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Title: Don't marry
or, Advice on how, when and who to marry

Author: James W. Donovan

Release date: October 26, 2016 [eBook #53368]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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Transcriber’s Notes:
The Table of Contents was created by the transcriber and placed in the public domain.
The cover for this book contains substantial text, and this text has been included in digital
form with a simplified format.
The cover contains a list labeled “CONTENTS:”; however, this is a partial list of topics
covered in the book rather than a Table of Contents.
Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
DON’T MARRY. 3
ROMANTIC MARRIAGES. 79
UNROMANTIC MARRIAGES. 101

DON’T MARRY;
OR, ADVICE AS TO

How, When and Who to Marry.
CONTENTS:
Don’t Marry for Beauty Alone.
Don’t Marry for Money.
Don’t Marry a Very Small Man.
Don’t Marry too Young.
Don’t Marry a Coquette.
Don’t Elope to Marry.
Don’t Dally About Proposing.
Don’t Marry a Drunkard.
Don’t Marry a Spendthrift.
Don’t Marry a Miser.
Don’t Marry Far Apart in Ages.
Don’t Marry too Old.
Don’t Marry Odd Sizes.
Don’t Marry a Clown.
Don’t Marry a Dude.
Don’t Marry From Pity.
Don’t Marry for an Ideal Marriage.
Don’t Break a Marriage Promise.
Don’t Marry for Spite.
Don’t Mitten a Mechanic.
Don’t Marry a Man too Poor.
Don’t Marry a Crank.
Don’t Marry Fine Feathers.
Don’t Marry Without Love.
Don’t Marry a Stingy Man.
Don’t Marry too Hastily.
Don’t be too Slow About It.
Don’t Marry a Silly Girl.

Don’t Expect too Much in Marriage.
Don’t Marry a Fop.
Don’t Marry in Fun.
Don’t Spurn a Man for His Poverty.
Don’t Marry Recklessly.
J. S. OGILVIE, Publisher, 57 Rose Street, New York.

TWENTY-FIVE
SERMONS
—ON—

The Holy Land.
—BY—
Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, D.D.
No Series of Sermons ever delivered by this famous preacher has
created such a widespread and intense interest as this. These Sermons
describe with vivid interest the scenes, incidents and many various
experiences met with in the Holy Land, the land in which people are
now more interested than ever before.
Among the hundreds of thousands of people who have read the
utterances of this wonderfully successful preacher there are none but
will be glad to have this book. Read the following
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
1. Eve of Departure—2. I Must also See Rome—3. A Mediterranean
Voyage—4. Paul’s Mission in Athens—5. Life and Death of Dorcas—
6. The Glory of Solomon’s Reign—7. Peace, Be Still—8. The
Marriage Feast—9. Christmas Eve in the Holy Land—10. The Joyful
Surprise—11. How a King’s Life was Saved—12. The Philippian
Earthquake—13. What is in a Name?—14. The Half was not Told Me
—15. I Went Up to Jerusalem—16. On the Housetop in Jerusalem—
17. The Journey to Jericho—18. He Toucheth the Hills and They
Smoke—19. Solomon in all His Glory—20. The Journey to Bethel—
21. Incidents in Palestine—22. Among the Holy Hills—23. Our Sail on
Lake Galilee—24. On to Damascus—25. Across Mount Lebanon.
It contains 320 pages in paper cover, and will be sent by mail,
postpaid, to any address on receipt of 25 cents. Bound in Cloth, $1.50;

Half Russia, $2.00. Agents wanted. Address all orders to
J. S. OGILVIE, Publisher,
57 Rose Street, New York.

FOR EDITOR’S USE.
We desire to call your attention to this book, and
ask that you give it a careful review and criticism.
Please send paper containing notice to

J. S. OGILVIE, Publisher,
57 Rose Street,
New York.

PRICE, 25 CENTS.

DON’T MARRY;
OR, ADVICE AS TO

HOW, WHEN AND WHO TO MARRY.

By HILDRETH.

“... The tale that I relate
This lesson seems to carry,—
Choose not alone a proper mate,
But proper time to marry.”

THE SUNNYSIDE SERIES, No. 39. Issued Monthly. October, 1891. Extra. $3.00 per year.
Entered at New York Post-Office as second-class matter. Copyright, 1890, by J. S. Ogilvie.

New York:
J. S. OGILVIE, Publisher
57 Rose Street.

THE SCIENCE OF A NEW LIFE.
A BOOK ESPECIALLY ADAPTED

To All Who Are Married
Or who Contemplate taking this Important Step.
16 page descriptive Circular sent free to any address by

J. S. OGILVIE
Rose Street,
New York.

DON’T MARRY.
BY HILDRETH.

It is not intended to advise against marriage, nor to draw the line too closely
as to the don’t-marry class, but simply to hint at the errors of some persons
who match badly on so long a contract.
The “yes or no” question is the vital one for all young people to answer.
Some answer too soon, others wait too long, others never reach such a
climax of happiness as to be invited by an eligible partner. The genius of
selection is the rarest of faculties.
What most puzzles the will and makes us bear the ills we have is the theme
of selection. A mother’s or father’s view of a suitor may be at variance with
the daughter’s wish and destroy the peace of both for a lifetime. But quite
generally the real trouble arises from a spiteful choice or a hasty one, or one
in some of the forms here mentioned. Should these hints prevent one
unhappy marriage, they will well repay the little study that their brevity
requires.
To avoid much lecturing, only two examples are given at any length, in the
form of stories. These are as near to the real characters as the writer can
safely relate them, being founded on actual romantic and unromantic
marriages. As marriage is the first question that every family will discuss, it
is well to treat it with exact candor.
Don’t marry for beauty merely. Very few have a supply that would last a full
dozen years in a married life that should continue for three decades.
And, more than that, beauty is not the only requisite to happiness. Very
handsome people are almost always vain, often exacting, and generally live
on their form, paying little or no attention to the rarer qualities of manhood
or womanhood.
If one seek beauty alone, he will find it in the fields and flowers and
gardens, in paintings, art works, and things of nature; while the real

pleasures of life may be found in a thousand ways outside of the worship of
beauty.
There are a dozen considerations beyond beauty that should govern the
choice of a companion. Think for a moment whom you admire most, trust
implicitly, and love more ardently than all others. Truly, it is not the wax-
doll face in a milliner’s window; were that so, why not marry the model and
get the perfection of beauty? The day will come when the “rain beats in at
the heart windows.” The time may run along so fast till the summer is over
and the winter snow-drifts shade your locks with silver, when one by one of
your friends will visit at the fireside, when some one will love you for your
mind and heart and nobleness. Some one suited to your silver-age condition
and disposition will be beautiful without any name for beauty; as the soldier
said of Grant’s face, after Shiloh’s bloody battle, “That was the handsomest
face I ever saw;” yet it was plain and dusty and rugged.
Prize-winners in matrimony have been women of finer mould than mere
beauties. Women who have won the hearts of statesmen, and painters and
poets, and the good and great of all time, were women of fascination, or
what the Southern ladies call sweet women, and not alone noted for their
beauty.
Many a one has been known to have been plain but social; not always
unhandsome, but never beautiful. They are the best wives and noblest
mothers who have more to commend them than mere grace of features,
shade of skin, or color of eyes, or art of beautifying. Some are frivolous,
and more are flattered into danger. The most miserable man I know is
married to one of the most beautiful women. He is jealous; she is exposed
to insults unawares. Their home is a Hades six days out of seven. I’ve heard
him wish she were less attractive!
Don’t marry a man for money. If money is your real object, the older and
uglier he is, the better; for nothing should come between you and the
chosen idol of your affection. If you marry one for his money, he will find it
out shortly.
What sublime contempt a man must have for one who simply loves his
pocket-book! Why not love his farm, or lumber-yard, or herd of cattle? The
love of money is a miserly pretence of affection that leads to discontent,
distrust, and disgust when they find it out.

Besides, wealthy men are men of care. The wife of a noted millionnaire has
had her husband’s body stolen from its vault, has been long kept in agony,
is an object of pity to all who know her. Another wife was heard to say,
“Why, I don’t have the privilege, nor the money, nor the good times that my
girl Bridget enjoys. I am poor and anxious and depressed, and weary of
hearing my husband say, over and over again, ‘You are fixing for the poor-
house.’ He really thinks and believes we will end life in the poor-house; and
yet he enjoys a princely income.” Thousands of such men carry their load of
care, and load of wealth, and load of anxiety, and how can they carry any
burden of love?
Don’t marry a very small man—a little fellow far below all proportion; try
to get some form to admire, something to shape things to, and some one
who is not lost in a crowd completely, who is too little to admire and too
small for beauty. You may need strong arms and brave hands to protect you.
You will need hands to provide for and maintain you, and a good form is a
fine beginning of manhood or womanhood.
Mental greatness is not measured by size of brain or bodily proportions.
Great men are neither always wise nor always large; they are more often of
more medium build, and well balanced in gifts of mental and physical
development. Of the two, a very large man is better than a small one, and a
medium large woman likewise.
Don’t marry too young. The right age to marry is a matter of taste; twenty-
one for girls, and twenty-four for men may be a little arbitrary, but certainly
is sensible. The happy early marriages are rare. It too often happens that
love is mistaken, or poorly informed, or lacks an anchor in good judgment.
There is no use of reasoning about it,—love is love, and will marry in spite
of reason, and in some cases it runs away with its choice and repents it a
thousand times soon after.
But be sensible, for a life contract should be a sensible one. What is the use
of throwing away one season—skipping girlhood or boyhood to rush into
maturity and maternity? The records of divorce courts tell the silly and
sorrowful stories of many a mismated pair, married too young and slowly
repenting of their rashness. Ask of your truest friends; take counsel; be
above foolishness.

