5. WHOM TO CHOOSE FOR A HUSBAND.--The choice of a husband requires the coolest judgment and the most vigilant sagacity. A true union based on organic law is happiness, but let all remember that oil and water will not mix: the lion will not lie down with the lamb, nor can ill-assorted marriages be productive of aught but discord.
"Let the woman take An elder than herself, so wears she to him-- So sways she, rules in her husband's heart."
Look carefully at the disposition.--See that your intended Spouse is kind-hearted, generous, and willing to respect the opinions of others, though not in sympathy with them. Don't marry a selfish tyrant who thinks only of himself.
6. BE CAREFUL.--Don't marry an intemperate man with a view of reforming him. Thousands have tried it and failed. Misery, sorrow and a very hell on earth have been the consequences of too many such generous undertakings.
7. THE TRUE AND ONLY TEST which any man should look for in woman is modesty in demeanor before marriage, absence both of assumed ignorance and disagreeable familiarity, and a pure and religious frame of mind. Where these are present, he need not doubt that he has a faithful and a chaste wife.
8. MARRYING FIRST COUSINS is dangerous to offspring. The observation is universal, the children of married first cousins are too often idiots, insane, clump-footed, crippled, blind, or variously diseased. First cousins are always sure to impart all the hereditary disease in both families to their children. If both are healthy there is less danger.
9. DO NOT CHOOSE ONE TOO GOOD, or too far above you, lest the inferior dissatisfying the superior, breed those discords which are worse than the trials of a single life. Don't be too particular; for you might go farther and fare worse. As far as you yourself are faulty, you should put up with faults. Don't cheat a consort by getting one much better than you can give. We are not in heaven yet, and must put up with their imperfections, and instead of grumbling at them, be glad they are no worse; remembering that a faulty one is a great deal better than none, if he loves you.
10. MARRYING FOR MONEY.--Those who seek only the society of those who can boast of wealth will nine times out of ten suffer disappointment. Wealth cannot manufacture true love nor money buy domestic happiness. Marry because you love each other, and God will bless your home. A cottage with a loving wife is worth more than a royal palace with a discontented and unloving queen.
11. DIFFERENCE IN AGE.--It is generally admitted that the husband should be a few years older than the wife. The question seems to be how much difference. Up to twenty-two those who propose marriage should be about the same age; however, other things being equal, a difference of fifteen years after the younger is twenty-five, need not prevent a marriage. A man of forty-five may marry a woman of twenty-five much more safely than one of thirty a girl below nineteen, because her mental sexuality is not as mature as his, and again her natural coyness requires more delicate and affectionate treatment than he is likely to bestow. A girl of twenty or under should seldom if ever marry a man of thirty or over, because the love of an elderly man for a girl is more parental than conjugal; while hers for him is like that of a daughter to a father. He may pet, flatter and indulge her as he would a grown-up daughter, yet all this is not genuine masculine and feminine love, nor can she exert over him the influence every man requires from his wife.
12. THE BEST TIME.--All things considered, we advise the male reader to keep his desires in check till he is at least twenty-five, and the female not to enter the pale of wedlock until she has attained the age of twenty. After those periods, marriage is the proper sphere of action, and one in which nearly every individual is called by nature to play his proper part.
13. SELECT CAREFULLY.--While character, health, accomplishments and social position should be considered, yet one must not overlook mental construction and physical conformation. The rule always to be followed in choosing a life partner is _identity of taste and diversity of temperament_. Another essential is that they be physically adapted to each other. For example: The pelvis--that part of the anatomy containing all the internal organs of gestation--is not only essential to beauty and symmetry, but is a matter of vital importance to her who contemplates matrimony, and its usual consequences. Therefore, the woman with a very narrow and contracted pelvis should never choose a man of giant physical development lest they cannot duly realize the most important of the enjoyments of the marriage state, while the birth of large infants will impose upon her intense labor pains, or even cost her her life.
[Illustration: EXPLAINING THE NEED OF A NEW HAT.]
* * * * *
CHOOSE INTELLECTUALLY--LOVE AFTERWARD.
