Part 19 (1/2)
MARRIAGE.
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men; A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage-bell.--Byron.
Quotation of this verse is made, not because it celebrated a marriage--it, rather, commemorated the frightful carnage of Waterloo--- but because it very faithfully represents the fas.h.i.+onable beginning of wedded life, to which it alludes. There seems to be in woman an inherited, instinctive desire for this kind of thing at her marriage. It is cruel to deny her, therefore man usually goes through with it like a martyr. My prejudices are so heartily enlisted against ”blow-outs” of this kind that I feel the compunctions of an honest judge at sitting in such a case. Nevertheless, I may relate some things I have seen, to show how badly a couple may start in life. Here is one instance: The dust has filled the air for six blocks around some stately church. The ”hacks” and private barouches and coupes have been packed together so that any movement was entirely impossible; the bride has come like a queen of the orient; she has walked on flowers to the vestibule; there she has pa.s.sed under an arch of tuberoses; half-way down the aisle a gate of jessamines and smilax has opened with a smothering sense of richness; at the altar she has actually knelt on a pillow of camellias (fifty cents apiece); and a fifty-dollar organist has put on his full instrument, as though he were proclaiming the glory of G.o.d most mighty, instead of the folly of man most miserable. Into the church have thronged the elect, proud and disdainful; on the outside has stared the vulgar mult.i.tude, too ignorant for anything but rapt wonderment. From the temple of high-priced wors.h.i.+p the celebrants have pa.s.sed, in a still more exclusive body, to a residence where a banquet has been prepared by a man who generally makes ice cream for a living, and where a dazzling display of wedding presents has been uncovered to the careless gaze. Then the train bears away the twain of one foolish flesh, and the farce is over.
OF COURSE IT WAS A FARCE.
The elect read the newspapers next morning with a smile. None but he of the vulgar mult.i.tude was hoodwinked. The man and the woman have spent all their money to purchase a ”swell wedding.” The presents were hired, so were most of the ”hacks.” The florist has got part of his money. The couple, six months afterward, are ”beating” some poor landlady out of their board, and the man, in all likelihood, will never again be heard of. But the women have been intensely agitated by the event. They have never thought about the subsequent aspects of the case.
NO ONE OF THE SAME ”SET”
would be willing to spare a single ”hack” or one double camellia. Why did the young man and the young woman do it? They did it princ.i.p.ally out of vanity, in imitation of some rich person who desired to distribute his money among hard-working folks and at the same time create a feeling of envy among his fellows and ”please the women folk.”
LET US HAVE THE MANHOOD AND THE WOMANHOOD,
if we have five hundred or a thousand dollars, to buy those necessaries of life which will enable us to live without debt after we are settled for life. We are sailing out of the harbor. Would it not be ridiculous for us to heave into the water our provisions, as a symbol of our delirious joy?--would not our s.h.i.+p be a s.h.i.+p of death when we reached the middle of the sea? There is just as much joy in a simple wedding which has properly shown our respect for the event as the third in importance of all which will punctuate our history. We have been born; we will die;
WE NOW MARRY.
”A man finds himself seven years older, the day after his marriage,”
says Lord Bacon. ”Men should keep their eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut afterwards,” says Madame Scuderie. ”Marriage is a feast,”
says Colton, ”where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.”
”Mistress,” cries Shakspeare, ”know yourself; down on your knees, and thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love. For I must tell you friendly in your ear,--sell when you can; you are not for all markets.”
”To love early and marry late,” says Richter, ”is to hear a lark singing at dawn, and at night to eat it roasted for supper.” ”Marriages are best of dissimilar material,” says Theodore Parker.
”TO BE A MAN
in a true sense,” says Michelet, ”is, in the first place, and above all things, to have a wife.” ”It is in vain for a man to be born fortunate,”
says Dacier, ”if he be unfortunate in his marriage.” ”When it shall please G.o.d to bring thee to man's estate,” says Sir Philip Sidney, ”use great providence and circ.u.mspection in choosing thy wife. For from thence will spring all thy future good or evil; and it is an action of life, like unto a stratagem of war; wherein a man can err but once!” ”We are not very much to blame for our bad marriages,” says Ralph Waldo Emerson;
”WE LIVE AMID HALLUCINATIONS,
and this especial trap is laid to trip up our feet with, and all are tripped up, first or last. But the mighty mother nature, who had been so sly with us, as if she felt she owed us some indemnity, insinuates into the Pandora box of marriage some deep and serious benefits and some great joys.” ”It is a mistake to consider marriage merely as a scheme of happiness,” says Chapin; ”it is also a bond of service. It is the most ancient form of that social ministration which G.o.d has ordained for human beings, and which is symbolized by all the relations of nature.”
”Marriage” says Selden, ”is a desperate thing;
THE FROGS IN aeSOP
were extremely wise; they had a great mind to some water, but they would not leap into the well, because they could not get out again.” Why were they wise? They were not wise at all. I have seen frogs in wells who are more contented than they would be outside. ”Men are April when they woo, December when they wed,” says Shakspeare; but he also says that ”maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives,”