Year: 1868

A Great Question,

 The comparative infrequency of matri- mony among the classes that do not live by manual labor is beginning to excite much attention in this country as we'll as in Eng land where the evil is much more severely felt than here. How serious matter it is becoming will be seen from an article we reprint on our outside from the N. Y. Eve ming Mail

 The conclusion arrived at seems to be this:

 The majority of women who do not get married in our own Eastern States, as in England, do not remain single because they prefer 8 single life but because the class of young men whom they would prefer-men of refinement and culture are disinclined to marry.

 We are convinced that the latter portion of this statement is as false as the former is true, confident assertions to the contrary notwithstanding. AS times now are, a man of the class whose wife is not expected to do the work of her own household, can- not support family merely by denying himself few luxuries. He must be pre- pared to double, probably treble, his an nual expenses When he has no means of doubling or trebling his income, is it not absurd injustice to abuse him for not marrying? We believe there are few young men from 21 to 3s years of age who would not marry if they could. Few young profes- sional men, however, without capital, min isters perhaps excepted, can marry early. Every man in our day must be money y-mak- ing machine, atleast to this extent-he must be self supporting in accordance with the modes of life of his class-or he is failure. This is just rule, but it is hard on educat- cd men. They are kept at colleges, which carefully unft them for money making, during the period when the youthful mind is hardening into the shape it must keep through life. Added to the disadvantages of their education, men of this class just now find their capital furnishing but half the support it formerly did, and their pro- feaaions yielding little more in currency than they formerly did in coin. If under such circumstances the ''rising" young man escapes from his enforced celibacy before arriving at ta middle age, he is lucky excep- ton to the general rule. If compelled to wait much beyond middle age, he either ceases to desire the change, or takes not a help-mate, but plaything.

 Now, as it seems to us, none of those who have commented on this state of facts have gone to the root of the matter. The } evil is one for which neither the individual young man nor the individual young wo- man is to blame, but the present organiza- ton of society. Both the English and American journals have noticed that it has never extended to the Glover" classes. It never will do so, and the reason is this. The husband in that grade of life takes a valuable assistant who does more than her fair share towards the support of their fam fly. The husband of the "upper" class, however, burdens himself with the most expensive of luxuries. Society does not allow his wife to give him real assistance, however much she may desire, or he need it. If they keep up an establishment, her life is not altogether useless one; but fl she wish to save him money, she must give up that establishment, and take to the ab- solute idleness of the boarding house. She cannot afford real assistance by assuming the entire labor of the household. for she lacks the requisite strength and education, she forfeits her place in society, and, more over. it is manifestly unfair that she should be compelled to do work of a much harder, more disagreeable kind than that of the husband.

 Now we openly avow our entire want oi faith in any society which makes the young lady either the mere pet of leisure hour, or labels her 'old maid" and throws he1 aside just as she is growing yearly more and more worthy of regard. We give he, nothing to do, and then aver that she is by nature unfit for genuine work-that thesweet ness, nobleness and unselfshness we canno, but recognize in her is but Q thin plating that the least real service will wear of! We satirize the frivolity of her gaiety, of he, charity and of her piety, forgetting that under like circumstances men have been not only frivolous but criminal! We ex pend largely on her .'music," teaching he, to execute mechanically, she knows mol what-and then wonder that she is never 6 great composerl In short, improving on Pharaoh, we give her straw and tell her tc

 make bricks without clayl But, say many. even of those who have read the works oi Charlotte Bronte and of Mrs. Harrie, Beecher Stowe, with wonder, admiration