Don’t marry a villain. Many a girl is ripe for an adventure, and in
appearance nothing more resembles an angel than a keen and designing
villain—a thoroughbred; not a gambler merely, but worse, a wreck! Such
men may be wary, artful, deceitful, attractive. They are crafty; their trade
compels it. They may be handsome, often so; they may be oily and slick—
most of them are. They may live rich and expensive lives for a season; ill-
gotten gains are not lasting. Heaven pity the girl that marries one of these
adventurers, for the end is bitterness! A friend met one on the Pacific road,
married him, and learned to her sorrow that he drank to excess, swore like a
pirate, lived in debauchery, and early offered to swap wives for a season
with a boon-companion. “And that man,” she said, “was as handsome as a
dude, as slick as an auctioneer, as oily as a pedler; I loved him only one day
after marriage.”
Don’t marry a hypocrite. Of all things get sincerity. Get the genuine article.
If you get a hypocrite, he is brass jewelry, and will easily tarnish. Make
careful inquiry, see that he is all that he pretends to be, or never trust him.
The habit of deceit is one of a lifetime.
Some join churches for no other reason than to cloak iniquity. It is not the
rule by any means; it is a too common exception. One who goes from city
to city and captivates too many by his oil of blandness; one who has no
business, an idler; one who apes the rich and is ground down in poverty;
one who lacks the courage to live like himself and had rather live a lie and
deceive the world around him,—is an unfit companion, and will bear
watching.
Don’t marry a coquette. One that is worn out by a long list of discarded
admirers is like stale bread—worse every day and seldom grows better by
long standing. There are women, and girls sometimes, who glory and revel
in the names of discarded lovers; whose sense of honesty has been
poisoned, numbed, and frozen by cheating their victims through pretended
affection, until they have lost all heart or honesty; who deserve to be left
alone to ponder on their cruelty for the balance of their miserable existence.
Of all the worst forms of flirting, coquetry is the most detestable. It is not
only trifling away the time of both, but casting distrust on the holiest of all
sentiments, the purity of womanhood. To steal money is honorable
compared to stealing affection.

The habit of coquetry will, or may, last long after marriage. She who
practises it will follow up in unpleasant references to her conquests,
wishing she had married at this offer or that, and wear out the happiness of
her last conquest by a frequent reminder of his inferiority to the others.
Don’t marry a woman for her money. These people are tenacious to a
minute degree. They long to remind you of my house, my property, my
farm, my lots on Lincoln Avenue, my furniture, my bank account, and the
like—making one a pensioner all his life for his board and clothing. If there
is any difference, it should be with the man. He is expected to control
property. He is the master of his house, or the manager of his expenses.
Very naturally he says “my” store or “my” lots, but it will sound far more
fair and considerate even if he says “our” in lieu of “my” sometimes.
The only fair way to act about it is to treat marriage as a partnership where
nobody owns all, but each has an equal interest. It is fair to divide a good
portion of one’s property with his wife, fair to deed her a nice homestead
and present her a given allowance—liberal as one’s income will warrant—
and let her draw from it as her own, and not be a beggar each time she
needs money.
Don’t elope to marry. It is a weak affection that cannot wait awhile. Jacob
served seven years, then seven more, for Rebecca. She was a fine specimen
of womanhood—as represented in paintings; housekeeping was easy and
inexpensive then, but they patiently waited and were handsomely rewarded.
Ruth was an excellent example of girlhood. In no great hurry to marry,
taking the hardships of travel, her devotion to her mother touched the heart
of a king, and she won a splendid prize for her patience. She might have
eloped with a stage-driver or a coachman, and ended her life with many less
historical-society notices.
Don’t dally about proposing. What is it to ask a fine girl to marry you? The
simplest, easiest thing on earth, if you “strike while the iron is hot.” Go
about it sensibly. To begin with, you never expect much encouragement
from a discreet maiden; she is in the background; her promise is to be
invited; she is not her own spokeswoman. Think of the embarrassment.
I venture to say, if you like her, that you will say so. Often you may have
told her how fine her eyes are, or how well you like her singing, or talking,

and her company; but when you ask a simple question, you get down on
your knees (they do in novels, not in reality) and beg for it. Nonsense! Such
a girl is unworthy. Begging is a silly fashion, seldom now indulged in, all
out of date, and no longer tolerated outside of novels and theatres. Use a
little sense about it.
Find out first if you have the right one, then settle the matter in one of five
ways: First, in the parlor (don’t propose in church, or at a donation, or in a
crowd, or on a street-car, or while the horse is prancing), get up your
resolution at the right moment and say: “Do we understand each other,
Clemantha?” Then, if she doesn’t, explain it to her in a sensible fashion, and
in little short words that cannot be mistaken; give her time, if necessary.
The second way is, on a fine walk or drive, “Would you like to walk
always?” or, “If you were to choose whom you would walk with forever,
who would it be?” She will say, “I don’t care to be so personal.” Certainly
then you may be more explicit.
Third, suppose you are to separate, what a grand opportunity! See that you
improve it earnestly. To tell a girl that she is fairer than flowers, clearer than
coffee, and sweeter than honey is old, very old, and uncalled-for. Tell her
she is what she is, and you like her with all her surroundings; that you can
better her condition sometime. Dwell on the “sometime.”
Be honest about it. If she doesn’t love you, let her love some one else, and
you will be surprised to find how many pure and beautiful beings there are
all around you, holding their finger-tips to hide a smile of welcome and
ready—“yes, Edgar”—eager to mate with one worthy and ready to marry
them, for marriage is a natural hope of every right-minded woman.
This is a fourth method: read aloud of characters like Arden, Romeo, or
Abelard, or Paul and Virginia, and make your comments audibly. You will
not be long in tracing a conclusion. Be a little ingenious about it, find out
through your sister. Prepare the way and don’t ask until you find she is
unpledged, remember; or at least tarry long enough to be reasonably certain.
And what if refused? No harm done. Like the German’s sugar, “The other
pound is shust so good as the first one.”
One man I know drew off a list of all his acquaintances worthy of marriage,
and went about it like a regular wheat-buyer. He was a bachelor, of course,

and very eccentric. Coming to the first, he explained his object, concealing
all names, but saying she was first of a long list furnished him by a friend
(each one was first, always); then he would say, “I will give you a week to
consider it, and no harm done; if not then, I must pursue my list further.” Of
all the sold-out men, he was sold the cheapest! He married a whole family.
The first two were disgusted, the third or fourth accepted. This looks too
much like a purchase and sale, and don’t try the method.
The last way is sensible; by writing—many a proposal is in writing. Even in
that be a little guarded; once a no, yeses come with reluctance. It is best not
to give one an opportunity to say no, but to parry long enough to test the
opposition. If it were a race-horse to buy, a house to contract for, or a block
to purchase, it would not be very hard to strike a bargain. So that, once
finding form, character, fitness, affection, desire to be mated, go about the
rest by a direct and sensible method, and don’t wear out the gate-hinges,
burn out all the oil, weary the old folks, or turn gray with anxiety, but do it.
Don’t marry a drunkard. He will promise, by all that’s good, great, and
holy, to reform. How many more like him have made just such promises?
He can’t keep such a promise if he would. Make him reform a couple of
years at least, on trial, before you marry him. It will be time enough then to
risk a life-partnership, to chain your hopes to an unfortunate creature whose
sense and judgment are corrupted, not by will, perhaps, but by habit
stronger than reason. With most men this habit becomes a desire. They are
bound to feed the fire that burns them. They have no voice in the matter,
and cannot, if they would, break the strong fetters that bind them in irons,
like the prison bars confine their victims.
It’s a sorry picture to behold a fair young girl chained to a being with a will
all lost and debauched in appetite for drink; a section of the land of departed
evil spirits can only equal her daily misery. Children must bear it, friends
submit to it, and all of character, sweetness of temper, or refinement in
one’s nature will revolt at the coarseness of the wrecked and wretched
career of a drunkard’s life. He is an object of pity, and a being to be
shunned in matrimony, no matter how many promises he makes or how
good he is otherwise.
To avoid long sorrow, disgrace, and regret, avoid him. If you had two lives
and one to dispose of, at any cost, mate with a drunkard and die a thousand

deaths. Your health, peace, and happiness will go with his.

“Art thou mated with a clown,
Then the baseness of his nature
Will have weight to drag thee down.”

Such a man will kill his wife, burn his own child, sacrifice everything on
earth when scourged by this degrading passion. More could be urged, but
let the starving families, the criminal courts, the idiotic children, tell the
rest: the story is too dreadful to dwell upon. It is monstrous. Life becomes a
burden, and death a sweet release from such a cross. Of all the matches on
earth, the most to be dreaded and avoided is the drunkard’s wife.
Don’t marry a fast man or woman. Something tells us that black logs will
darken the whitest garments. The edge of virtue once dulled is never quite
so keen afterwards. It may be very well to speak slightingly of wild oats,
but who cares to know that their oats are a second crop? Who is willing to
believe that they are the last resort of one who has pleaded and pledged to
hundreds or even dozens before her, or waits an opportunity to make as
many more pledges as occasion may offer? Fast men are not satisfied with
one vice merely, but follow on to many. They may drink, gamble, sport, and
venture, and step by step indulge in the kindred vices of lewdness, till
disease shall fasten its clutches in their burning blood and run in their veins
for a lifetime. They are rarely satisfied with one home, one wife, and one
family.
Don’t marry a foreigner,—one who comes from a far-away country and
returns to it. It is very uncertain; think ahead carefully. The new and strange
customs of his country may and may not be congenial. They may be a
dreary dream of home and early separation. Think of the ties of friendship,
the cords of affection twined and woven around your nature; ties that are
not severed without many pangs of sorrow. Life is a short, strange journey,
and, make it when we will or where we will, it is pleasant to be made with
company. Those who know us best will love us most if we deserve it, and
few will continue on in friendship long after we go to strange and unknown
countries. A stranger neighbor soon comes nearer than a long-absent friend
whom we never hear from.

