EUGENIC WEDDING.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1117, 3 July 1913, Page 4

EUGENIC WEDDING.

MARRIAGE SERVICE WRITTEN BY THE BRIDE

The fashion of composing one’s own marriage service is growing apace among young Americans of “advanced” ideas. The latest protagonist of the “new marriage” (writes a New York correspondent) is Miss Delia F. Dana, a granddaughter ol the poet Longfellow and a sister of Mr Edmund Dana, whose “ethical wedding” last year with Miss Jessie Holliday, an English portrait painter, furnished the newspapers with an abundance of amusing “copy.”

Miss Dana is to be married to Mr Robert F. Hutchinson, a Harvard undergraduate. Instead of formal vows she announces that she has arranged to say at the altar: “I, Delia F. Dana, take you, Robert F, Hutchinson, to be my lawful husband, and promise faithfully to fulfill towards you all the obligations arising out of the married state ; and I hope to be a true comrade and helpmate. As a symbol, therefore, I give you this ring.” “As I say the last words,” Miss Dana says, “I shall slip on Mr Hutchinson’s third finger of his left hand a heavy silver ring. Mr Hutchinson’s vows will be on the same lines. He will give me a gold band instead of a silver one.” The bride proclaims her belief that “the marriage calling should be studied as one would any profession, such as nursing. I have made a close study of Eugenics and am of the opinion that I am fitted for the marriage state with all its duties.” Miss Dana, who approves of race suicide under certain conditions, says: “Present day engagements are not natural. Trial marriages would end all this and permit the couple to know each other intimately, at the same time allowing them to separate if incompatibility were found.