1. LOVE.--Let it ever be remembered that love is one of the most sacred elements of our nature, and the most dangerous with which to tamper. It is a very beautiful and delicately contrived faculty, producing the most delightful results, but easily thrown out of repair--like a tender plant, the delicate fibers of which incline gradually to entwine themselves around its beloved one, uniting two willing hearts by a thousand endearing ties, and making of "twain one flesh": but they are easily torn asunder, and then adieu to the joys of connubial bliss!
2. COURTING BY THE QUARTER.--This courting by the quarter, "here a little and there a little," is one of the greatest evils of the day. This getting a little in love with Julia, and then a little with Eliza, and a little more with Mary,--this fashionable flirtation and coquetry of both sexes--is ruinous to the domestic affections; besides, effectually preventing the formation of true connubial love. I consider this dissipation of the affections one of the greatest sins against Heaven, ourselves, and the one trifled with, that can be committed.
3. FRITTERING AWAY AFFECTIONS.--Young men commence courting long before they think of marrying, and where they entertain no thoughts of marriage. They fritter away their own affections, and pride themselves on their conquests over the female heart; triumphing in having so nicely fooled them. They pursue this sinful course so far as to drive their pitiable victims, one after another, from respectable society, who, becoming disgraced, retaliate by heaping upon them all the indignities and impositions which the fertile imagination of woman can invent or execute.
4. COURTING WITHOUT INTENDING TO MARRY.--Nearly all this wide-spread crime and suffering connected with public and private licentiousness and prostitution, has its origin in these unmeaning courtships--this premature love--this blighting of the affections, and every young man who courts without intending to marry, is throwing himself or his sweet-heart into _this hell upon earth._ And most of the blame rests on young men, because they take the liberty of paying their addresses to the ladies and discontinuing them, at pleasure, and thereby mainly cause this vice.
5. SETTING THEIR CAPS.--True, young ladies sometimes "set their caps," sometimes court very hard by their bewitching smiles and affectionate manners; by the natural language of love, or that backward reclining and affectionate roll of the head which expresses it; by their soft and persuasive accents; by their low dresses, artificial forms, and many other unnatural and affected ways and means of attracting attention and exciting love; but women never court till they have been in love and experienced its interruption, till their first and most tender fibres of love have been frost-bitten by disappointment. It is surely a sad condition of society.
[Illustration: MOTHERHOOD.]
6. TRAMPLING THE AFFECTIONS OF WOMEN.--But man is a self-privileged character. He may not only violate the laws of his own social nature with impunity, but he may even trample upon the affections of woman. He may even carry this sinful indulgence to almost any length, and yet be caressed and smiled tenderly upon by woman; aye, even by virtuous woman. He may call out, only to blast the glowing affections of one young lady after another, and yet his addresses be cordially welcomed by others. Surely a gentleman is at perfect liberty to pay his addresses, not only to a lady, but even to the ladies, although he does not once entertain the thought of marrying his sweet-heart, or, rather his victim. O, man, how depraved! O, woman, how strangely blind to your own rights and interests!
7. AN INFALLIBLE SIGN.--An infallible sign that a young man's intentions are improper, is his trying to excite your passions. If he loves you, he will never appeal to that feeling, because he respects you too much for that. And the woman who allows a man to take advantage of her just to compel him to marry her, is lost and heartless in the last degree, and utterly destitute of moral principle as well as virtue. A woman's riches is her virtue, that gone she has lost all.
8. THE BEGINNING OF LICENTIOUSNESS.--Man it seldom drives from society. Do what he may, woman, aye, virtuous and even pious woman rarely excludes him from her list of visitors. But where is the point of propriety?--immoral transgression should exclude either sex from respectable society. Is it that one false step which now constitutes the boundary between virtue and vice? Or rather, the discovery of that false step? Certainly not! but it is all that leads to, and precedes and induces it. It is this courting without marrying. This is the beginning of licentiousness, as well as its main, procuring cause, and therefore infinitely worse than its consummation merely.
9. SEARING THE SOCIAL AFFECTIONS.--He has seared his social affections so deeply, so thoroughly, so effectually, that when, at last, he wishes to marry, he is incapable of loving. He marries, but is necessarily cold-hearted towards his wife, which of course renders her wretched, if not jealous, and reverses the faculties of both towards each other; making both most miserable for life. This induces contention and mutual recrimination, if not unfaithfulness, and imbitters the marriage relations through life; and well it may.
