The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-11-04

Dodd Gaston in the Topeka Capital
 @ UT glass society in Topeka is IV preparing to throw fit be- O cause girl in that set is getting ready to marry man whose salary is only s75 a month. They say she is throwing herself away-that after she has beaten her young and ten der wings against the head winds of ad- versity for year or two she will sicken and fade under the sordidness of it all. doubt that. I doubt it so stron' ly that I am willing to lay long odds that the marriage will turn out hap pily. The affair is on the right basis, to begin with. She isn't marrying him for what he can give her. She is marrying him because she loves him and is proud of him. She knows she will have to economize and she doesn't care a rap. For he is a fine, likely fellow, sure to advance in his line of work and between the joy which the union of congenial souls always brings and the looking forward to his ultf- mate and certain advancement, they
 
 pinched them. I have watched the matrimonal game in the role of casual onlooker for many years and have come to this conclusion: More than half the unhappy marriages are the result of bargain hunting. More than half the unhappy married wor en were girls who married primarily de them in the way of material comforts. No woman who travelled that road ever found complete happiness. Happiness doesn't lie that way for the woman who has a great deal will want much more and there is limit to every mans capacity to supply.
 The real name of marriage is self sacrl- flee In speaking of marriage here I do not refer to the commercial bargains in the name of matrimony that are con- stantly being driven in every community. I refer to the real thing-the route to happiness which most of us sooner or later elect to travel. To both the inti- mately interested persons marriage means the giving up of many cherished things
 
 by the same token there is no joy like the joy of giving. To deny ones self that another may have, to work, to plan, to endure hardship that another's path may be smoothed and made easier is the one satisfactory answer to the riddle of life. It is the one universal panacea for dis content and unsatisfied longing. Mar nd caIf al Its every detail is giving up, a con- cession to the tastes, desires and abili- ties of another with collaborating as it's highest and most ennobling expression. If it were not for this joy of giving why | should any man want to marry? For | marriage gives him nothing he has not | already except official license to work, plan and endure for others. The | girl who is trying to put her marriage | on a commercial basis, and there are lot l of them in Topeka and in every other l town, is not altogether to blame. She is | simply the victim of the morbid under- | current of thought which sweeps her
 life. IT. her market place men are valued | for what they can give and she comes naturally to look upon marriage as a means to gratify her material desires. Small wonder that so many girls go bar i gain-hunting Small wonder that the goods so often fail to wash.
 | And there is this other angle to the | proposition If woman has a right to demand that her husband come to her