MARRIAGE ITS VARIETIES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 585, 16 July 1913, Page 3

MARRIAGE ITS VARIETIES.

"'Marriage, which makes twu on , is » lifelong- st; ;!gg:e to dis-'*->"'.r which is that', one." It so .11 is, perhaps, like one of the thing.-: ivo all say in moments «.«£ cxakatini:. to recall afterwards with wonder what, we could have meant by it. Let us assume pro*, isiotial'y ... that it means something. Ue may then apply the general the kind of marriage which makes two one is chiefly theoretical. .A rrcivration ago we might have sai<l nL'al. But there are so many idcr.l.-: tin .v. Take an ordinary, common plate, humdrum, happy marriage. You. will find it necessary to stretch point to assert that the two of them have become perfectly ail.! completely on?. There are divergencies, id'io <yncrasi< s. They do not think quite til-- same thing about the same subject. There is no quarrel, no collision, but they look at the business from dilkruit points. And as the same person ■ cannot lie looking from more than one point at a time, we have to infer that he and she arc not exactly one and the same. Thay preserve separate identities, separate habits of thought, separate 'impulses. They are not one—and yet not precisely two. They work well together, they use 011 all matters of importance such a unison of sentiment and thought as no two people who were merely friends or kinsfolk or master an 1 servant ever attain. There is a working agreement, a capacity for subordinating on a matter which either thinks of the first moment the hesitation or doubt of the one who feels less strongly. So far as this, and not further, the ordinary, commonplace. comfortable marriage makes two people one. It is not, of course, denied that there arc Icloser, more complete unions, in which, so far as mortal man can tell, the two individualities have been fused into on'-, something greater or less—than either. But these arc not in the majority. These are rare. At all events they do not, rare or otherwise, come under this dictum about "a lifelong struggle to discover which is'the one." But then we might very .wc-11 go 011 to argue that such a description describes n:- happy marriage. It describes something real, though. Who anu nus has 'not met nian'lages in which the object of each partner is to absorb'the other, and use the other solely to ! carry out private ambitions? These unions, no houbt, arc the exception. But any account of marriage as an institution has to be full of exceptions. Yet another variety of marriage is indicated by our epigram. There are a good many quite comfortable conjugal partnerships, in which one partner is supremely confident of being the managing director, while the fortunes of the firm are really controlled by the other. There is in a sense "a lifelong struggle to discover which" of the two is the one, but it is chiefly an unconscious struggle, and very often both partners are equally unaware of which is the master spirit. Nor would they be in the least better off if they knew. Fortunately, if you toid them neither would believe.— "Telegraph."