FOOLISH MARRIAGES. BRUSSELS SPROUTS

Otago Witness, Issue 2569, 10 June 1903, Page 67

FOOLISH MARRIAGES.

BRUSSELS SPROUTS

"Look before you leap" is a proverb specially applicable to matrimony. There is no contract that people enter into so blindly as that of marriage, no knot so rashly tied as the nuptial knot, and none fo iiard to untie. Marriage is a contract for life. Everybody knows it. but few take heed of it. A woman will buy a bonnet that she expects to keep only a "ew months, and will take pains to see that ■it is a good bonnet, and that it suits her ; but she will take a partner for 'ife without assuring herselt that he is a .jood man, or even that he is the kind of mm likely to make her happy. n these days a woman marries of her '•. a free will. If she has any doubt of a . -m she may say "No," and be done th him. It rests with herself. len are deceitful and false, but !*ot so deceitful and false as to entirely deceive women when women have

their eyes open. The girls who make bad matches are generally to blame for their own recklessness. Unhappy marriages are the result of bad matches. A few of the girls who make bad matches may be given here : — The girls who marry men to reform them ; the girls who make friends of men to -whom they have never been introduced ; the girls who marry men old enough to be their fathers, and the women who marry men young enough to be their sons ; the girls who marry men young enough to be their sons ;• the girls who marry against their parents' wishes ; those who marry out of spite ; the girls who many anyone for fear of becoming old maids ; and the girls who become infatuated with handsome faces, and recklessly marry the owners. Probably more bad matches are made in the summer holiday season than at any other time. At the seaside young guls meet men without introduction, and a friendship springs up betwen tfiem. Even girls who are careful of their friendships at home become reckless in this, ■nay at the seaside. The girls foolishly allow these friendships to continue when the holidays are over, without ever attempting to discover who and what are the friends and relatives of these casual acquaintances. They may be honest, respectable men, but they frequently prove to be arrant flirts, or men already engaged, or even inairied. It is not to be denied that some marriages resulting from these friendships are happy ones, but most of them are not. A girl has a perfect right to know whom she is marrying. She has a light to see the relatives of a man who wis,hev to mmr her ; she has a right to kno'v hi.w he rr ;tK s his living, and what his prospects are ; she has a right to inquire into his past, and to know everything about him. An honest man's charact-er will bear investigation. — English paper.