THE SECRET OF MARRIAGE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 28, 11 July 1891, Page 151

THE SECRET OF MARRIAGE.

HALL I tell you how to get married ? Aye, that I will, with pleasure. And, what is 'll -yIK f ar n,ore inipoitant in this age of rapid transportation, I will tell you how to stay married, too. Now. then, in the first place, to begin at the beginning, read this -J/] ililmjb from the second chapter of the Book of a My/ 11 ixZr book s: — ‘And the Lord took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it.’ So, you see, man was put to work. He was put to work, and put to woik at once, even before woman was made. He was put in the ‘ Garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep But w hat is be doing to-day ’ He is not dressing or keeping the Garden of Eden or any other garden if he can help it. If he can only manage ‘to dress ’ himself ami *to keep himself, by hook or by crook, by the practice of the law or the preaching of the Gospel, by marrying almost any woman in the world except his grandmother, only so that she has money * to dress ’ him and ‘to keep ’ him, why, ‘ Barkis is willin’.’ I have, or rather I had, two friends—one a sweet young girl, who kept house for her invalid brother, a clerk in a bank ; the other friend was a son of the president of this

same bank. Of course nearly every girl wanted to marry this young man—not for himself, not for anything lie had done or won in the battle of life, but for his father’s money. And he, for a wonder, had sense enough to know it. I say for a wonder ; for all men—and women, too, as to that—are ready to ascribe all admiration to their own merit.

And yet this one sweet girl of whom I spoke did not flatter or flutter around the young man with the big fortune at all. She avoided him when her biother brought him to the hotel where they lived, when her work required her attention. And when required to speak she was careful to put as much truth in as few words as possible. Ah, me 1 ah me ! If women only would, if women only could be honest and truthful with men, what marriages, what happy marriages we might have right along ! But women take men for geese and men take women for fools, and so the whole thing is a sham and a lie even up to the very altar that stands in the centre of God's house. One evening, as the young banker, entered the open parlour of the pretty girl, he saw a tent through the halfclosed curtains of the rear room. She was leaning over a map and some diawings on the table. ‘ Ah 1 This is our little secret : but perhaps brother has told you ’ He is not strong, you know, and now, at last, he has saved money enough, together with what I have saved by typewriting and teaching, to buy five acres of orange land, and we are off for the country to plough and to plant all through his vacation for Christmas. Yes, that’s the tent. And here, you see, is the map of the grounds where we will pitch it. I will stay tbeie ami run the ranch, while he makes a few more dollars here to get it well started.’ The young man came to me with the whole storynext day and wanted me to advise him ; and when

I refused to advise him he said he would give me £1 if I would kick him half way down the hill. And when I refused to kick him he cried out, ‘ Here I have l>een lying to that girl ; lying and lying, loafing and lying right along all the time, and she hard at work with her honest little hands trying to help her broken down brother. S'es, I lied to the other girls, too: lied to them all. But then they lied to me. They loafed ami lied and I lied and loafed in leturn. And so all that was even. But here this honest anil industrious one in the lot has given me truth for falsehood. And now I'm going to marry her if I possibly can get her.’ Well, he married her, after liatd work ami very liaid training in telling the truth ; and now, the orange ranch—five hundred acres instead of five—is run by three of them. No, there are four of them—l forgot the baby. And now, my little fair maiden, let me tell you this — there are more good men looking for tiuth than for money. In fact, no really good ami courageous man is looking for money in the matter of marriage. What an honest man wants is an honest woman. That is what he wants and that is all she wants. Let an honest man meet an honest woman, and, all other things being equally propitious, my word for it, he will marry her. And ham! in hand those two honest souls will go on gladly together down to the doois of death. Truth is fortune enough for any two. Ami now, one word to you, my briefless young lawyer—you who turned your back in the battle of life, you who left the good old farm where God first set you down in the fight, you who tied from your old schoolmates and took refuge in the town to live by your wits ; well, sir, you want to marry

that rich old man’s girl, do you ? I will tell you howto do it, and I take out my fee in the satisfaction of having done a bad man a good turn. Go to work. No, don’t join a baseball club nor straddle a pair of steel wheels. Goto work.

How many handsome and learned young clergyman there are treading this same soft path in a cat and mouse scheme to catch another man’s money. But these are less bad, less deliberately burglarious than the young lawyers by a great deal, for they teach and preach peace, while the others onlystir up strife and perpetuate enmities. But the load to triumph in the matter of marriage is the same. Go to the heart ; go with truth in clean hands. When I was living in my cabin at Washington, writing when I could and helping to plant trees when 1 could round about the city, my little girl, then five years old, came to spend a month or so with me, and she, too, wanted to plant a tree. So she begged five cents of me and went and bought a leafless little tree. And while I was busy at work in the cabin, my little gill took her leafless little tree out behind the house, and by long and hard work she dug a hole in the dirt with her little dimpled baby hands, ami planted it there all by herself. Then she came gleefully and led me out to see. And lo ! God bless her ! she had got it upside down !

lint I didn't care for that. The spirit was there; the effort was there : the sense and obligation of t< il it; the garden. And if I caught her up and kissed her and cried, it was because I couldn't help it. Yes, my young friends, first comes toil. Then the candour and the truth, and the tiuth and the candour that come of toil. These things go to the heart. This is the secret of marrrage. Jo.vqt IN MiI.I.ER.