10. UNHAPPY MARRIAGES.--This very cause, besides inducing most of that unblushing public and private prostitution already alluded to, renders a large proportion of the marriages of the present day unhappy. Good people mourn over the result, but do not once dream of its cause. They even pray for moral reform, yet do the very things that increase the evil.
11. WEEPING OVER HER FALLEN SON.--Do you see yonder godly mother, weeping over her fallen son, and remonstrating with him in tones of a mother's tenderness and importunity? That very mother prevented that very son marrying the girl he dearly loved, because she was poor, and this interruption of his love was the direct and procuring cause of his ruin; for, if she had allowed him to marry this beloved one, he never would have thought of giving his "strength unto strange women." True, the mother ruined her son ignorantly, but none the less effectually.
12. SEDUCTION AND RUIN.--That son next courts another virtuous fair one, engages her affections, and ruins her, or else leaves her broken-hearted, so that she is the more easily ruined by others, and thus prepares the way for her becoming an inmate of a house "whose steps take hold on hell." His heart is now indifferent, he is ready for anything.
13. THE RIGHT PRINCIPLE.--I say then, with emphasis, that no man should ever pay his addresses to any woman, until he has made his selection, not even to aid him in making that choice. He should first make his selection intellectually, and love afterward. He should go about the matter coolly and with judgment, just as he would undertake any other important matter. No man or woman, when blinded by love, is in a fit state to judge advantageously as to what he or she requires, or who is adapted to his or her wants.
14. CHOOSING FIRST AND LOVING AFTERWARDS.--I know, indeed, that this doctrine of choosing first and loving afterward, of excluding love from the councils, and of choosing by and with the consent of the intellect and moral sentiments, is entirely at variance with the feelings of the young and the customs of society; but, for its correctness, I appeal to the common-sense--not to the experience, for so few try this plan. Is not this the only proper method, and the one most likely to result happily? Try it.
15. THE YOUNG WOMAN'S CAUTION.--And, especially, let no young lady ever once think of bestowing her affections till she is certain they will not be broken off--that is, until the match is fully agreed upon, but rather let her keep her heart whole till she bestows it for life. This requisition is as much more important, and its violation as much more disastrous to woman than to man, as her social faculties are stronger than his.
16. A BURNT CHILD DREADS THE FIRE.--As a "burnt child dreads the fire," and the more it is burnt, the greater the dread: so your affections, once interrupted, will recoil from a second love, and distrust all mankind. No! you cannot be too choice of your love--that pivot on which turn your destinies for life and future happiness.
[Illustration: AFTER THE ENGAGEMENT.]
* * * * *
LOVE-SPATS.
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth.
--SHAKESPEARE.
"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."--CONGREVE.
"Thunderstorms clear the atmosphere and promote vegetation; then why not Love-spats promote love, as they certainly often do?"
"They are almost universal, and in the nature of our differences cannot be helped. The more two love, the more they are aggrieved by each other's faults; of which these spats are but the correction."
"Love-spats instead of being universal, they are consequent on imperfect love, and only aggravate, never correct errors. Sexual storms never improve, whereas love obviates faults by praising the opposite virtues. Every view of them, practical and philosophical, condemns them as being to love what poison is to health, both before and after marriage. They are nothing but married discords. Every law of mind and love condemns them. Shun them as you would deadly vipers, and prevent them by forestallment."--O.S. Fowler.
1. THE TRUE FACTS.--Notwithstanding some of the above quotations, to the contrary, trouble and disagreement between lovers embitters both love and life. Contention is always dangerous, and will beget alienation if not final separation.
2. CONFIRMED AFFECTIONS.--Where affections are once thoroughly confirmed, each one should be very careful in taking offense, and avoid all disagreements as far as possible, but if disagreements continually develop with more or less friction and irritation, it is better for the crisis to come and a final separation take place. For peace is better than disunited love.
3. HATE-SPATS.--Hate-spats, though experienced by most lovers, yet, few realize how fatal they are to subsequent affections. Love-spats develop into hate-spats, and their effects upon the affections are blighting and should not under any circumstances be tolerated. Either agree, or agree to disagree. If there cannot be harmony before the ties of marriage are assumed, then there cannot be harmony after. Married life will be continually marred by a series of "hate-spats" that sooner or later will destroy all happiness, unless the couple are reasonably well mated.
