The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-06-30
From the New York Sun.

1 HE discussion of love and mar .@ rIass by our correspondents ''po lent
 brings to us some letters from people who profess to give to true love- safer higher elevation than it gets from human laws and social conventions by making 1t law unto itself infinitely supe- rior to the artificial restraints of society or the church.
 For example, this is an extract from one of these letters:
 "You seem surprised that woman law yer should advance the proposition that such a thing as true love can exist with out a marriage ceremony. Love existed before the ceremony of marriage was in- stituted and if this ceremony were to be abandoned love would still exist. The mere fact that magistrate, priest or minister ties the knot does not add one mite to the love that the man bears to the woman or the woman to the man"
 This may be true, but what does it amount to? Of course, the institution of matrimony does not create the senti- ment which attracts together men and women but only regulates it in the in- terest of necessary social order and morals. Besides romantic sentiment, of prime interest to the parties in the marriage, there come in many practical rights which lie at the basis of civiliza- ton. One of the most important fea- lures of the statues of state concerns the rights of property as affected by the relation of marriage, and these rights extend to society generally.
 The more a man loves a woman whom he is free under the law to marry the more content he is to render obedience to every social regulation surrounding matrimony He Is proud to call in all society to witness his assumption of marital obligations to her He has no fault to find with marriage laws and customs The tighter they bind him the better.
 Why then do men and women write to us of the hardships of the marriage laws as if these interfere with true love?" What is the trouble?
 Is not the trouble that with them true love- is passion which they can not gratify without coming up against the prohibitions of the law? They may be married already, one or both, so that their true love IS an llllClt sentiment, so far as concerns a legal marriage with those with whom they are enamored What would they have? Would they abolish all marriage laws and leave the whole matter to be arranged by that in definite and changeable, perhaps mo- mentary, attraction called true lover Who is to determine that 1t is true love?'' Shall everybody be left to settle the question for himself, to decide when the Hove" is present or absent, is vital or has become exhausted?
 These are questions which interest only the relatively small part of society which is composed of those in whom the sentiment of love is perverted or has been misdirected. In this country, more perhaps than any other, the inn pulse to marriage is purely romantic sentiment, and consequently the num- Der of married people who are vexed about true love" is small. Married people dismiss that question as finally and irrevocably settled. They have nc further interest in 1t, unless as an ab- stract question treated in poetry. in novels and plays. The sentiment of the great mass of men and women on that subject is wholly healthy; but, of course