Don’t marry a spendthrift. The habit of living is formed early. Either one is
bent on rising or going lower. As water seeks its level, so men seek their
ambition and find it. Prosperity comes not on silver trays, ready-made and
ready for use to everybody; most men work for it, strive for it, and deserve
it. The sons of the rich, who inherit property and have formed the habit of
useless spending, are a little bit lower than the poor. It is not disgraceful at
all to be born poor; but to become so after once being rich, and that through
reckless spending, is a dishonor to any one. “One thing we can be proud
of,” said Ingersoll; “we’ve made some improvement on the original
implements and the common stock.”
A young man who lives on his father’s earnings has very little to boast of,
but one who squanders his inheritance in riotous living is an object of
contempt and ridicule. “He is one of the old man’s pensioners,” said a
business man lately of a rich man’s son. “But for his father’s thrift he would
be a beggar; he lives like a refined beggar on the food furnished by another.
What a brilliant genius he is!”
Don’t marry your cousin. It may be very tempting; relatives are often
warmly attached to each other from long and intimate acquaintance.
Remember that constantly thrown in each other’s society will often create
such attachments. With many persons, marriage of blood relations will
more or less lead to deafness, blindness, or deformity. It may skip one
generation and find another. It may result in disease and weakness. It may
be all right, but seven to eight it is risky and uncertain, and you can’t afford
to be uncertain in such matters.
Don’t marry too far above or below you. There is no such thing as station in
this country, like the titles and surroundings of Europe; but ignorance mated
with refinement must be lost and confused, and ill at ease every hour.
Such matches are hasty, and poorly considered. They lead to gossip and
resentment of relatives, and an uncomfortable ill-feeling, seldom cured for a
full generation. If one has beauty and refinement and is poor, never mind
the poverty; the good qualities are more than a balance. But the marriage of
a millionaire’s daughter with a coachman is supreme folly. It ends in
disunion, and never in harmony. Water and oil will as soon mix as such
elements. Avoid them.

Don’t marry a doubly divorced man or woman: it’s risky. Something is
wrong surely. One divorce should cure any one. Two is a profusion. It may
be that the doubly divorced is innocent,—he will claim to be; but if he seeks
a new party to a possible divorce case (it will be a habit by this time), tell
him to wait a little longer. Grass widows may be very lovable creatures, but
unless their other halves were clearly blamable, beyond reasonable
question, give them a wide road and avoid them entirely. It is a very bad
sign, possibly a habit, that a man and woman mate and divide soon after;
the fault may belong to either, and most likely relates to both, in similar
proportions.
Don’t marry a miser. Of all the old “curmudgeons” on earth, deliver me
from crabbed, narrow-minded, pinch-penny, miserable misers.
They begrudge you your meals and clothing. They count your shillings and
control your pin purchases; they make life a burden, by owning much and
using little, and eternally twit you of every quarter used ever so sparingly.
Life is made to live in and enjoy. We make only one journey. We need not
open up our purses and leak out the pennies, just to see them roll around
promiscuously; but cutting notches on a stick for each one of them, and
never spending, even for necessaries, without dread and grudging, is
intolerable. I had rather be poor and enjoy something.
Don’t marry too far apart in ages. June and December is a long, long
distance in matrimony. Some people are as young-hearted at sixty as others
are at forty. Some men at forty-five have hardly reached their manhood. But
old, white-headed men, marrying girls in their teens—servants generally—
are pitiable spectacles. To the girl it is suicide; to the man sheer folly; no
need of marrying the man. The girl is the most interested in this don’t
sentence. Why not, if you love him? This is the reason, not jealousy,—that
is a partial reason,—but consistency. Think of a trip round the world or
across the continent with one older than your father, to be called your
husband, to be your husband! It must be humiliating. It is annoying. It is
foolishly silly and inconsistent. Money is a small compensation for such a
sacrifice. Love, and love only, should govern marriage, and I doubt its
sincerity when the difference goes beyond reason.
Marry one whom you trust, admire, respect, look up to, and confide in, can
be true to, and one whom you love from good and earnest motives.

“Respect is a cold lunch in a dark dining-room. Love is a picnic in the
woods.” Think of a picnic and an old man escort!
Don’t marry too old. Be in earnest about it. Here is the thought in a nut-
shell:

TOO OLD TO LOVE.

I.

“I never loved but one,” she said;
“I loved him just for fun,” she said;
And, saying this, she swung her head—
Had she been frank, they had been wed.
I saw her at a ball that night,
Her eyes so dark and face so white,
Her tone and manner wild delight;
I knew she served him not aright.

II.

“I am too old to love,” she said;
“The one I loved in fun is dead!
I plant these flowers above his head,
Here lies my idol, dead!” she said.
“’Tis sad to think it might have been;
’Tis sadder yet to feel my sin.
Love learns too late; but then, but then,
He loved me once—the best of men.

III.

“I never see a pure, good face,
Nor painting outlines ever trace,
But he is near, his love is dear,
Had I been earnest; he were here!”
She veiled her dark eyes with her hand;
I turned away,—“True love is grand,”
I murmured, in an undertone;
“Life gives no more than love of one.”

Don’t marry odd sizes. A tall man with a little woman looks awkward
enough; but a tall woman with a little, tiny man is a misfit, surely.

See if you can’t find someone of your size, as the school-lads say in a
wrestle. Pair off like soldiers in time of dress parade, with an eye to unity.
This caution relates to extremes, of course, and not to small variances.
Some change and grow portly after marriage, but none get very much taller
after twenty-four.
Just for the looks of the thing, pair off in uniform lines.
Don’t marry a man or woman without a character. Soon enough you’ll see
the value of this caution. Character is a matter that grows through a lifetime,
but enough of it crops out early to be noticed. One is known not only by his
company but by his habits, his tastes, and his inclinations. It is said that
some whole families are born fast; some thievish, some inclined to
crabbedness, others mild, upright, honest, and reliable. It runs in the blood
in some cases.
Suppose one is to marry for virtue, purity, and uprightness, he will seek it in
the blood as much as he would look for quality in a racer.
If a woman loves a rakish “man of the world,” so called,—a name too often
used to varnish a bad character,—she will very easily find him around the
different bar-rooms of almost any crowded hotel in the city or village. He
will be after marriage what he was before.
Tell me where a man goes, and I will tell you what he is. If he is fast, he
will cultivate fast habits, live a rapid life, and earn that character very early.
If these are the traits you are looking for, “inquire within” and you will find
them. It may be a woman you are asking about, a girl for a wife, a life-long
companion. Which are you seeking for? A dashy, fly-away dancer, or a
domestic home-lover, and one whom you can trust with your keys, your
secrets, your conscience? Look to her character. In either case, the man or
woman has lived somewhere. Find out about it,—how long, how well, how
faithfully.
A well-to-do widow, was crazy to marry a man that she fancied, and who
actually refused to give more than his name and hotel, and no references.
On careful inquiry such a person was known by no less than two to four
names,—changed to suit circumstances. The spell was broken, the match
ended.

Men and women often rush into matrimony as game is run into a trap, for
the little tempting bait set to catch them (a catch-as-catch-can race). They
marry and risk a life-long happiness on less actual information of each
other’s real nature than a good horseman would exact of his carriage horse’s
pedigree. This may do in the country, but never will answer in a city. Sense
and reason dictate that men and women, to enjoy each other’s society,
should see well to the match beforehand. A fine hand, a small foot, a
becoming hat, a twist of the head, a simper, or a half-witty saying will do
well in their places; but colors must wash and wear to stand a lifetime.
Don’t marry a clown. A silly fellow that jokes on every subject never did
amount to anything, and never will. All he says may be very funny, very;
but how many times can he be funny?
Fun will grow stale and threadbare; one cannot live by it. Life is a trip that
costs car fare, wash bills, board bills, trinkets, notions, and actual outlays.
Real providers are never clowns; the clownish fellow is a favorite in school-
days. He is so cute, just as cute as a cotton hat, so cunning, so witty, so nice.
Is he? Wait a few years, until his nice nonsense turns to active business!
Don’t marry a dude. Of all milk-and-water specimens, a dude is the lowest,
—a little removed from nothing; a dressed-up model for a tailor-shop
(sometimes it’s in woman form); a street flirt, a hotel-step gazer, an eye-
glass ogler, a street strut; one who finds his enjoyment in the looking-glass
—a masher.
Very many are called, but few are chosen. The many that are called are
ridiculed. The time will come when a tailor’s suit and a fancy outfit will no
more make one respectable than it would make a gentleman of a wooden
Indian in front of a cigar-stand.
Men, real men of business, and men fit to marry, are not dudes, but manly,
upright beings, with sense, integrity, and genius or industry; who come
upon the stage of life as real actors in its affairs, not as “supes” and sham
soldiers in “Pinafore” battle-scenes, where a few parade in fancy feathers as
commodores for the amusement of spectators.
Life is too earnest to spend on silly, tawdry, fancy colors or showy clothing;
and the one who has the less of it is the most likely to be marked for a
gentleman, and the brand will be correctly designated. With women, no less

than men, is this silly street-walking habit quite prevalent. A flirting woman
on a public street is a sorry picture; even one who stoops to notice her must
secretly know her measure. She deceives no one, for her character, like the
dude’s, is so transparent that no one mistakes its meaning. The habit of
going nowhere for nothing is as foolish as it is injurious.
Character grows out of little things. It may be that being seen with a
disreputable person three times, or even once, will change the whole current
of our career. Don’t practise the vices of dudes nor the habits of street flirts.
Do not marry a boy or girl who is not good at home. That is the golden test
of duty,—to do one’s duty alone, away from the eyes of men and the notice
of the world; to be good from a right disposition.
There is no safer rule to marry by than this: “She loves her mother, and isn’t
afraid to work. She has a good name at home among her near neighbors.
She is neat, sweet, and tidy. Seven days each week she is never off guard,
always a lady.”
And of a man may it be said, “He is a man, take him all in all; he is manly,
he is truthful; he loves his home; he treats his sisters and mother kindly. He
is capable of good deeds, and incapable of mean ones. He has a good
name.” He deserves success, and it will follow him. He is plain, perhaps,
but man outgrows it. He is not a painting, an imitation, a counterfeit, but
simply a man. He will do to marry; so will she, the last-named.
Don’t marry from pity. It may be akin to love, but the kinship is quite
distant. Many a weak woman has so married, and only once regretted it—
each and every day afterwards. A life-long regret must follow. What a cold
respect is that compliment to any woman, “I took pity on her!” Away with
such base uses of pity! Many a woman has had pity on a rakish man or a
drunkard and married him to reform his nature. Better, far better, trust a
child with a runaway horse or a mad dog. Danger seen and not avoided is
criminal carelessness. Surely you can save one life, and its happiness, in
such cases. One is quite enough to be sacrificed. Let bravery be shown by
demanding a full surrender and reasonable atonement.
Don’t marry for an ideal marriage only. The girlish dream of marriage is so
wide of the reality as to be dangerous. She is to grow up and go away, off to
Italy, or some far-away clime of sunshine; there to be taught music and the

