THE ROMANTIC GIRL AND MATRIMONY.

Evening Post, Volume LXVI, Issue 16, 18 July 1903, Page 10

THE ROMANTIC GIRL AND MATRIMONY.

i <■ For a woman of a romantic turn of mind there is not one year of happiness, much, less of bliss, in matrimony. Marriages would not last a week if just because the man yawned the woman wanted to run awaj r . No man worth marrying is romantic. For that matter, no man who .is really a man is romantic. Only a fop or a fool is. Marriage is doomed to be a ghastly failure unless both husband and wife are sensible and practical persons, whose love for each other^ is lined with a strong, thick coating of devotion and friendship, so that when the cloth begins to wear out the lining may be there ready to protect and shelter them. It is only the strong and lasting qualities that are guarantees of happiness in matrimonial life. A man may fall in love with a woman on account of her beauty ; but it is not her beauty, even if it were equal to that of Venus, which would keep him in love with her. It might help, but alone it will not do it. 'What will, or, at any rate, may succeed in doing it are her amiability, her cheerfulness, her good companionship, her* toleration, her appreciation of her husband's character, and of his talents, he* devotion to him in times of sickness or trouble. When the girls are romantic they expect husbands to remadn lovers for ever and ever. But it is not in man's nature to remain a lover. He may be for a year, he may be for ten years ; but what is most 'provoking about love in matrimony is. that the man is always going slower and slower toward a dead stop,' whereas the woman is "coaling" and getting steam up. The romantic girl has her Ruy Bias aud Petrarca, and the mandolin and the moonlight, and love philtres all mixed up in an intoxicating draught. If she marries an English country squire or a Scotch laird her illusions .will soon be shatt<-red, as she will never know any romantic delights. But if she marries a man of an artistic temperament who will cake her near to heaven, she will come down with a fearful crash when the journey is over and the balloon bursts, unless she is sensible and manages to save herself by using the parachute of friendship, lasting and fast friendship, which will allow her to come down easily, comfortably, and even graceully. The married woman who is clever takes care that her husband is never bored in his house. Only a selfish woman wants to shut up a man all alone with her in a kind of attitude of perpetual adoration of herself. She calls that affection. I call it egotism. Some men, "very few, submit to this sort of demand, and go about held tight in a leash, like unslipped pointers , bul the majority bolt, as a famous woman, Ouida, tejls us that she would if Bhe were one of them. Some women, the stupidest of all, have met the "cooling down" of their husbands with recriminations, reprimands, scenes «'f jealousy, and tears. Of course, in such cases, if there was a particle of love, I mean of passionate love, left in the m,nn, it instantly extinguished it. Love is not obtained for the asking, much less is it revived by scoldings and reproaches. Marriages have been known to*be happy whioh began with mere sympathy that became live and even turned into passion ; but no marriage has ever been known to be tolerable which began with passion. Matrimony is like a play ; the* interest must go on increasing from a sober bec'nnins; to a climax.-r-Max O'Rell.