[Illustration: HOME LOVING HEARTS ARE HAPPIEST.]
4. MORE FATAL THE OFTENER THEY OCCUR.--As O.S. Fowler says: "'The poison of asps is under their lips.' The first spat is like a deep gash cut into a beautiful face, rendering it ghastly, and leaving a fearful scar, which neither time nor cosmetics can ever efface; including that pain so fatal to love, and blotting that sacred love-page with memory's most hideous and imperishable visages. Cannot many now unhappy remember them as the beginning of that alienation which embittered your subsequent affectional cup, spoiled your lives? With what inherent repulsion do you look back upon them? Their memory is horrid, and effect on love most destructive."
5. FATAL CONDITIONS.--What are all lovers' "spats" but disappointment in its very worst form? They necessarily and always produce all its terrible consequences. The finer feelings and sensibilities will soon become destroyed and nothing but hatred will remain.
6. EXTREME SORROW.--After a serious "spat" there generally follows a period of tender sorrow, and a feeling of humiliation and submission. Mutual promises are consequently made that such a condition of things shall never happen again, etc. But be sure and remember, that every subsequent difficulty will require stronger efforts to repair the breach. Let it be understood that these compromises are dangerous, and every new difficulty increases their fatality. Even the strongest will endure but few, nor survive many.
7. DISTRUST AND WANT OF CONFIDENCE.--Most difficulties arise from distrust or lack of confidence or common-sense. When two lovers eye each other like two curs, each watching, lest the other should gain some new advantage, then this shows a lack of common-sense, and the young couple should get sensible or separate.
8. JEALOUSY.--When one of the lovers, once so tender, now all at once so cold and hardened; once so coy and familiar now suddenly so reserved, distant, hard and austere, is always a sure case of jealousy. A jealous person is first talkative, very affectionate, and then all at once changes and becomes cold, reserved and repulsive, apparently without cause. If a person is jealous before marriage, this characteristic will be increased rather than diminished by marriage.
9. CONFESSION.--If you make up by confession, the confessor feels mean and disgraced; or if both confess and forgive, both feel humbled; since forgiveness implies inferiority and pity; from which whatever is manly and womanly shrinks. Still even this is better than continued "spats."
10. PREVENTION.--If you can get along well in your courtship you will invariably make a happy couple if you should unite your destinies in marriage. Learn not to give nor take offence. You must remember that all humanity is imperfect at best. We all have our faults, and must keep them in subordination. Those who truly love each other will have but few difficulties in their courtship or in married life.
11. REMEDIES.--Establishing a perfect love in the beginning constitutes a preventive. Fear that they are not truly loved usually paves the way for "spats." Let all who make any pretension guard against all beginnings of this reversal, and strangle these "hate-spats" the moment they arise. "Let not the sun go down upon thy wrath," not even an hour, but let the next sentence after they begin quench them forever. And let those who cannot court without "spats," stop; for those who spat before marriage must quarrel after.
[Illustration: "LET NOT THE SUN GO DOWN UPON THY WRATH".]
[Illustration: ALONE AND FORSAKEN.]
* * * * *
A BROKEN HEART.
1. WOUNDED LOVE.--'Tis true that love wields a magic, sovereign, absolute, and tyrannical power over both the body and the mind when it is given control. It often, in case of dissapointment, works havoc and deals death blows to its victims, and leaves many in that morbid mental condition which no life-tonics simply can restore. Wounded love may be the result of hasty and indiscreet conduct of young people; or the outgrowth of lust, or the result of domestic infidelity and discord.
2. FATAL EFFECTS.--Our cemeteries receive within the cold shadows of the grave thousands and thousands of victims that annually die from the results of "broken hearts." It is no doubt a fact that love troubles cause more disorders of the heart than everything else combined.
3. DISRUPTED LOVE.--It has long been known that dogs, birds, and even horses, when separated from their companions or friends, have pined away and died; so it is not strange that man with his higher intuitive ideas of affection should suffer from love when suddenly disrupted.