classics. On some clear moonlight evening, in a summer-time, where birds
sing all day long, near a brook or flower-garden, she is to be surprised by a
creature of form and make and mental endowment that shall thrill her whole
being into rapturous joy. They will go to the parlor, and there, by a grand-
piano, she will unseal the pent-up currents of her heart, till tears flow from
all eyes around her; there she will seem to hear the childhood melodies, the
song of departed friends, the harmony of all the senses, mingling in one
sweet welcome to her new-found happiness.
Her prisoned soul is no longer grovelling in common themes; all the latent
power of her being is to burst forth in gladness; and music of the heart is to
bear her up until the cottage walls are narrow, till flowers and falling water,
brilliant company, ease and riches, smile upon her glad career.
She is to be lifted up, and raised to heights before unknown to mortals. He
of whom she dreams of now is fit for Paradise. Finer and finer every day
will his genius grow, and nearer to her liking every hour. There is just such
joy and just such glory in a new-born love, that seems to reach a grander
height each moment, as on eagle’s wings.
And this is but the generous dream that Nature gives, as a preface to a real
life after,—so very, very different. The girl that twines her tender arms
around her mother’s neck, and thrills with joyous pride in telling of the
brilliant prize that’s offered her, thinks not of rainy days ahead. Perhaps it is
just as well; who would begrudge her such half-hours of happiness? But,
seeing sometime she must break the spell and know all, it may be safe to
drop a hint in season, and say, This way lies safety, that way danger!
Don’t marry a man of even doubtful character. No matter how handsome or
brilliant, a bad man has in him elements that are always repulsive; they are
poison to his blood and his surroundings, and the only safe guide is his
character.
No matter how many promises of reformation; you need not turn reformer
for his sake. If you will take the risk, do it after he proves himself reformed,
and be in no great haste about it.
No amount of spicing and seasoning can make tainted meat palatable, and
no amount of promising will reclaim a character tainted with vicious habits
once seated.

Young ladies who enter upon the reforming mission furnish more women
and children for prisons, later in life, by their own misfortunes than any one
class. Cases of reclaimed men after marriage are so rare as to be
exceptional. It’s always a dangerous experiment.
Don’t marry too cautiously as to perfection. It has before been fully stated
that men and women are human, and imperfect. That is, if you are hunting
angels it’s a fool’s errand; there are none unpledged. If you look for tall,
handsome, rich, manly, cultivated, talented, brilliant men, or pure, refined,
fascinating, beautiful women, and one for each man the world over, the
supply never equals the demand of either sex.
But to presume that the persons marked under head of “don’t marry” cover
all the rest is unreasonable. There are thousands of noble women and men,
possessed of sterling sense, strong bodies, affectionate natures, ability to
conduct a home, become a genial companion, raise a family, shine in
society, and bear their full share of life’s earnest work. Occasionally a man
or woman will tower above their fellows, but, generally, the real difference
is less than is often supposed. The great majority are good, and live and go
to their reward unheard of outside of their neighborhood.
One has put it rather strongly in this, to many: “The lives of men and
women, the best of them, are marred and ruined by uncongenial marriages.
They mostly suffer in silence, ashamed to complain of the chain they cannot
break. Men and woman cannot know what their sweethearts will be after
marriage. I have known a sensitive man, a genius with a soul like a star,
whose life was a pilgrimage over burning coals, because his wife was a
coarse termagant. Many a gifted woman, fit to be a queen or an empress, is
chained to a clod of a husband, whose forced companionship is to her the
tortures of Inferno.”
Don’t marry expecting all the virtues in one person. If you do, the
disappointment will be startling. There are no perfect characters. History
gives none since the Saviour. Even Joseph was willing to punish his
enemies.
The majority of men and women are good and pure and fair-looking. The
numbers who go to the bad are few compared to the good. Take the country
population, and ninety per cent will be good; and sixty per cent of all cities
are people of fair characters.

It is a mistake to think that most people are bad because the bad ones get so
often chronicled in public journals. The good, like the virtuous, live and die
and demand no praise of their virtue. The great mass of men are sensible,
and honest and upright and sober, and worthy to marry.
Don’t break a marriage abruptly. This is the wrong way to break a bad
match. It intensifies affection. It leads to elopement, or that slow canker in a
girl’s nature ending in melancholy, or insanity.
Love is a plant so tender that to uproot or transplant it may touch a vital
part. There are ways enough to change its current; but of all food to increase
its growth, give it a little opposition. Tell a child to leave something alone,
and he sulks to touch it. Tell a girl that the man she admires is distasteful to
her relatives, and she half despises them from a simple motive of
resentment. Lead her by reason to see with her own eyes, and she will be
convinced.
The great London actor, Garrick, played the drunkard to disenchant a girl,
and succeeded. Her parents might have tried it a lifetime and failed. Human
nature is queer. It will lead when the way is enticing. It will magnify
discoveries, but they must be discovered in the right manner. Remove not
the prop till the safety of the structure is secure without it.
Don’t oppose one’s marriage choice suddenly. Should a girl fall in love with
one of bad character, it is best not to call him so at one breath; but say,
“What are his habits? Is he good enough and worthy of so pure and comely
a person as you are?” Let this task be performed by some girl of same age
and class as the one you seek to change. Let them be often together, and
find ways of expressing the objections by this method—coming from a
classmate, a friend, a chum or companion—and your object may be easily
accomplished. A proposed absence without showing why, a long journey
with genial company, may have the desired effect. At least use one caution;
see that the girl knows the real habits and character of the man you are
opposed to her marrying. It will do more than all the urging, scolding,
coaxing, or threatening.
Don’t marry for spite. Why should you? If the one whom you loved most
has deceived you and taken another, it will be folly to try to punish him by
hanging yourself, or committing a double suicide in a loveless marriage.

You will learn this lesson all too dearly when it’s over. Life is too short for
those who love it and are well mated; but many a miserable marriage has
made one or the other wish for death a million times, to be rid of its burden.
You are the one most interested. You will find out, after the knot is tied, that
there are many conditions in life better and easier to be endured than a silly
marriage to spite some one. You will spite them better by showing what a
noble choice they had missed when they took another in your place.
Don’t propose on a wash-day, in the rain, at breakfast, or in a tunnel. There
is no room for fainting in the former, and a narrow chance for time in the
latter.
Many ladies have singular notions on how proposals should be accepted,
and to such any rudeness is extremely shocking. A very modest fellow, in
deep anxiety, took up his fair lady’s cat, and said, “Pussy, may I marry your
mistress?” when the young lady replied, “Say yes, pussy, when he gets
brave enough to ask for her.” More than likely this brought the young
fellow to his senses. It certainly brought matters to a crisis.
Most young people talk to each other as though a tall stone wall stood
between them and they must find a door in it. Strange enough, the
difference in views vanishes at the merest mention of each other’s
sentiments.
Don’t mitten a mechanic, simply on account of his business. If he is worthy,
never mind his business. He can grow out of it, and will grow out of it.
Collier was a blacksmith, Wilson a shoemaker, Andrew Johnson a tailor,
Peter Cooper a glue-maker, Grant a tanner, and Lincoln the humblest of
farmers. In this country it is not a question what a man was, but what he is;
not even what he is, but what he may be, and what he is capable of yet
attaining.
Many a girl has turned away a mechanic and married a rich loafer, only to
find in good season that the mechanic was at heart a gentleman, with
growing possibilities, and the loafer remained such for all time.
Advice is seldom heeded in such matters, but it may do to mention it. The
true test of manhood is seen in the mettle of boyhood. If you wish to
forecast the future, study the past history of your subject. If one is selfish,
tyrannical, and overbearing by being rich, he will be a bad man to marry. If,

on the other hand, he is pleasant, kind, genial, and forbearing, loves his
kind, is attentive to his mother and sisters, and has made friends and
character in early life, he is not very likely to change his notions later. There
is often more manhood in a poor one-armed man than a rich athlete.
Don’t marry a man too poor. It is the height of folly to mate, and attempt to
raise seven children on what will bring up three indifferently. Have a little
discretion. Think that eating, dressing, etc., cost something, and no one can
live happily without some of these common comforts. If they cannot buy
them single, it is folly to double one’s misery by marrying in the jaws of
starvation. It is suicide: it is worse,—it is double suicide, and may lead to
pauperism and crime and disgrace.
Don’t marry where the woman is older than the man. Men are restless
creatures and exacting. They expect grace, beauty, and refinement; they
prefer youth to age, generally. At least it is the fashion to marry a wife some
years younger than the husband. Women mature earlier; they have less
expectancy of long life, and on an average live seven to ten years less, and
show age at fifty more than a man does at sixty-five. Of the two, a woman
should look smaller and younger and better than a man. This accords with
the belief of all refined people.
Don’t marry a crank. This class of men will be wordy and persuasive. They
tell all sorts of stories of life,—how the world is mismade; how they could
improve upon this thing or that; how marriages should be made between
blondes and brunettes; how, with their philosophy, society would reach
perfection.
Such men are invariably tyrannical. They are exacting to the last degree;
they have neither faith, hope, nor charity, but run in one groove. They
distrust the powers that be, and generally mount some hobby, and forever
prattle about the rights of free love or the wrongs of government. Avoid
them as you would a tramp.
Don’t marry fine feathers. Chesterfield was well up on manners, and gave
his son this rule, among his twenty-one maxims to marry by: “Let not the
rustling of silk entrap you into matrimony.” Fine clothing has a certain
fascination to many. Some choose a wife by the becoming effect of a tasty
garment. Some select a fine dancer; others rely upon a small hand or a

