The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1893-01-03
THE REAL And IDEAL.
Much Disappointment in
Welded Life Due to a
FatuouS Belief III
Each Others
Perfection.
WOMEN AS BREADWINNERS.
Eccentricities and Habits of Stage
S~tars-Richard Manifold Be-
hind the Scenes.
@ AS BREADWINNERS.

49,
one of the refined coterie who heard
her thought of calling Immoral:
SAT eighteen / married, of my own
foolish will, a mar of fifty, who ador-
ed me. At twenty / had learned that
it would be a sin 10 waste my full
young life-the only life 1 could know
this side of the grave-in Sc monstrous
a union. He was a good man, and,
according to his lights, a model hus-
band. | could not but respect him,
but we had not one emotion in com
mon. We were wholly incompatible
in feeling, sentiment-in nature. Up
on this ground, and this alone, | OBJ
tanned Il divorce"
Tear away sentimental verblage ana
this woman's' case stands thus:-Her
husbands ideas and tastes were not,
to her apprehension, favorable to the
development of what she sketched as
the life she ought to lead. Hell indi-
vidual happiness ~outranked all otner
considerations in her mind. The
marriage vow, uttered of her W free
will, because she then fancied that
she was forwarding her own selfish in
terests by the union, became a rope
of sand when inclination veered to an
other quarter.
There is an extreme of altruism
which is fanatical. Bald egoism of
the type here ayowed can never be
anything but conremptibie.
1t is sound if homely wisdom to
make the best of a bad bargain. Our
representative Incompatible made the
worst OF one that, to dispassionate
Judges, was only doubtful. Carlyle's
caustic reminder to the complaining
egoist that "there is no act OF Parlia-
ment t o the effect Thai thou shouldst
be happy" comes intelligently here.
The appellant at twenty, against her
e,ehteen-year-old self, was by her W
confession, incapable of standing in
her lot and conquering circumstance.
In demanding that everything in her
environment should be suspicious to
her growth in the direction indicated
by wilful imagination, she testified to
her inability to bear and to perform
what Providence or fate or her OWL
ill-judged desires had brought to her.
Wedlock is not Eden any more than
men and women are angels While
wearing the garment of mortality.
The united pair, turning from the
altar, albeit in name, and, for the
time, in heart, are no more made per-
feet in patience and wisdom than In
holiness and happiness. How they
fare in the novel state, entered upon
with upquestioning eagerness, will de-
pend as much upon the discipline of
temper and will, and the practice OF
the every day graces of mercy, good
ness and truth, as if each had contin-
ued TO lead an existence detached
from the other, and been compelled
to defer to the whims of blood rela-
tives and to consult the wishes of
chance associates.
The serious mistake that lies at the
root of this form of welded wretched-
ness is the fatuous belief in one
another's perfection, without which
ballad-makers and romance-w writers
tell us marriage is a mockery. No
body can live up to a standard as
false as it is mischievous. Husbands
and wives are as fallible as if they
had never been in love, and hoped,
through love, to find a terrestrial
heaven, There is a nobler use than
the pursuit of a personal happiness
for the mutual affection which,
thanks to Him who implanted it,
Yields but slowly to the pressure OF
crucial disappointment. 1t is refined
and strengthened by sustained effort
to,rise superior to the disposition to
seek out i%nfirrnities and to punish
w~rong-doing. With each victory over
selfish ease and desire it approximates
the love that to gentlest long-suffeI
ing adds belief and hope in all goo
and gracious possibilities. -MGT5o
Horzand IN Hd7pe2's Ba2Gr. y
The Failure to Marry.
The failure Of young men to marry
has compelled hundreds of thousands
of young women to earn an i~ndepend-
ent living, writes John Lambert
Payne in the LADIES' Home JeU791Gs.
All honor to the girls who work; but
the Divine plan was that men should
be the b-read-earners and that women
should be the centre of homes.
Whenever such a fundamental law of
society as this is violated, retribution
is Inevitable. There are today up
ward of two million women in the
United States who make a living by
professional and personal services,
such as the practice of law and medi-
cine, the teaching of music and art
work, clerical service of one sort or
another in government and other
offices, quite apart from the army of
young women who serve in stores and
toll at mechanical labor. No n
who can look back ove a generation
of time has failed to observe the ex-
tent to which women have become
independent bread-earners within
comparatively recent years, and par
ticularly in those avenues which edu-
cation and refined habits of life have
opened up. 1t is, in fact, a grave
social problem where this thing will
end.
1t would seem that this, among
other causes, is accomplishing the
purpose which Nautilus aimed to
reacl: for the inexorable conclusions
of the statistician show that the
American and Canadian family is
steadily growing smaller. If the aver
age number per family had been as
cTeadlil 1890 as in 1860, there would
AN~<ot@wNNANeN@N~p
q If you spy it 9