The Girl Who Marries “to Have a Good Time.”

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVIII, Issue XI, 15 March 1902, Page 523

The Girl Who Marries “to Have a Good Time.”

MARRIAGE ISN’T A READY-MADE PARADISE, AS SHE VERY' SOON FINDS OUT.

Not long since a girl was showing with much pride and pleasure her

wedding-presents to an older woman friend.

The friend said something about the conveniences and prettinesses that seemed to be ready in lavish measure for the new home, and how interesting and delightful it would be to keep the house homelike. The girl looked at her with wideopened eyes of distaste and amazement. “Oh, ncjbody need suppose I’m going to bother over things of that sort!” she said frankly. “I’m not going to spend my days over housekeeping, I’m not marrying to do my duty, and dull things like that. I’m marrying to have a good time!” Now, most girls would not, perhaps, express themselves with the same brutal candour, but many of them have much the same idea in their secret hearts. Marrying to have a good time —to hold the keys of that paradise that books and foolish talk and their own fancy have combined to assure them is to be found in marriage! Poor deluded girls! Marriage, like the rest of life, may be paradise or the other thing, as one chooses to make it. But most, of the making rests with ourselves. There is no ready-made paradise in niarriage, or out of it. i girl fancies that from the moment the wedding-ring is on her fin-

ger all cares and troubles and disagreeables cease. Sue imagines she steps over the threshold, when she leavers the church, in veil and orange-blossoms, of an ideal palace of delights. Pe< r soul! She goes on living just the same life of every day. Only she has joined that life to another which can make hers happy or wretched, just in the same degree of power as she has on her part. Marrying to have a good time! If that is her only reason for wifehood she had better have retained her spiust erhood. Certainly, it would Lave held far more probabilities ol her desires being satisfied than the lot into which she has entered. If she thinks she will find freedom from care in marriage she makes a fatal mistake. Marriage doubles cares and responsibilities for the most part. It entails duties that send “good times” pretty much into the background, and leave little thought or place for them. When a woman has a house to care for, and a husband to claim her time and attention, she is no longer free to spend her days as she likes. Hockey and golf must take a very subordinate position. Dances are no longer able to be the chief interest of her nightsWhen children come, she is fortunate if she has any leisure moments at all. If she cares for them, and desires to study their welfare, she must sacrifice to them most of the time that went in amusement and idleness before. Marrying to have a good time ! What an ideal of the state that is called holy! What a poor and pitiful end to what ought to be the opening of a finer and more perfect life! How dull that good time will be-

gin to seem to her after a year or two of it, even if she succeeds in getting a taste of it at first! How she will be bored in her effort to gc on amusing herself! How she will find all the old amusements pale and grow tame! Marrying to nave a good time! She will wonuer how she could have had the folly to give up for that fallacious hope her girl’s liberty and ease and absence of care and responsibility. There is no life after all so simple to live as that of the unmarried girl at home. What were the qualifications of the husband she has chosen to be her companion and friend through life.’ Either thr.t he had money to give her the life of pleasure she desired, or that he was a pleasant playmate. He had played hockey with her, and cycled farther than any other youth of her acquaintance, and their steps suited each other to perfection in a ballroom. Ueasons for choosing the companion of an idle hour, perhaps. Reasons for taking a helpmate and stay to walk through life with? The question is a mockery. What is going to happen to them both in the long, long vista of dull and troubled ano anxious days? Those days come to every married life. Tn many thev by far predominate. What will be the good of a jolly companion tnen? Will a trained eye and hand in hockey help to smooth the lines of care from one’“ forehead, or a skill in waltzing mak° ill"os« fi ie easier to bear? Does one turn for help and strengthening and comfort to the one who can break other cycling records or sail a boat? Which of us know the little trivial opern called “Da Cigale”? The insect

with the gauzy rainbow wings that lives iu the sun. lu that gleaming suushiue and warmth it dauces and makes merry; it fears neither sorrow uor care; it scoffs at any end to its joys. But then comes a change •h the weather—the sun goes in under black clouds, and the bitter blast of winter comes. The Howers droop blackened and dead with the breath of the frost, the storms of. rain beat down the sheltering leaves, and what becomes of the poor cigale? Out in the darkness and the pitiless chill, and the nipping cold, draggled and torn and broken, its beauty washed out, and its spirits dead. It finds no shelter—no home for the evil days—for it scorned to make it when the sun was shining, and now it is 100 late. That is the fate of the girl who marries for the good time marriage is going to bring. Dike the eigale, she is out in the storm and the darkness, and she has no cover to creep under, and hide her head.