petite form. These points may be all well noted, but they are but parts of a
greater whole that should govern a wise selection.
Don’t marry a “masher”—man or woman. A regular professional flirt will
never settle down to love one woman or one man. Habits once formed will
cling to them in after-life. They are like runaway teams—liable to take
fright and go when least expected.
Civil attention, by a lady or gentleman, to the other sex is natural and
courteous, but the thought that every fair lady is common prey is repulsive.
The traveller who avoids all vacant car-seats but the nearest to a handsome
young woman, and forces his conversation against her will, has an eye to
his business of one more conquest; but the too often insulted woman who
complains of over-attention from gentlemen is generally one who walks
much unattended and shows some willingness to be not wholly unnoticed.
Don’t marry without love. It will be plain enough after a while. You will not
mind it at first, perhaps, but the time will come when, by a song, or a face,
or a voice, or a form, you will awake as from a dream, to find you have
chosen carelessly. It will be too late then. A loveless marriage may stand
throughout a honeymoon. It may last in youth, but not when storms and
trials come in after-years. It lacks that something which words do not well
express,—continuity, heart-bound devotion, and endurance.
No matter how plain each or either may be, if they love each other they will
overlook little things, and live patiently and happily to the end. But once, at
least, must come this joy and glory of wedlock, that seems to be the wise
design of Nature,—a love for one another. It endures through age and
trouble, and is a more lasting tie than all others together.
Don’t marry an idle spendthrift; one whose money comes without effort at
first, and goes as rapidly, will one day come to want as certainly as waters
reach their level. Nature has fashioned us all for work,—work of mind or
work of body, mental or physical labor,—and with it comes strength of
muscle and of will. Listless life of idleness, without motive, without aim, is
open to every form of temptation.
It is not a crime to be rich, or to be poor. It is a crime to be listless in a busy
world. He would be disgraced who, standing on a wharf, saw a drowning
crew without offering relief. He would be a coward who would not defend a

woman in distress; yet all around us are the needy, helpless, drowning,
starving, whom it is our duty to rescue and lift up in life; and marriage is the
place where society is born, and grows and ripens into use.
Don’t marry a stingy man; of all narrow, mean men, he is worst who has
money, and has no will to do good with it. A “dog-in-the-manger” man,
who can improve his town, his church, his neighborhood, and does not, is a
drone in life’s hive and deserves no success.
One who is poor and has no means is excusable; one who locks and buries
treasures deserves the Bible sentence of him who hid his talent in the earth
—to be taken from him and placed with the active one’s talent.
A narrow, selfish, stingy man will count your pennies spent, and postage
used, and clothing worn, as wasted. One must live in constant dread of such
a creature—we need not name him man; it would disgrace the term. A
miser’s wife lives a loveless life.
Don’t marry too hastily. Some rush into matrimony like a steam-engine
going to put out a fire, as though one moment lost would be eternal defeat,
and the first there gain the highest prize. Many a one has repented more
leisurely and in sorrow for such conduct. But of all things, marry at a good
opportunity.
Don’t be too slow about it. Girls who give up the society of all but one, and
turn their homes into special receptions for one person, will be worried to
death in a year or two, if things move too moderately.
Brace up and proceed to business, or release your claim and let some one
else have an opportunity. Long engagements lead to lovers’ quarrels; they,
in turn, fail to make up sometimes, and then follow scandal and gossip over
broken ties; and later two go down to their early sleep disheartened, ruined
by a trifling neglect and a reasonable inventory of prospects. You will see it
all plainly when it is over. It will be a “might have been” then, sure enough,
but too late.
Don’t marry a silly girl. It’s something of an art to select a sensible person,
but many are captivated by frivolous sayings and coquettish acts of
simpering school-girls and marry them. They make better playmates than
wives. They are generally shallow, nonsensical, and superficial. They
seldom learn anything; a tittering girl is wearisome in real life. They are

ever unstable as water and changeable as wind; get some one that you can
rely upon in confidence.
Avoid slovenly dressed girls or heedless men. Life seems very short
sometimes, but if ill-mated it may be a long and tiresome life. A woman
with shoes run down, a man with slouched and battered hat, reckless of
neatness, will grow worse, and seldom better.
Trifling as it may appear, the tidy dress, the tasty every-day apparel, the
ladylike appearance, and general style of man or woman, go a long way to
form character. Beecher was right in saying that “clothes do not make the
man, but they make him look better after he is made.” The same rule is true
of women.
Don’t expect too much in marriage. The story pen-pictures and fashion-
plate models of men that we see and read about are always exaggerated.
Not one man in a million would equal their description. Men are plain
flesh-and-blood creatures; women are not angels. They build their hopes too
high who expect otherwise. Take the handsomest person you know and ten
years’ wear will dull the edges; and of all faded features, the once very
handsome show change the soonest. There are many little odd-faced fellows
who grow up to be fine manly men. The growth from boyhood or girlhood
to youth, and youth to manhood or womanhood, and so on to old age, is
marvellous. It takes a keen sense of foresight to measure the future of many
boys and girls by their beginning. There is no rule safer than choosing a
good form, a good brain, a good temper, and a good character, and waiting
for the other developments.
Endure what cannot be cured, and don’t wish your wife or husband were as
handsome as some neighbor or as rich as some nabob. Youth and good
qualities are riches. It may be he is richer by far than the very one envied.
The richest are not always those who own the most—many of these are
poor indeed, and often miserable.
Don’t marry a fop. Vanity in a woman is bad enough, in men it is
intolerable! A man-milliner, a namby-pamby female male, a walking model
for ready-made furnishing-stores, may think himself exceedingly stunning,
but to a real lady or gentleman he is a nonentity. Such husbands never could
be satisfied with the admiration you would give them; they would weary
your mirrors and try your patience. What are they good for, anyway? There

is room for women and room for men, but a half-woman or a half-man is
never great. They are not very likely to marry at all, and less likely to make
home happy.
Don’t expect everything of one person. Some expect to marry love, beauty,
talent, riches, and affection all in one. It is unreasonable; you will never find
it, and may as well give up looking in good season.
“Waukeen” Miller was requested to rewrite an article sent to a New York
magazine and returned this pithy reply: “I can’t re-copy it. I can’t do
everything. What do you expect of a man, anyway—to be a genius, an
inventor, and a writing-teacher? No, I can’t bother my brains with copying
worth four to six hundred a year at the highest.” This covers the whole
subject in a sentence. But it is well to add that Nature is sparing of her gifts.
To one she allots beauty, to another strength, to another wisdom, to a third
courage, to a fourth ability to acquire riches, to another that to write and
speak, to teach, to manage, to paint, or to control armies: all are not alike,
and to no one belong all virtues.
Don’t expect too much of a wife. If she is beautiful, that will be her pride
and ideal. If plain, she may make it up a thousand times in goodness,
gentleness, industry, virtue (the plainest are the least tempted). Earnest in
her duty, she may be of all women the most suited to your station. If
talented, she will devote herself to it. You cannot own beauty, talent,
domestic drudgery all in one.
“Looking for angels, are you?” said an advanced maiden in the country.
“Well, you’ll not find ’em fit for kitchen work; and, while I think of it, how
would you look by the side of an angel, you brute you?” and he subsided.
No, they are not much suited to kitchen work, the so-called angels; but
many a mother who has brought up a large family as her own kitchen maid,
without servants, who has braved the hardships of poverty and privation,
has led a life but little lower than the angels, after all.
Don’t marry and cross your husband. While on this division, don’t cross
your wife just at dinner-time. After the cares of business he is tired, fretful,
and she is of similar humor. To make a dispute is much easier than to make
a coal fire. Wait!
Don’t flash up and speak back, and irritate by quick answer. Wait!

If man or woman could only wait in seasons of anger, all would blow over
and harmony return like spring flowers, that are not always in blossom.
Don’t both speak at once, nor both get angry at once, nor both be too
determined at once. No one is ever convinced by angry tones. It is horribly
repulsive to talk so; besides, you will both be sorry for it very many times.
Wait, and let your judgment mature after dinner; quarrel, if you must, in
whispers; that is the new fashion. Try the newer form.
About ten thousand new divorces could be prevented each year by
observing these rules of common sense and reason. When will married
people and unmarried people, and lovers and neighbors, learn how pleasant
peace is, and how awkward it is to quarrel together?
One man pounds his finger with a tack-hammer and blames his wife for it a
month later; one man’s goose gets in a neighbor’s garden and is killed—
perhaps served him right—and yet they are sworn enemies for five years
later; and not until some child is rescued from a burning building or a mad
dog, by the enemy neighbor do the two know how pleasant and useful it is
to dwell in harmony.
Families who have been estranged for years are some day—ah, some day!
—called to look into the sightless eyes that once flashed in anger, or lay
away in its earthy home the form they shunned for some trifling answer in a
passion. If we knew how soon, how cautious we would be! Life is so short
to quarrel and make up in; they who quarrel may never make up.
Don’t marry in fun. Be in earnest about a matter of so much moment. It may
seem funny to a lot of girls out on a sleigh-ride to call in some one and wind
up an escapade by a double wedding; but few of such marriages ever end
well.
Sudden and ill-considered matches are mismatches. You may have a
mother, a sister, or a family to consult; then the old-fashioned way is the
best. It’s a left-handed marriage at best that will not allow the forms used
for ages to strengthen its solemnity.
Let the world know by open dealing that you have married above any
secrecy, elopement, or underhanded fashion. Be brave enough to follow the
form of society in a manner that concerns every neighbor and every
relative.

