The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1893-09-20
RuskIN's WEDDING ROMANCE,
The Story of the Eccentric Critics Mar
rage and Divorce.

John Ruskin did strangely maynard
thing when he consented to get married.
He did most cratic and, to the public, a
most inexplicable thing when he arranged
for his divorce. He had accepted some of
the loftiest traditions about womanhood
that men sometimes read and talk about,
and he looked for his ideal companion One
night he met her in the drawing room of a
London friend, who, without his knowing
st. had brought the young lady to meet the
eyes of the great writer.
1t was June night. He was 35, and she
looked like Greek goddess. He was daz-
zled. She was a tall, graceful girl of 10,
with face and figure as faultless rs one of
the statues of old. No one ever expected
Ruskin to fall in love, and he did not. She
was poor needed home and its comforts,
and so they were married.
Their welded life was peaceful, friendly,
kindly to the highest degree, but there was
not a spark of affection to enlghten their
existence. She admired the great man she
had married and was grateful for the wealth
and comfort he showered on her. He wor-
SHIPPED her as he would the marble made
lifelike by the sculptor's chsel.
There was nothing human about the life
they led as husband and wife, and she was
awoman who in her heart, like all true
women, laughed at the traditions that
made her sex love distant worship.
One day Ruskin brought an artist to
paint his wife's picture. And the man was
Millais, and he was a bright, CHEEKY, hand
some fellow, human every inch of him, with
great and absorbing love for the beautiful
and n willingness to tell of his love.
He began to paint the portrait of the
magnificent woman, and when he had fin
=. l. a. - 4
Womanlike she saw it, and perhaps she
was not full of sorrow and reproach. 1t
was the first tribute of real manly love that
had ever laid at her feet.
And Ruskinl His wide eyes saw the ro-
nance that was weaving around those two
lives, and his heart realized how little af-
lection he had to lavish on the woman he
had made his wife. How he told her the
story of his pride in her, and the sacrifice
he was to make for her, while she lay prone
at his feet is one of the things which only
he or she could tell
1t is difficult to obtain a divorce in Eng
land, but John Ruskin secured it for her
and one bracing morning in the early win
ter, month after the divorce was granted
Rusllin stood beside the couple in one OF
London's quiet churches and saw them
made man and wife.
That was good many years ago, and
since then Millais has become rich and ia
nous and is now Sir John, and his wife /:
my Lady Millais. The warmest, sturdiest
friend the struggling painter had in hi'
toiling days was the man whose wife hi
had married, and through all the years o
Millais' later success and greater honol
John Ruskin has been the welcome guess
and daily visitor to the man and woman
whose lives he so unselfishly crowned will
happiness.
1t is a strange story, and the world knows
little about it, and some men have con
demned him, as some women have censurec
her. But the two men and that one woman
who knew best have been happy and con
tented with the change that John Ruskin's
pure unselfishness brought into their lives
And so the world should not complain
Chicago News.