ON GETTING MARRIED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 8986, 25 February 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

ON GETTING MARRIED.

A MAX once remarked in my hearing that | it was the nicest women who were most likely to be disappointed in marriage. A discouraging speech, certainly; and yet when we look round us at the best of our sex, and observe their immense capacity for idealising, I do not think anyone will deny the truth of those words. A girl who has no dreams, no power of calling up a vision of a nobler and sweeter life, is not exactly the girl from whom we expect much good, nor no we feel any deep interest in her concerns. But most girls are waiting for the coming of that prince who is to rule over their world ; and while they wait their hearts are busily weaving the royal robe that he is to wear. It is a beautiful robe enough, made out of thousands of tender fancies ; the pity is that it so often hides the real man from their gaze. Of course there comes the inevitable process of stripping off the veil —the disenchantment which makes life seem so bare and hard to an eager soul. The girl has expected too much, and the man is angered by her disappointment. " I did not want you to make a pod of me," he says, not untruthfully. " I wanted you to give a sense of comfort to my life, and make me a home. There is no true home without a woman. Why can't you be converted with the stream that flows on without tiny foaming and fuss ? Didn't you know that the froth and bubbles would pass away after a while ? Be satisfied with my love for you, and take me as I am, dear, and make the best of me." And she is a wise woman if she does take him as he is, and make the best of him. She is wiser still if she does not part with the ideal of her girlhood, but believes that it can be found in the prose of life as well as in the poetry. Never refuse happiness because it is discovered in the casket of lead instead of the casket of gold. One reason for the vague discontent which so often haunts the young wife is her ignorance of the moods of men. It is not likely that a fresh, unworldly girl has had many opportunities of studying the ways of the other sex. Her husband's first fit of the blues is sure to be a sore trouble and puzzle to her. A woman is not good at discovering causes, precisely because her habit of thought is introspective. She worries herself to find a reason for his depression, and hunts for it in the inner life instead of in the outer life.

Was it something'said, Something done, Vexed him '! Was it touch of hand, Turn of head. No, little self-torturer, it was none of these things. It was just something that happened out-of-doors, apart from your home sphere altogether. It is Smith who has upset him, or it is Jones again—-Jones with his aggravating supercilious airs, laying down the lav/, and proving that everybody else is wrong. A man must be as meek as Moses and as pat ient as Job to be proof against the exasperating ways of Jones. By-and-bye, if you give him time, and do not bother him, your husband will tell you the cause of his gloom of his own accord, always supposing that there is a cause. Only do not question him, for a man hates being questioned. It is not wonderful that a man who goes out daily to work in a noisy, bustling world should want soothing when he comes home. He gives and receives hard knocks; ho is bruised and sore with pushing his way through a struggling crowd. From all this a woman is guarded carefully ; within doors no temptations nor offences may come, unless she herself invites them to enter. Let her beware that she docs keep her door shut against dangerous intruders— visitants that present themselves not only in flesh and blood, but in a form which is not material. These enemies are many, and the deadliest of them may seem as "airy nothings sudden desires for a freer life and a wider sphere; a weariness of the prosaic surroundings; a vision of some brilliant circle where the lowly little wife might have been the society queen. It is always a perilous thing to encourage the might-have-beens ; they are a race of mischievous spirits, bent on spoiling our peace. They make us disgusted with the work that our hands have found to do, by suggesting ideas of some grander performance. They take the sweetness out of our joys, and sour tempers unawares. No wonder that he husband finds a cloudy face by the fireside when these malevolent spirits have been his wife's companions in his absence. The first year of a girl's wedded life is oft-an the saddest and loneliest that she is destined to know. The husband goes out to his daily calling, and she sits alone in a house uneheered its yet by baby voices. Can you marvel that she recalls the past, and thinks of the old home that she has left for ever? The long-tried mother's love; the well-tested father's care ; the brothers' and sisters' familiar affection— this is given up for the sake of a love untried and new. Is she as necessary to him now as she was to them once? Would he miss her from his life as they have missed her from theirs ? She does not sway his will and his tastes as much as she expected to do. All women, even the meekest, have a secret desire for power, and they are generally disappointed to find that their influence is not unlimited. Men (if one may dare to say so !) are a monotonous set of beings, whose doings may be predicted with tolerable accuracy ; but you may as well try to fortell the tints of to-morrow evening's clouds as the future moods of a woman, "it is this glorious uncertainty of nature which makes her at once so charming and so provoking. She is a puzzle; and it is not surprising that men sometimes get tired of trying to fit .ill the dainty little pieces into their right places, and give her up in despair. But our nice girl (even when the first chill of disenchantment is on her spirit) will never entirely lose faith in her old dream of married life. She may realise, bitterly enough, that love has only one spring-tide, and that nothing can restore the dew and perfume of its blossom-time ; but she will take heart in thinking of the fruit that comes after patient waiting. A true home is not made in a few months ; people do not know each other's sonls after living together for a week or two. They see each other at first " through a glass darkly," and it is well t if that glass be not darkened still more by the breath of their own unworthy suspicions. The charity that " hopeth all things, believeth all things," is seldom more needed than in the early days of wedlock. A woman desires evidences of love long after a man has ceased to think them necessary. He takes an interest in the round world, and all that therein is ; and she, alas ! is only interested in him. And so she too often calls his satisfaction indifferent, and is half ready to quarrel with the peace that is born of content. But the good wife will check he reproach that rises to her lips, and stifle the craving, and avoid the smallest beginning of strife. A little tact, a great deal of self-control, and a desire to do right, will lead the wife safely over that disenchanted ground which all married women must tread. She will leave her girlhood there, aye, and a folly or two perhaps ; but faith and hope will go with her to the end of the journey. And as mile after mile is passed, and the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, she will cease to regret the illusions of her youth.—By Sarah Doudney, in The Quiver.