Marry at home or at church, in good form, without display; marry according
to the best usage of the best people, and you will reap some benefit from the
sensible conclusion.
Don’t marry without an eye to comfort. A man that expects to live thirty
years or more with a partner will investigate his likes and dislikes; so
should a woman. Are you ready to attend a cattle ranch and brave the
frontier? Then look the matter clearly in the face at the first hint of the
man’s proposal who expects it.
Do you prefer the city to the country? Look to the earliest opportunity. Can
you endure a soldier’s absence, or wait for an explorer? or will you prefer a
domestic relation that brings you both under one roof daily? These
questions should be answered soon enough to prevent regret, remorse, or
separation. The greatest of all dangers in marriage is the color-blindness of
lovers: they never use but one color—rose color—till a few weeks after the
wedding.
Don’t spurn a man for his poverty. “Prosperity is the parent of friends;
misfortune is the fire by which they are tried.” One may be poor by an
honest failure, another may be rich on ill-gotten gains. The first the lord of
honor, the last a prosperous knave.
“I would give it all willingly and work by the day if we could be placed
back where we were, and be free from the worry and dread and anxiety,”
said a rich man’s wife to a waiting friend by her sick bedside.
Who does not know of poor, plain boys who endured the poverty of youth,
struggled with their studies, carved out a fortune as from flinty marble, and
enjoyed it in maturer years, all the more for the effort it cost them, all the
more likely to last and continue to bless other generations?
Franklin commenced poor with a penny loaf; Greeley was homely and
awkward. Few would have looked for Lincoln’s rise. Giddings and Collier
and Garfield all started low on the ladder, and ended high in honor and
worthy of any woman’s affection.
If we could only get near enough to Genius to comprehend its superior
worth; if we could reverence talent and admire integrity and take true
measure of prospective greatness, what a fortune we would possess!

Like high-priced lots in large cities, the discoverers of rare locations seldom
knew the value of their purchases. It takes time for development; more time
in genius and character than we are always ready to wait for; but the far-
seeing are always rewarded, so with the prizes of matrimony.
Don’t marry and expect a husband to be wealthy while young. Only the
older men should be looked to for high financial standing. In a hopeful
country like ours, few are rich under fifty, seldom under sixty.
Young men who earn their education, and begin and learn a business are
barely partners at thirty or thirty-five. It takes time to prosper. Several
mistakes may be made. Scarcely a wholesale house in New York or Boston
has run on twenty years without a failure. Failure is the rule, success the
exception. Patience, pluck, and perseverance win the victory, but they who
spend freely in the forenoon have little left in the evening. Those who save
early double in like ratio later on.
Don’t marry in opposite religious views. If possible, marry near your own
belief. This may seem strained, but the story of divorces will confirm its
wisdom. Children and parents very often disagree on religious subjects. The
farmer’s “Betsey and I are out” controversy, “was a difference in our creed.
And the more we argued the matter, the less we ever agreed.”
It is pleasant to agree on a subject so vital in families, more especially so in
Protestant and Catholic families, where education is sometimes controlled
by church government, and marriages are held illegal in one church if not
solemnized by its forms and between regular believers in its faith and
doctrines.
Don’t marry a duke, or any man who travels on his title. The most of such
men are very common, and the most of young people who seek their
company are sold, deceived, and seriously disappointed.
They expect a fortune to begin with, and will be the most exacting of all
mortals. This is a mere matter of birth and surroundings. Novels tell many
beautiful stories (pretty visions) about brave and noble dukes and their
princely palaces, attentive servants, and flower-arbors. Experience tells far
different stories.
The history of nine out of ten of such unnatural unions is a record of a half
million or so squandered on a petted daughter to satisfy a mother’s

ambition, and ending in misery entailed by the dearly bought purchase.
Don’t marry so much out of rank as to be a burden, or carry a burden.
Do marry a man that you can look up to, and see that he can do likewise.
There are plenty of farmers, mechanics, merchants, conductors, doctors,
lawyers, and men of general business, who are worthy, trusty, generous,
noble, and will make excellent husbands.
Seek them out from their character, their conduct at home, their treatment of
sisters and mothers, their devotion to business and adherence to principle.
Show them that you trust them. Be ready to marry. Become accomplished
and useful. Make yourself worthy of a home, and know how to manage it
with skill and kindness. Loving natures are not long neglected. The worn-
out belles and women who fade and wither, and die snappish and single,
were insincere, or lacked some quality of winning manners.
Do marry a President. That is the correct form now. It’s so romantic. Waive
all the hints of other objections,—age, love, spite, money, and the like. Get
a President,—just for the position, you know!
Then all the little jewels and diamonds and presents will come rolling in
like flowers to a favorite singer. All little objections vanish in the presence
of a President. He must be suited to any condition of beauty, genius, or
intellect. Don’t refuse a President’s offer; you may never get but one such in
a lifetime.
Do marry a plain man. Just a plain, common-sense man; be he banker,
lawyer, doctor, farmer, builder, merchant, so he is a man; for manhood is at
a premium to-day in home life! The world is full to overflowing with
brilliant men. Public offices are public trusts, and all that such responsibility
implies, and there are women in stations where the word home has very
little meaning, and other women who long for the quiet and comfort of true
domestic life away from the cares of office and the demands of lofty
stations.
Two of the things that lead to greatest misery of the masses to-day are over-
ambition and reckless marriages.
Don’t coax a woman to love you. If you wish to win, that is certainly the
wrong way. If they have any notion of it, you are in the opposite direction
of success.

Women despise a fawning, cringing nature. “Fortune and women, born to
be controlled, stoop to the forward and the bold.”
A far more sensible way to win will be by indifference. Show enough
willingness to reassure her, and enough courage to act manly.
Ten to one you have mistaken her temper by lack of frankness. Nothing is
more touching than truth. If you are really bent on marrying and have told
the right person the whole story, earnestly and truthfully, the answer should
be decisive.
Keen dealers seldom banter; they may hesitate, they may explain their
wants and wishes, they never parley very long or express much anxiety to
strike a bargain.
Winning a wife or a lover is a rare art. To be worthy of either is the first
essential. It is better to be worthy of it than to be President and unworthy.
It must be consoling even to a jilted lover to feel that he is superior to the
one successful. The next thing to being worthy is being ready. Many a
youth begins driving, sleighing, and dressing for society who pays his
clothing bills by instalments, and whose salary is wholly unequal to his
outlay.
Fairness demands that a girl in marrying should better her condition. How
can one expect her to marry into misery?
Chesterfield quotes an old Spanish saying of great force and aptness: “It is
the beginning that costs in everything. The first step over, the rest is easy.”
Don’t marry recklessly. Before two or more men form a partnership, they
learn each other’s means of furthering the business to be engaged in; the
confidence that each is worthy of, the skill, attention, etc., each can give,
and the prospects of a mutual agreement and prosperity.
Without some inquiry on these vital requisites, no company concern would
be founded. It would be a foolish investment to purchase goods and fit up
stores or warehouses without some forecast of results; and yet this is
precisely in the line of marriage.
Partnerships are business marriages. It is not best to be too cool and
calculating about it; one caution may let another take the venture and draw

the premium. But some common-sense may as well be mixed with a matter
so vital as a life-long engagement.
Firms are limited to a few years; marriages are unlimited save by death, or
divorce, for over a third of a century, on an average. While it is very
difficult to tell whom to marry,—for no one can foresee your circumstances,
—still, it is well to mention a large class that no one should marry, at least
till all others are no longer accessible.
If one could foresee the extent of happiness depending on this selection of
partners, if he would take a simple business caution and investigate enough
to be considerate, he might save society from disgrace and himself from
lasting misery. For the fact is, that the most glaring of all our American
evils is the looseness of marriage ties, and the misery it entails on domestic
relations.
If these hints or reminders should induce one woman to avoid a bad
marriage, and one man to contract a good one, or save a long quarrel, or
keep families in harmony, or help some poor bashful fellow to gain his Yes
by a sensible proposal, the time in reading will be well spent, the trifling
cost will be a splendid investment.

ROMANTIC MARRIAGES.
Caroline Crofton had completed her course at Vassar, one of its earliest
graduates, and one of the most brilliant in her class of thirty odd young New
England, graceful, gifted, and generous girls, that have long been noted for
their purity of principles and perfection of character. She was smaller than
her classmates, an only daughter of Judge Crofton, whose manner and
training marked him as a classical, refined, and upright gentleman, and a
dignified and just judge.
All that culture could impart, or character add to the graces of nature, was
bestowed upon Caroline, who never assumed the fashion of shortening her
name by fancy contractions. Carline was the shortest way of calling her, and
this was not a favorite with her mother. From her father she inherited the
qualities ascribed to her, while her mother, like a clinging vine wound
around the oak, was of a trusting, lovable, nature, of darker hair and eyes
than the Judge; and the two mingled in the daughter, and formed a slender
figure and a graceful form, an ardent, lovable character, as one could easily
discover.
Diligent by nature and proud of her progress in early studies, Caroline had
entered Vassar’s advanced classes and employed all her energy to excel in
each department.
She literally lived in her books for four full years, to the exclusion of
modes, society, or even the newspapers; her one ambition seemed ever to be
excellence, and when the graduating day arrived, and the long row in white
were seated in breathless awe to read their papers and receive their reward,
something more than a common interest was awakened.
Such are the days when young men of wealth and ambition, and poorer men
with an eye to the beautiful, come in and listen to the overdrawn pictures of
school-girls’ first productions.
The theme of Caroline Crofton was “Pioneers;” how they had founded our
government in the little log school-houses of New England, in the sixteenth
century; how they had established their town meetings and voting precincts;

how they had gradually driven back the Indians (“noble redmen”) from the
rich, fertile valley of the Mohawk in New York, cleared away the
underbrush from the fertile plains of Northern Ohio and Pennsylvania, and
boldly evaded the massive pineries of bleak, cold Northern Michigan;
dauntlessly, fearlessly, and bravely establishing schools and churches in the
very midst of Indian huts and wigwams, taking their lives in their hands, to
improve and populate a great and growing nation; and how wonderfully
they had all prospered.
In her vivid and graphic picture of a fruitful theme (a theme learned from
books and stories), she dwelt on the part that mothers had borne, and
brothers were bearing, in this tide of prosperity and improvement, till tear-
drops came fast to the earnest eyes of the old gray-haired professors, who
were judges, and many a mother’s heart leaped with joyous pride at the
mention of brave sons battling with the Western wilderness, for their sons
were among them.
Caroline Crofton could feel the hush of silence, always such applause as is
irresistible; she could feel the emotion, and conveyed that emotion to her
audience; she forgot herself, forgot her hearers, and read with a girlish
animation born of deep-seated belief in the grandeur of the theme she
advocated. Round after round of applause greeted her conclusion, and she
staggered to her seat literally overcome by the brilliant effort which resulted
in a handsomely inscribed medal as first of her class of Vassar.
Whether the influence of that essay on the mind of Caroline, or its greater
influence on Cyrus Arthur (a newly arrived resident of Vassar) was the most
potent means of a quick acquaintance between them, is not well known to
the writers; certain it is that an early friendship soon refined into affection,
and meagre inquiries into his character being satisfactory to Caroline, he
was promptly admitted as a suitor at the dignified household of Judge
Crofton, on the banks of the beautiful St. Lawrence. The Judge was led to
believe that a long acquaintance had ripened between schoolmates, when in
fact it was a love at first sight affair, and on very little consideration.
That these young and ambitious lovers enjoyed all that is allotted to their
class is forever a secret, for their after-life reveals but little of its mystery.
Their after-life was a struggle for bread first, and position soon after. They
really put off living, very foolishly.

