KEEPING CUPID'S BOOKS

Cromwell Argus, Volume L, Issue 2648, 17 November 1919, Page 7

KEEPING CUPID'S BOOKS

MARRIAGE FACTS AND FIGURES. Out of every score of babies horn in the British Isles, only nine ever find their was to the altar. The remaining eleven die young or unwed. Out of every hundred persons now living in England, sixty are single, thirty arc married, and five arc widowed. When a British bride and bridegroom plight their troth to each other, they may reasonably expect to enjoy twenty-sevc<i years of wedded happiness, or otherwise ; for this is the average duration, of wedded life in the United Kingdom. In France, it is interesting to note, the period is a year less ; .ami in Russia three years longer—in normal times. For those who wish to marry, London is the happiest hunting-ground; for it enjoys the highest marriagerate. For those who cannot live in London, the following counties can be recommended —Glamorgan, Nottingham, Warwick, Durham, East Yorkshire, and Lancashire ; for there is close rivalry between them for the top places in the marriage-roster. Those who prefer to keep untouched hearts should make their homes in Surrey, Middlesex, and Cumberland, or in Rutlandshire, which is an ideal county for would-be spinsters and bachelors.

In the United Kingdom, in an average year, 3-10,000 bridegrooms put wedding-rings on the fingers of 340, a 000 brides. So many, in fact, are these nuptial couples that, if they were marshalled into one oridal procession, at intervals of a yard between .successive pairs, the first bride and her swain would be entering Leeds while the last couple were emerging from St. George's church, Hanover Square. Of every 1,000 of these bridal couples, approximately GOO are made one by the Church of England, IGO in registrars' offices, 180 in Noncanformist churches, and forty in Roman Catholic churches. The marriages of Quakers are only three in 10,000 ; and of Jews, five in every 1,000. The wedding-ring which each of the 310,000 brides wears on her linger weighs but a. few pennyweights. And yet so many are they that a year's rings would contain 7,0851b. of pure gold—a weight sufficient to tax the strength of thirty powerful men, and to raise half-a-hundred brides of average avoirdupois into the air.

Private Jibson's wife coaxed Jib- ' son to send word of bis whereabouts ! in Flanders from time to time, despite the sensor. Jibson proceeded to ' do so by placing dots under certain I letters in his epistle, which, when J snelt out, formed a word. Once he made his dots too large, and the censor rubbed them out and i put some of his own. When Mrs. j Ji!.»son deciphered her message this I is what it spelt : C-c-n-s-o-r-e-d.