4. CRUCIFYING LOVE.--Painful love feelings strike right to the heart, and the breaking up of love that cannot be consummated in marriage is sometimes allowed to crucify the affections. There is no doubt that the suffering from disappointed love is often deeper and more intense than meeting death itself.
5. HEALING.--The paralyzing and agonizing consequences of ruptured love can only be remedied by diversion and society. Bring the mind into a state of patriotic independence with a full determination to blot out the past. Those who cannot bring into subordination the pangs of disappointment in love are not strong characters, and invariably will suffer disappointments in almost every department of life. Disappointment in love means rising above it, and conquering it, or demoralization, mental, physical and sexual.
6. LOVE RUNS MAD.--Love comes unbidden. A blind ungovernable impulse seems to hold sway in the passions of the affections. Love is blind and seems to completely subdue and conquer. It often comes like a clap of thunder from a clear sky, and when it falls it falls flat, leaving only the ruins of a tornado behind.
7. BAD, DISMAL, AND BLUE FEELINGS.--Despondency breathes disease, and those who yield to it can neither work, eat nor sleep; they only suffer. The spell-bound, fascinated, magnetized affections seem to deaden self-control and no doubt many suffering from love-sickness are totally helpless; they are beside themselves, irritational and wild. Men and women of genius, influence and education, all seem to suffer alike, but they do not yield alike to the subduing influence; some pine away and die; others rise above it, and are the stronger and better for having been afflicted.
8. RISE ABOVE IT.--Cheer up! If you cannot think pleasurably over your misfortune, forget it. You must do this or perish. Your power and influence is too much to blight by foolish and melancholic pining. Your own sense, your self-respect, your self-love, your love for others, command you not to spoil yourself by crying over "spilt milk."
9. RETRIEVE YOUR PAST LOSS.--Do sun, moon, and stars indeed rise and set in your loved one? Are there not "as good fish in the sea as ever were caught?" and can you not catch them? Are there not other hearts on earth just as loving and lovely, and in every way as congenial; If circumstances had first turned you upon another, you would have felt about that one as now about this. Love depends far less on the party loved than on the loving one. Or is this the way either to retrieve your past loss, or provide for the future? Is it not both unwise and self-destructive; and in every way calculated to render your case, present and prospective, still more hopeless?
10. FIND SOMETHING TO DO.--Idle hands are Satan's workshop. Employ your mind; find something to do; something in which you can find self-improvement; something that will fit you better to be admired by someone else, read, and improve your mind; get into society, throw your whole soul into some new enterprise, and you will conquer with glory and come out of the fire purified and made more worthy.
11. LOVE AGAIN.--As love was the cause of your suffering, so love again will restore you, and you will love better and more consistently. Do not allow yourself to become soured and detest and shun association. Rebuild your dilapidated sexuality by cultivating a general appreciation of the excellence, especially of the mental and moral qualities of the opposite sex. Conquer your prejudices, and vow not to allow anyone to annoy or disturb your calmness.
12. LOVE FOR THE DEAD.--A most affectionate woman, who continues to love her affianced though long dead, instead of becoming soured or deadened, manifests all the richness and sweetness of the fully-developed woman thoroughly in love, along with a softened, mellow, twilight sadness which touches every heart, yet throws a peculiar lustre and beauty over her manners and entire character. She must mourn, but not forever. It is not her duty to herself or to her Creator.
13. A SURE REMEDY.--Come in contact with the other sex. You are infused with your lover's magnetism, which must remain till displaced by another's. Go to parties and picnics; be free, familiar, offhand, even forward; try your knack at fascinating another, and yield to fascinations yourself. But be honest, command respect, and make yourself attractive and worthy.
[Illustration: A SURE REMEDY.]
* * * * *
FORMER CUSTOMS AND PECULIARITIES AMONG MEN.
1. POLYGAMY.--There is a wide difference as regards the relations of the sexes in different parts of the world. In some parts polygamy has prevailed from time immemorial. Most savage people are polygamists, and the Turks, though slowly departing from the practice, still allow themselves a plurality of wives.
2. RULE REVERSED.--In Thibet the rule is reversed, and the females are provided with two or more husbands. It is said that in many instances a whole family of brothers have but one wife. The custom has at least one advantageous feature, viz.: the possibility of leaving an unprotected widow and a number of fatherless children is entirely obviated.