Cyrus Arthur was a large, strongly built, dark-haired, handsome fellow, of
considerable assurance in the social gatherings, and generally managed to
lead off with the dances and parties from his size and commanding way
more than from any merit of talent or real goodness in himself; one of the
village leaders who gained favor by fine looks and outward appearance; one
of the petted class of forenoon brilliants whose afternoons are often more
shaded.
There was a smile of serene contentment and half-satisfaction on the
haughty face of young Arthur as he offered himself to the Judge’s daughter
in that manner assumed by generals in battle. He obtained his prize, and she
obtained her ambition. He married beauty, she married a leader. Her highly
colored future was a life of intellectual greatness; his first pride was of
conquest, then of distinction.
A large man in a small place may be a little man in a large city.
In good season they were married, of course; and of their courtship little
need be said, for it was all unromantic.
Arthur’s father was a merchant of limited means, and the younger having
high notions of going West to grow up with the country, early settled in a
lumber-making city of North Michigan, where he took his fair young
companion, who soon realized that her rose-colored romance of brave
pioneers was not a living reality.
Dreams are one thing, real life is another; work was scarce in the big
overgrown city, but plentiful in the pineries; and after the first day of
married life wore into weeks, and living expense came around with painful
regularity, the new couple were forced to economize, then look for
employment, which they first found in tending store and camp, cooking for
a large lumber-ranch; certainly far less refining than the vision of a Vassar
schoolgirl’s essay had pictured.
But they prospered, and by dint of close saving, always coming from the
wise counsel of the weaker one, they became managers, then owners, of a
portable saw-mill and a ranch, and gradually a store building partly paid for.
From the letters home, showing their thrift and economy, gradually came
small sums lent to the far-away idol of the staid old Judge’s household.

Cyrus was surprised and delighted one day to find a large bill of goods sent
on to fill up their store and give them a start in their hard beginning.
It was the work and influence of that little brainy wife, whose tender hands
had grown harder by cooking, mending, and working for forty or more
robust workmen, and the reward it brought and the encouragement to both.
With a well-stocked grocery and comfortable surroundings, Cyrus began to
look the world in the face quite complacently, and take matters easier.
Meanwhile, the silent ambition of Caroline determined, if growing up with
the country meant anything, she would fathom its mystery, and she
continued to delve and save, and plan and execute, and encourage her
husband in his extensive contracts.
Here was a profit on forty laborers, a margin on their payment in goods, a
rise in lumber, and a golden opportunity to buy vast tracts of pine timber at
very low figures in cash payments. Drawing on her savings the little wife
advised wise investments.

II.

Fifty-seven, eight, and nine were the three trying years in Northern
Michigan. Many a man would cheerfully trade a load of shingles for a bag
of corn, and a thousand feet of timber for a single ham. New England thrift
was in the market, and the little daughter of a discreet judge balanced the
chances and made hay in sunshine most effectually.
Four years passed by, and a rapid rise in prices gradually increased the
value of timber, then lumber, then shingles, then lands, and long before the
war ended, Arthur and his once timid wife were among the wealthy citizens
of the Rapids.
A large, strong frame, and but little anxiety; a dark, swarthy complexion,
with a heavy black beard; the face of such a man at thirty-eight showed less
signs of wear than his little fair-faced companion at six years younger.
Age, climate, work, and care were telling on the slender build of Caroline.
The rapid birth of three children in ten years told also their story of a
mother’s anxiety, written in shading lines on her once delicate features.

Absorbed in her duties as a wife, she had little room for society, while he, a
man relieved by riches from hard labor, was approaching that prime of
maturity when the world looks complacently upward to one who has
prospered, not even asking how, or why, or any reason.
Long trips to large cities, absence from home, mingling often with wealthy
lumbermen, and assuming that position that wealth ever commands in
society, were doing for Cyrus Arthur what they will do for many in like
situations.
He craved a larger field for usefulness, he moved and settled in a large city;
he craved society, he was a favorite with women; he developed a fondness
for the more forward class. He fell; he fell often.
If he had ever loved his devoted wife, the author of all his success and
prosperity, he now grew unloving, haunted by the caresses of more
passionate women. Driven by appetite to seek the companionship of the
brazen and deceitful, he lost his self-respect, his love of home, and grew
madly in love with a most bewitching character, lately divorced from her
husband.
A spell came over him; “the trail of the serpent is over them all,”—the
“twelfth temptation,” as shown in the powerful drama of its name, that
takes a farmer-boy in innocence, carries him safely through the perils of a
great city, saves him from saloons and wine, and larceny and dishonesty,
and at last when weakened by tampering with sin, brings him face to face
with such dazzling beauty that his fall before it seems as natural as his ruin
later is effectual.
The trail of the serpent had crossed by the path of Arthur. The coil wound
around him, for he loved the bold siren who enchanted him, and yielded to
the twelfth temptation.

III.

“For a woman can do with a man what she will;” yet a man who knows a
woman thoroughly and loves her truly—and there are women who may be
so known and loved—will find, after a few years, that his relish for the
grosser pleasures is lessened, and that he has grown into a fondness for the
intellectual and refined amusements without an effort, and almost unawares.

Fettered and controlled by the witchery of his evil genius, Cyrus Arthur lost
all power but that borrowed of his seducer. Her counsel replaced the once
wise confidence of a better companion. Her influence was as a loadstone in
a compass,—it carried him in dumb obedience to her will. He was
absorbed, confused, bewitched, stranded, lost!
As often as they met in their evil way, she demanded a divorce and insisted
on early proceedings.
“But the cause?” he would say. “Cause?” she would answer; “make a
cause!” “Not so easily done,” replied her willing admirer.
“Money will do anything,” was her ready answer.
“Money will do anything,” repeated the fond lumberman; “true, money will
do everything.”
But how? When, and where?
These questions were all puzzling.

IV.

There was a dark-faced inspector, a man-of-all-work in lumber camp, called
Roland, who had often called at Arthur’s, and who occasionally partook a
little too freely of Northern fire-water, as the Indians term it, and whose
poverty at such times would consent to almost anything, on one pretence
and another.
Young Roland was sent to inquire if Mr. Arthur was in, or if Mrs. Arthur
needed shopping done, or errands attended to, with instructions to hint that
his employer was seen riding out with the enchantress in a cutter, seemingly
on the way to another village. These little irritations were to be repeated for
effect, but no effect seems probable. They did create some inquiry, and at
such dates of confidential conferences Mrs. Arthur was alone with the
hireling spy and listened to his inferences of her husband’s indiscretions.
Neither by word nor deed nor murmur did Caroline exhibit a sign or symbol
of her unhappiness, save by the deeper lines and paler countenance that
easily escaped detection to one who barely looked her in the eyes twice a
day for months together.

It was a failure; she would never act, he must take the initiative.
Armed with a sworn affidavit of her infidelity with Roland on a recent
occasion, together with further papers to complete their separation and
settle an alimony of a few thousand dollars as her share of their large
property, Cyrus Arthur visited his wife late at night as a robber would call
for her jewels, and demanded a complete surrender. Stunned and shocked,
and overcome by the intelligence, she wept most bitterly, pleaded, begged,
and implored her husband, in the name of Heaven, to spare her and her
children from a disgrace so terrible. The sighing of the pines in a Northern
forest would have moved him as soon from his purpose. She was between
him and an envied object; he must succeed. He was already goaded to
desperation. Seizing the part of her plea relating to her little girls, he made
the worst of it.
“If you would spare yourself and them from disgrace eternally, make no
denial and all shall be secret, and no one the wiser.”
“Can this be true?” asked the distracted mother of the other’s lawyer.
“Yes,” he replied, cases have been heard on default and divorces granted,
and not one scrap of bill or answer ever published.
“What is a bill and answer?” questioned the little woman in her tears, for
she never dreamed of a divorce between her and her husband till that
moment.
“It is the ground and denial for divorce,” replied the attorney.
“Cyrus Arthur,” said his wife, as she looked at the eyes that evaded her
earnestness, “do you mean this proceeding, or are you trifling?”
“I am in earnest,” he answered.
“Have you forgotten my home, my surroundings, the shock to my mother,
my father, my own feelings, my neighbors, our children? Do you realize
how you sin, and wrong me?
“How I have toiled and helped you, planned our success! How I have
suffered, gone almost in the grave, in bringing you these children! Are you
in earnest?

“If your heart is not iron, speak to me; shall I deny such a foolish slander?
Shall I tell you before God, who will one day judge us all, that every one of
the charges are infamous lies and perjuries; shall I place my word against
his and you deny me?”
“But you cannot swear in court in such cases,” said the ready lawyer.
“Then Heaven will hear me; I am innocent. And may the Almighty end my
life right here, if I have ever, by act or look, or word or deed, done aught
that a true woman should not do in every day of our married life, from first
to last, as God is my witness!”
“But your children?” he pleaded, as if he had heard not a word of her
earnest protest.
On and on they argued, later and later grew the hour, till, worn out at
midnight they passed her the papers, and eight thousand dollars, with which
she was to return to her home in New England, and abandon all defense to
the proceeding, including a release of all dower interest in his estate, real
and personal.
You may smile at the absurdity, you may question the reason of such haste
and compulsion.
“But who, alas! can love and still be wise?”
Ask of the court records in every American city, and you will find stronger
cases and stronger instances, more degradation, greater hardship, and equal
perjury. Ask of one court and find this case!
No sleep nor rest comes to Caroline Arthur. Early dawn found her
surrounded by her weeping children, in alarm at the sudden illness, for she
only called it illness.
Twice she started for the City National Bank to deposit her money, and
twice relented. Once she determined to consult a neighbor, and later
concluded she would bear alone her sorrow.
Hastily filing his bill and securing her appearance, an early demand for a
hearing before a commissioner, in less than a single week came a divorce on
the ground of infidelity.

