Deseret evening news. [volume] (Great Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1867-1920, 1896-12-11
WIVES OF GERMANS.
AN AMERICAN GIRLS POSITION WHEN
SHE MARRlES A BARON.

How She Has to Economic In 4hS Use OF
Her own Money-An Authority on tho
Women In This Country.
Few questions have been put to me as
test to my foreign experience oftener
than the familiar: Ought American
girls to marry German men? Are such
unions happy? Do they turn out we'll!
What class of men is it that step out.
side the beaten track of home matri-
mony to seek American wives and
transplant them into the life of the fa-
therland?' writes Baroness Won Wedel
in Cosmopolitan.
In respect to the marriages of Ameri-
can girls with German men, they may
be approved of safely in the cases Of
practical, worldly minded women and
of very young or of very gentle temper
ed girls. Wives who possess little senti-
ment or only soft sentiments yield read
lily to their environment, the latter Civ
ing way unconsciously, and hence with
out pain, the former with foresight and
with a purpose selfish enough, AS we
may assume, to recompense them for
their renunciations.
AS for the class of willful, silly, pre-
tcntious women, they are happy no.
where. German society should not be-
called too harshly to account, therefore,
If they are wretched in marrying into
1t. We must concede, il We are fair
minded. that they would have beon just
as discontinued in any other geograph-
ical position as in the fatherland.
The inquiry begins with our average
girls. They represent American wives
whose happiness is influenced by the
specifically foreign traits i'll their hus-
bands and their husbands society and
surroundings. However they may vary
in character, they are alike in their
Americanism. and it is republican prin-
ciples which are opposed in them to the
aristocratic education of the men of
their choice
1t is false prejudice to suppose that
these or the titled gentlemen who take
American wives are mere fortune hunt
ers and degenerated specimens of nohil-
ity. They are often men, it is true, who
could not marry women without dow
ries, for gentlemen on the continent as
it must be kept continually in mind,
are excluded from the chances OF max
ing money.
Where cases of dissipation of tho
great fortunes Of American wives occur
and are duly reported, two or three
things are sometimes overlooked. The
first is that, if the cases were not rare,
they would hardly be considered worth
offering to the public us shocking facts.
The second is that the fortune evidently
was limited. The next may surprise us,
for it is a truth that has not not been
realized by our home staying country
men-I mean the fact that foreigners
lay the blame on tho American WIFE
Why, the relatives ask, did she not bring
more money into the connection?
What they mean, and what they feel
justified by the usages Of their class in
meaning, is that young noblemen do
nothing unusual in being extTavagant
If tho consort of such man brings
wealth enough for her TO DO luxurious,
too, no objection TO that Ia valid. But
the head Of the house is the member
who is the representative Of his rank, to-
gether with the munitlceuce that is suit.
able to it, and where the mutual fortune
is circumscribed it becomes the duty Of
the wife to retrench her outlays in order
to allow him to continue representing
their station without too much danger
of bankrupting the family means. Ger
man wives economize the more in pro-
norton as their husbands snend
American born wives, ON the contrary.
have drawn the reputation upon them
selves of being incapable Of this sort of
sacrifice.
l have learned to look for tho real
tragedies among foreign marriages in
the silent cases. These women of char
acter Aad ambition. united in . ferYid