Why Young Girls Should Not Marry.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVII, Issue 7, 9 January 1886, Page 5

Why Young Girls Should Not Marry.

A very young girl is certainly not capable of choosing a husband. She takes it for granted that men are always as she sees them in society—polite, friendly, and on their good behaviour. If she marries early in life the man -who happens to please her fancy, she learns to her sorrow that in nine cases out of ten a man at home and a man in society are widely different beings. Five years at that period of life produce a great change in opinions and feelings, We frequently come to detest at twenty-five what we admired at sixteen. We advance from the taffy-candy and peanut age to the era of gum-drops and marron glaces, and even in later years to lqse our yearnings for those dainties. Similar changes take place in the moral and spiritual nature. Why should we feel the same toward persons in after life, when we have learned to distinguish between the false and the true, the bad and good ? how is it possible for one to feel surprise any more than we should like dime novels after we have become acquainted with Dickens, Thackeray, and Shakespeare? How few, comparatively, of the sohool-girl friendships extend into later life. How lew of our companions in sooiety do we love as well after twenty years have passed. How few evon of our brothers and sisters in whom we da not see faults we could wish eradicated. Considering all this, when a couple who marry in their teens grow to love each other less as years roll by, when both grow alike, whether it be rapidly or slowly, backward or forward, there ie some hope of their ever seeing each other with tho same eyes, but when one progresses and the other retrogrades, a difference springe, up between them, and in time one looks down upon the other with c, feeling of superiority, perhaps unconfessed, but still there, while the other, unable to perceive the real cause of the trouble, grows a,t length to dislike what was once loved. And thus it happens that those who loved at 16 are inditjorent at 25, and sometimes divorced at 30. One great cause of early marriages is the pernicious habit of calling a girl who remains unmarried until 25 an '•old maid." This is done by many well-meaning but thoughtless persona, who would be sorry to think that any aot or expression o? theirs had ever caused one an hour of misery; yet this very dread of being called an "old maid" has driven more women into marriage and life-long misery than any other thing, excepting, perhaps, poverty. It is a mistake to think that single life is any lew noble than marriage, especially if the upkiii of discord is permitted to inflict its horrors upon a whole household.—" Exchange."