Why She Married Him.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 871, 9 November 1888, Page 4

Why She Married Him.

A very pretty, clever woman was asked by a man-about-town. to marry him. She had never had but a scant supply of those aids to matrimony which surround a rich girl, and had never had an offer that was so eligible from a worldly point of view. She summed the situation up, and accepted him. When asked her reasons, she said :—'That man has run his race. I believe he is a clear-minded man, and that he has 'seen enongh of bad women and gay life to appreciate a decent wife and a tempting home. He drinks more or less, I know ; but it is custom more than habit. I know he is the soul of honour in business, and I do not believe that any man who lives up to his contracts in a business way is going to break a contract with the women he loves. He loves me ; I am fond of him ; and I am going to be a wife to be envied by every mother’s girl who is trotting off done np in rose-colour with beardless boys who have all their ‘ fun ’ yet to come.’ She married him three years ago, and promised herself five things—To be non-demonstrative at breakfast ; to be bright and jolly at dinner; to be loving and babyish after dinner ; not to have a first squabble ; and never to preaoh at him, but at the things he did. Her interpretation of the preaching clause was unique. Her treatment-of the drinking question was this She didn’t say it was wicked, or horrid, or brutal. She simply laughed at men who liked to have their months taste nasty in the morning, and who didn’t know it was pleasant for a woman to kiss a nice clean man as it was for a man to kiss a sweet-mouthed woman. To this she would now and again add a wide eyed wonder that a man could find it a pleasure to make himself feel dizzy And ill just for the sake of saying idiotic things at night and feeling ill and disagreeable in the morning. She wa3 so clever and amiable about it that the man never once gave her the credit of thinking him anything but perfection. He loved her, and was proud of her, and he knew enough of the ways of this wicked world to be anxious to be the one man in it to her. The result is that the man is the most temperate man who over stopped short „

of being a prohibitionist ; that he swears by the goodness of that clever wife of his ; and that she is one of the happiest women who ever had the sense to appreciate happiness when she found it.