3. THE MORGANATIC MARRIAGE is a modification of polygamy. It sometimes occurs among the royalty of Europe, and is regarded as perfectly legitimate, but the morganatic wife is of lower rank than her royal husband, and her children do not inherit his rank or fortune. The Queen only is the consort of the sovereign, and entitled to share his rank.
4. DIFFERENT MANNERS OF OBTAINING WIVES.--Among the uncivilized almost any envied possession is taken by brute force or superior strength. The same is true in obtaining a wife. The strong take precedence of the weak. It is said that among the North American Indians it was the custom for men to wrestle for the choice of women. A weak man could seldom retain a wife that a strong man coveted.
The law of contest was not confined to individuals alone. Women were frequently the cause of whole tribes arraying themselves against each other in battle. The effort to excel in physical power was a great incentive to bodily development, and since the best of the men were preferred by the most superior women, the custom was a good one in this, that the race was improved.
5. THE ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIAN employed low cunning and heartless cruelty in obtaining his wife. Laying in ambush, with club in hand, he would watch for the coveted woman, and, unawares, spring upon her. If simply disabled he carried her off as his possession, but if the blow had been hard enough to kill, he abandoned her to watch for another victim. There is here no effort to attract or please, no contest of strength; his courtship, if courtship it can be called, would compare very unfavorably with any among the brute creation.
6. THE KALMUCK TARTAR races for his bride on horseback, she having a certain start previously agreed upon. The nuptial knot consists in catching her, but we are told that the result of the race all depends upon whether the girl wants to be caught or not.
7. HAWAIIAN ISLANDERS.--Marriage among the early natives of these islands was merely a matter of mutual inclination. There was no ceremony at all, the men and women united and separated as they felt disposed.
8. THE FEUDAL LORD, in various parts of Europe, when any of his dependents or followers married, exercised the right of assuming the bridegroom's proper place in the marriage couch for the first night. Seldom was there any escape from this abominable practice. Sometimes the husband, if wealthy, succeeded in buying off the petty sovereign from exercising his privilege.
9. THE SPARTANS had the custom of encouraging intercourse between their best men and women for the sake of a superior progeny, without any reference to a marriage ceremony. Records show that the ancient Roman husband has been known to invite a friend, in whom he may have admired some physical or mental trait, to share the favors of his wife; that the peculiar qualities that he admired might be repeated in the offspring.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: PROPOSING.]
[Illustration]
Hasty marriage seldom proveth well.--_Shakespeare, Henry VI._
The reason why so few marriages are happy is, because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.--_Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects._
* * * * *
SENSIBLE HINTS IN CHOOSING A PARTNER.
1. There are many fatal errors and many love-making failures in courtship. Natural laws govern all nature and reduce all they govern to eternal right; therefore love naturally, not artificially. Don't love a somebody or a nobody simply because they have money.
2. COURT SCIENTIFICALLY.--If you court at all, court scientifically. Bungle whatever else you will, but do no bungle courtship. A failure in this may mean more than a loss of wealth or public honors; it may mean ruin, or a life often worse than death. The world is full of wretched and mismated people.
BEGIN RIGHT and all will be right; begin wrong and all will end wrong. When you court, make a business of it and study your interest the same as you would study any other business proposition.
3. DIVORCES.--There is not a divorce on our court records that is not the result of some fundamental error in courtship. The purity or the power of love may be corrupted the same as any other faculty, and when a man makes up his mind to marry and shuts his eyes and grabs in the dark for a companion, he dishonors the woman he captures and commits a crime against God and society. In this enlightened age there should be comparatively few mistakes made in the selection of a suitable partner. Sufficient time should be taken to study each other's character and disposition. Association will soon reveal adaptability.
4. FALSE LOVE.--Many a poor, blind and infatuated novice thinks he is desperately in love, when there is not the least genuine affection in his nature. It is all a momentary passion a sort of puppy love; his vows and pledges are soon violated, and in wedlock he will become indifferent and cold to his wife and children, and he will go through life without ambition, encouragement or success. He will be a failure. True love speaks for itself, and the casual observer can read its proclamations. True love does not speak in a whisper, it always makes itself heard. The follies of flirting develops into many unhappy marriages, and blight many a life. Ma