St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1892-01-30
SOCIETY II MODERN LONDON.
Ne London AArried Woman Ever Was .
London Girl


society's scheme of activity has be-
come but ill-snited to the circumstances
of modern England The first thing
that one notes on entering the great
world Il that there ara no great men
there. We do not speak here Of the
claret-cup crashes where the people of
political taste gather-chiefly before
Easter. There, indeed, great men are
to be seen In plenty. escorting tiri-
desirable wives and still less desirable
| daughters. but that is not society. II
Is the vestibule OF the inferno. Society
properly SO called is . place for boys
and giris-a marriage market Moth
ing but the unconquerablc in
stincts of racial preservation can nc.
count for the stark courage with which
the British chaperon faces the sleepless
anguish Of her calling. Now. unhappily
in q ballroom the girls outnumber the
men and pinety.nine per cent Of them
want husbands, while as TO the '.men."
eighty per cent of them are a. little
abe to finance a nursery Us to Rna nee
the Italian opera. Nothing is looked
for from them but that they should
keep sober and break to the eye by their
black garments the Rlaring. gloomy
banks Of unmarried muslin. There are
plenty Of men in London who can
marry and do marry, but when the
time has arrived when their circum-
stances justify the step, they do not
seek to enter society in order to choose
q wife. They arrange . three days
holiday and run down to the country,
where they propose to the old love of
long ago. No average man can truth
fully testify that he ever knew . Lon
don married woman who was London
girl before she was married woman.
While society Is expanding 80 rapidly
and SO widely that sven the professed-
ly fashionable papers have long aban.
doned any attempt to maintain the old
practice of recording the names Of the
guests at its chief functions, fashion.
able marriages have become SO rare
that all the evening papers and some of
the morning. papers think them suffi-
GENTLY remarkable to give each q re-
port Of from: thirty to sixty lines. The
chief reason. then, OF the failure of so
ciety is that It does not fulfill its raison
d'etre. If the chaperon wishes to get
at the man who is worth marrying she
must alter her hours, cool her rooms.
and simplify her entertainments 1t
would pay a matchmaking mother far
better 20 give twenty dinner parties to
rising barristcrs or civil engineers than
to entertain four hundred penniless boys
at . ball supper. Unfortunately for
the chapcroL, she can not rid herself of
the idea that her daughters domestic
happiness mast be based on land. She
forgets that the land of England is
more heavily mortgaged than of yorc.
and thst it yields thirty per cent less
in gross rentals. whilst the number of |
girls who consider themselves destined |
to ''marry land" is three times greater |
than IL was twenty years ago Unless |
the cbaperon wishes to condemn her |
daughter to perpetual celibacy she
must seek husband elsewhere than in |
the London ballroom, for the London |
ballroom is closed to every man who |
lives by his own exertions, and as for
the ''gilded youth" he generally pre-
fers the Cafe Royal. or Rules, or
Romano's. where, indeed. he is still in |
society, but in society whose daugh-
ters attach no special ethical value to
the mere dry ceremonial Of MARRIAGE
London Speaker.