The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-12-28
MARRIAGE CUSTOMS.

The all important question of mar riage and divorce has of late been dis cussed in the public press from a great variety of viewpoints, and has received additional interest by reason of mum Der of opinions and suggestions regard ing the subject advanced by well known public men, as we'll as by an official bulletin of the Census Bureau at Wash ington, according to which divorce, the great social evil, is stated to be on the steady increase.
 Reasons why young and impecunious army officers should not contract mar riage, and thereby save themselves and the government possible trouble an an noyance and at the same time render more efficient service, formed an impor- tant chapter in General Corbin's annual report to the war department. A well known English writer has been re ported as fayoring a marriage contract covering a limited number of years as a solution for the 'alarmingly growing divorce mania. and Bishop Potter and other prominent members of the clergy of other denominations are exerting their influence to bring about a change for the better.
 Naturally. the question as to who should and who should not marry has agitated the public mind ever since the institution of marriage was known. Disraeli says that matrimony has often been considered as a condition not well suited to the domestic life of genius it is accompanied by too many em- lbarrassments for the head and the heart. Fuessil, the Swiss artist, con tended that the marriage state was in compatible with a high, cultivation of the fine arts. Peiresc. the French col lector. refused marriage, convinced that the cares of family were too absorb ing for the freedom necessary to liter ary pursuits, and sacrifice of fortune incompatible with his great designs. Boyle, who would not suffer his studies to be interrupted by household affairs" lived as boarder with his sisteB Lady Ranelagh. Bayle and Hume and Gibbon and Adam Smith de- cided for celibacy. Regarding the liter ary genius. Disraeli says: If the liter ary man. united himself to a woman whose taste and whose, temper are ad-i verse to his pursuits, he must courage ously prepare for martyrdom," And thus the wife of Bishop Cooper, while
 her husband was employed on his Lexi- con, one day consigned the work of many years to the flames and obliged that scholar to begin a second siege of Troy is a second Lexicon. The wife of Whitelocke often destroyed his manu- scripts, and the marks of her nails have come down to posterity in the numerous decorations still gaping in his Memo rials. The learned Sir Henry Saville, who devoted more than half of his life and nearly e10,00O to his magnificent edition of 'St. Chrysostom, led a very uneasy life between that saint and Lady Saville. Milton carried nothing. of the greatness of his mind in the choice of his wives; his first wife was the object of sudden fancy. He left the metropolis, and unexpectedly returned a married man, united to a woman of such uncongenial dispositions that the .romp was frightened at the literary habits of the great poet, found his house solitary, beat his nephew and ran away after a single months residence. To this circumstance the world owed his famous treatise on Divorce and a party who were similarly situated as Milton, calling themselves Miltonists. Thomas Hollis, solely devoted to litera- ture and republicanisnl, when occupied in furnishing Europe and America with editions of his favorite authors, would not marry, lest marriage should inter- rupt the labors of his platonic politics. Moliere married a girl from his own troupe, who made him experience all those bitter 9disgtsts and ridiculous endorsements which he himself played off at the theatre. Addison, Steele and Rousseau were similarly married to uncongenial partners. who were the source of much unhappiness to them
 As to the marriage contract itself history records that in the early times of purchase a woman was bartered for useful goods or for service rendered to her father. In this latter way Jacob purchased Rachel and her sister Leah. This was marriage where man, as in Genesis, leaves his father and his mother and cleaves unto his wife, and they become one flesh or kin, the woman's. When Augustine converted the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity mar riage by capture was dying out, andpur- chase. had become general. Nevertheless capture was not exterininated in Eng land until centuries later, for Ethelbert, while enforcing the new law, also rati- fled the old one, so that they ran con- currently He recognized the right of a captor to carry off a woman by force on his afterward paying fifty shillings to her owner as fine, and then buying her from him at a reasonable price. If she were maid, the fine went to her father; if a wife, then to the husband; but the captor had to buy the defrauded husband another wife, and in each case he retained by law the woman he had stolen. The transition from capture to purchase in England was gradual, and both methods existed for time to- gether. Even the princesses were