Elated by his victory, with his deeds well recorded, and the court’s great
seal granting their divorcement, Cyrus Arthur stalked the streets in supreme
confidence as a man of victory.
It is said that Roman generals, once victorious ever bore about with them
the marks of conquerors; so did our modern general, but for a brief
duration.
Once in the newspapers, and the busy streets were vocal with open
denunciation. “Eight thousand dollars from a property worth one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars!” came from bankers. “The wife that made him
what he is,” said another. “A shame to our civilization,” said the third. “A
fraud, a sham, a pretext,” said another.
And the majority joined in the last anthem,—“a sham, a pretext,” a trick to
turn off his worn-out wife and marry that impious trader in unvirtue and
immorality.
Press interviews were had, and the dear little lady of clean hands and honest
heart, whose soul shone as a diamond in the filth of foul slander around her,
utterly and consistently refuted and denied the whole story, and related its
history with marvellous circumstantial evidence to convince any reasonable
person of her truthfulness.
Indignation knew no bounds; a firm of able lawyers at once filed a cross
bill, and a prayer to set aside the fraudulent bill and another to annul all
conveyances to Arthur; and within almost as brief a limit as he had secured
his decree she had been restored to her rights with a divorce from Arthur
and a thirty-thousand-dollar settlement.
He was driven from the city in infamy, and she lived on in honor; but the
stain on the children was of a nature more permanent.

UNROMANTIC MARRIAGES.
Grace Hartwell graduated at Hillsdale College in 18—, and settled as an
assistant teacher in the Union school on College Hill, living with her mother
across the narrow river near by, where she would pass the old homestead of
Richard Baker, son of a well-to-do farmer adjoining the village, and who
early became interested in the fair young teacher.
Grace was a full brunette, of fairer complexion than is common to her
school of beauty.
She was beautiful, with well rounded arms, heavy black hair, rosy lips,
white hands, eyes of marked expression—eyes that stood out full, and
shone in striking contrasts, the black portion and the white being clear and
sharply defined.
Grace was no less a beauty than a dreamer, and longed for the kind of
change that best suits a girl of her quick, passionate, and impulsive nature—
a marriage.
Richard was below the medium size, with very light hair, of slim figure,
reticent of speech, shy and bashful, especially so in the presence of Grace,
whom he met at parties, donations, and college receptions, so frequent and
amusing in their lively village.
Both went too long a distance for their dinner to make the trip agreeable,
and both often carried their daily lunches in little baskets for convenience.
On their homeward trips they met occasionally, bowed, passed the time of
day, chatted of the last night’s party. It was growing so much of a custom
with Richard to meet these road-side appointments, self-made, and well
timed to match his lonely companion, that they soon became a matter of
each day’s history.
Grace was willing to listen, Richard was anxious to turn aside from his
regular pathway and go round a square to bear her company.
They were in love without romance, and against both the belief and
expectation of all their associates.

She was the prize of the village; he was neither well-off nor popular, but
plain and unhandsome. He was not her only suitor, but the first had taken
some pique at her attentions to a stranger in the village, that offended the
haughty admirer of her beauty, and each was claimant for her entire
devotion.
Miss Hartwell’s father was a tall black-eyed Virginian, warm-blooded,
swarthy, and impulsive, and liked not the manner of his daughter’s new
friendship.
He put his foot down with emphasis. He insisted on obedience. He wanted
position, old family, wealth and social standing, or no marriage.
Grace could not always govern her scholars, but herself she was determined
to control.
Herein both father and daughter were much alike.
Time passed; attachment increased by opposition. Such is more often the
way of lovers separated; but these were not wholly separated.
At the death of Richard’s stepfather a division of the estate netted a round
three thousand to the young farmer, who had done nearly all the farm work
lately, and now started on an early Northwestern visit to the wheat-growing
regions, resolved on a test of climate, comparison of prices, and general
outlook for an investment. He bought early and largely in prairie lands of
finest quality. He struggled, prospered, and grew well-to-do as a farmer.
And what became of Grace, the teacher? Letters to and from Dakota, neatly
written, choicely worded, and carefully punctuated, from one side; hurried
notes, badly composed, from the other. The mind is never quite full of two
subjects at once, and the surest cure for heartache is active employment and
earnest work.
The increasing cares of farming, the magnitude of the business, the constant
desire for money (for the seed-time of farming is in its early stages), were a
source of daily anxiety to Richard. “My poor Richard” was not a common
name for a heading to Grace’s letters; truly she had found a fit name for her
absent lover; a lover of land and of cattle, a lover of acres and of reapers, a
lover of fences and shade-trees, and a growing Northwesterner; but poor,
indeed, in actual happiness.

They were married; Grace removed to her rude quarters and furnished them
by taste, skill, and refinement. She took to her new home all the delicacy of
rare machine-work, neat stitching, and tidy ornaments of her Eastern
education; the sewing of many odd hours of industry.
It seemed like an endless harvest, a long busy day, a strife and a struggle, in
a wilderness of bleak broad fields at great distance from market. They
raised vast crops, but sold at low prices.
The panic of ’73, and the cold winter following, made not a very happy
honeymoon to both, but they endured it all, risked all in a fond large hope
of abundant future riches. In a land of no railroads (it’s changed now; it’s as
much more brilliant to-day as an electric light compared with the light of a
common candle), Dakota was then rather a dreary country.
Sometimes, it is true, there would come over Grace a feeling of lonesome
homesickness. It comes to a far-away settler many times in a lifetime; but
she would choke it under, and resolve to be a brave wife and a worthy
companion.
Ten years have rolled by, and times are better; both are older, worn a little
by climate, larger, changed.
On the way to the National Park I chanced past their village one evening on
the great Pacific Railroad, and mentioned “Hillsdale” incidentally.
I saw a woman turn half-way round and look towards me, but went on
unmindful of the situation. Suddenly her companion arose and asked me if I
said Hillsdale, to which I assented, and then a vacant seat was made and
both came back and questioned me. They were strange people, truly.
He a stout-built, long-bearded man, half gray, with buffalo overcoat, fur cap
and mittens on; she well wrapped in beaver; both Western-looking in every
particular.
“You spoke of Hillsdale, sir,” began the woman; “and we lived there once,
and feel curious to know if you would not remain all night with us. We have
a farm near by next station. I hope you will consent to spend the night with
us;” clearly the woman was the social leader.
There was a pleading in the look, a frank expression that said, Please do,
and I consented.

Two miles, a drive by a cold open sleigh-ride—cold is hardly strong enough
to mark the term,—and we found a low unpainted farm-house, plastered
below, with chamber-floor for ceiling overhead, and rudely formed walls; a
house of three rooms, mainly in two; a farm of six thousand acres, five
teams, three tenant-houses, wagons and sleighs and farming-tools without
stint, but comfort nowhere.
After breakfast the farmer fed his flocks and attended to his general chores,
while I stayed in and chatted by a sickly pretence of fire made of bad coal
and green kindling-wood. I had seen, each time as he came in, how gently
he handled his little pet dogs, that seemed their only children, how deeply
absorbed he was in farm and stock, and how anxious he was I should see
the ranch, but how little he noticed his superior companion.
“Where are your children?” I ventured to inquire.
“They are all three yonder in the field,” she said, and I knew they all slept
in narrow houses there. This seemed to let loose the flood that held her
feelings since the night before. “But for my husband,” she added, “I should
go home ere this. He promised me to go as soon as the road was built; but
then it costs so much, we keep on putting off from year to year. But I am
longing so much to go! And when I heard that word Hillsdale last night, it
filled me so full of home I could not contain myself. I hope you were not
offended; but it seemed if some one would come and talk to me, my life
would all be new again! It is so blank, so bleak, so cold and desolate, and I
am heart hungry.” The tears came fast, and filled her large dark eyes and
softened down her voice to tones of confidence. With eagerness she spoke
of care, and work and trouble, sorrow and neglect; for, in his greed of gain,
he had forgotten her as year by year rolled on, and both were growing older
fast, and he not heeding it,—living on in his farm, reapers, sheep and crops;
his heart was full of such, and had no room for her, no room for life.
“And you have been out here for fifteen years?” I said. “How many years in
that long time have you really lived?”
“Lived!” said Grace—for this was Grace and Richard, as you must know
ere this—“lived!” she replied;—“in work and trouble a long life indeed; in
happiness, not one year yet. We have been waiting every year for that good
time to come when we would find our happiness; we have not found it yet.

The more he gets, the more he wants. Land means care, and taxes, and hired
men, anxiety of crops, and overwork.
“I had rather live one year back by the old farm school-house, when I
carried my dinner to my school, and had a loving group of faces looking
into my eyes each noon, and loving me, than own all our acres and be here
a dozen years.
“Life is not all in years to me! I have learned that lesson dearly, learned it
living where we see so little of real life that memory is all the hope I have.”
“Starving amid plenty is cruelty,” I said. “Sell half and live while you may.
You are wasting your whole lives in a fruitless hunt for happiness.”
I have since learned that my visit was a revolution and reform, and that they
are living better.
And I thought, as I turned to the States and cast a long sad look at the lonely
form in the doorway, and one at the bundle of robes beside me, who was
driving me to the land of daily enjoyment, if their children had grown up
and lived in such a place, where would have been their hope? In land and
horses! Where their company? The company of flocks and cattle. The hope
of sometime finding more congenial quarters. I turned in sadness, saying
inwardly, “God pity the land-poor farmers, and pity their wives, and show
them the lives they are leading!”

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Transcriber’s Notes:
The author of this book is listed in other sources as James W. Donovan using the
pseudonym Hildreth.
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in the original
publication, except that obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
The following changes were made:
p. 54: that removed (and trials come)
p. 65: it added (for it a)

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