THE MARRIAGE MARKET.

Otago Witness, Issue 3899, 4 December 1928, Page 71

THE MARRIAGE MARKET.

Somehow’ weddings always seem more Bewonable in summer than at any other time of the year. Though it is hard to find a house at any’ time, there is perhaps a better chance of nesting in summer. The long evenings give chances of distempering and polishing and seeing the furniture into place—• a slow’ process with many’ interludes. The holidays, too, come along, and there is leisure for the marriage and a long honeymoon.

young people, envious of bride and Now weddings are in the air. Other groom, become engaged, for one wedding they say makes another.. The older generation looks on for the most part sympathetic—or at least bowing to the inevitable. There are the parents of big families who are always delighted with the in-laws presented to them by their sons and daughters; and there arc the not-easily-satisfied of a ewe lamb. Sentimental old ladies are as pleased as Cupid with the “ pretty dears ” who go a-ccurting; cynical old gentlemen are apt to jeer and to suggest that the camouflage of love will not long the realities of married life. It would be very depressing—if they could get anvbodv to listen to them.

“ The bloom may’ be rubbed off every other peach,” says the faithful lover, “ but it will remain on mine for ever,” and there is more than a chance that he is right. As I read the other day, “ Love matches lose their first easy gloss after three or four years, but when the gloss is gone they show whether or not gold is underneath.” It often is ?c, though the metaphor is a trifle mixed! In the early stages no one can say what will be found underneath, because so much depends on what the partners are looking for, on their needs and their individual temperaments. That is why criticism of any love affair is bound to bo rather futile. The fondest of father? may’ be making a mistake if he dubs the penniless Brown as a fortune-hunter; the most devoted mother may fail to realise (and small blame to her!) that the fluffy, foolish little thing her boy has chosen will prove, right up to his golden wedding day, the ideal peg on which to hang his devotion. For surely’ so many things are needed —comradeship or temperamental affinity, character, patience, good sense, a little money—and lov c to crown them all. _ Yet in the summer men and women gaily mate without worrying about accidents or even essentials —and the queer thing is that the marriage lottery is after all, one in which the prizes, though less conspicuous, are surely far more numerous than the blanks of which wc hear so much. —Norah Macleod, in an exchange.