, and
stands firm, he gives way, and when he
holds conviction, and stands firm, she gives
way; and this mutual concession is their
rule, and happier would it be for many if
they followed their example.
Those studying the subject Of divorce and
devising ways of lessening the evils connect
ed with it, must first discover the cause, and
they will find the greatest factor of all in
matrimonial inelicities to be the doctrine
of the supremacy OF sex 50 long and relig-