(From the New Zealand Family Friend.)

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 318, 21 November 1888, Page 3

( From the New Zealand Family Friend.)

3 marriage a failure ? Well ! if the correct definition of "marriage is that found in the marriage service — that it was ordained for the 'mutual society, help, and comfort,' that the one ought to have of the other both in prosperity and adversity, then I am. sadly afraid, judging by the ; quarrelling, the bickering, the unhappy divisions among many married friends aim _ acquaintances, and, above all, the miserable ' records of our national disgrace, the Divorce Courts, in nine cases out of ten one would be inclined fco«say, most unhesitatingly, ' Yes, a most deplorable failure. ' I notice that the woman who speaks kindest of her husband is— the widow. Still, the lea&t a woman can do after burying her husband is to speak well of him ; but I am sceptical in this instauce it is too often a case of Mr Graves' Sainteji .Maria. Possibly there are some people, not expecting too much on either side, who jog along fairly well. Why on earth don't married people endeavour to keep their vows made at the altar to take each other ' for better for worse,' and let the man, who is, as he will tell you, the superior in mind and intellect, and bodily strength— let him use a little move of the two first, and a little less of the last towards the weaker vessel, and let his wife benefit by his superiority: but, forsooth, these superior beinsrs adopt a tone that would cause what is called hysterics — an inclination to laugh, were it not that you want to cr~. Why ! only the other day I

heard 1 a si.vfoofc man exclaim, sentimentally, to his much-snubbed wife and daughters, ' If you would only deal gently with me you would find" me as docile as a child.' A nice enough speech for a pretty not-over-wise young woman, but not fiom a great strong man T "Again, women say, apologetically, 'Ah ! but men don't love as women do (that they don't), they tequire to be managed.' Good beav.ens ! iohy can't a, man assert his manhood, not as a noble Duke once did, by kicking his \\ ife in the stomach ? Women can dispense with that kind of attention ; but why, in the name of all that is good, can't a, 'man show hi* superiority in such a way as to make a woman look up to him and respect hini '! There is a'contemptible proverb that the more a woman is beaten the better she is ; don't believe it. As it ia only a very debased woman who could take pride in ruling her husband by a process known as henpecking, so it is a very mean man indeed who could bear to rule his wife by cowing her, or by other than love and kindness. How awfully revolting is the sight of a husband and father strutting among his too often terrified women folk like Sir Oracle who,

when he opens his lips , no dog (or woman) may bark. How often, 'too, do you see a husband who ought to give * mutual society, help, and comfort,' a mere brulc and bully at "borne — hub abroad? Oh! so nice, t>o charming, such a pleasant fellow ! But is nob much of the failure in husbands due to their early training ? Are not they taught from their very cradle to be selfish, to find themselves the first consideration '{ Say a man has a family ot five daughters and one son ; the girls are set aside ; they don't get educated (beyond, ot course, the smattering of superficial knowledge supposed quite enough for girls) ; they are not trained for a profession ;, no dot is put away . or ever thought of beings'pufe away, in case of their marrying, or, failing marriage, as a provision for their single old^ age. If the parent troubles himself" at all about the matter he is generally, in cases ot daughters exceedingly pious and full of faith, — ' The Lord will provide,' says he, and dropß the matter. Not so with the sons. From their cradle they are an object o£ interest and speculation ; money is saved for their education ; extra money is saved . for their -pocket-money, so that they -may not, you ktfow, be less well off than their companions, too often sons of richer men ;■ and, sister Mary-or- sister Julia must not feel aggrieved '"if 'she cannot have a new dress, or visit a 1 friend, or have singing lessons, . because father can't afford to indulge the daughter and spend*all on thefson at the same time. So from the cradle the girl practises self-

abnegation, and tho boy learns thab all is lor him, and the only use of girl<* is to minister to his especial comfort during the holidays. Later still, when young men, they too often hear woman spitefully rending in pieces her fellow-woman, showing 1 up all her little foibles and weaknesses, and saying things that, ior ill-nature, only woman <\m say of a woman ; and so he imbibe* a. wrong- opinion of the sex, and accnutoma himself to speak slightingly and disrespectfully in clubs and elsewhere of women, whom he should respect for his mother's and sisters' sakes ; and this is his training to become a husband whom a good woman is to love and to honour and to obey. Ah ! if men only knew it, a true woman asks no higher, happier lifo than to love, honour, and obey her husband if he will kb her. It is perfectly possible to love, aye, and to continue to love, through all his cruelty and unkindness and neglect and brutality, a bad husband ; but, mercy on me, how to obey when it is impossible to do so consistent with one's feeling of whab is right and true, or to honour where no honour is due! How many men are there in the United Kingdom truly worthy of honour in the domestic life ? Is there one to tho hundred? Is an Englishman ever honourable unless it is his interest to be so or he is compelled by the Law ? A woman loves to look np bo and obey and lean on a \ manly man, stronger and wiser than horself, '. and asks no other happine&s than living for him and his children. Too often matrimonial failure may be ; traced bo the fact that courtesy was bid farewell to on the threshold of the bridal i home. If men would carry a little, ever so . little, of the chivaliy of the lover, or women ; the smallest bit of the pretty fascinations of ihejiaucte into their married life, how much > pleasanter home would be. Why should husband and wife be less courioous to each < other than they Are compelled to be to their ; very servants ? Says a devoted lover, tripping over his lady-love's feet one day previous to marriage, 'O, ray darling, have I hurt your , tootsie- j wootsies ? ' The same gentleman having after marriage committed the same awk wardness, turns savagely round with, ' Good Heavens, woman, can'b you keep your d d hoofs out of the way ?' That's it ; { , ' tootsie- wootsies ' before marriage, ' d d hoofs ' after marriage. ' There's no one half so pretty as you, my darling, 1 said a millionaire to the lady of his choice : ' and you have such a pretty lisp.' Six months later the husband jerks out, testily, ' I can't catch a word you say with that impediment.' ! There again. ' Lisp ' before marriage burns into an impediment after marriage. Poor, unlucky woman • A man shuts his j eyes and dreams of impossible perfection, then opening his eyes and seeing only ordinary virtues, vents his spleen by kicking her. How indignant I feel with men at times. INo man is too impure, too debased, too sensual, too immoral, too degraded for Society ; he is received (provided he is rich or has a title) everywhere with open arms — aye, and by the same arms as have just pushed over the precipice the woman who has the suspicion of a whisper against her. And this old roue, after living his bestial life and drunk to the dregs of depravity, | turns round and says : ' I would marry ; I i will none but a young girl, an innocent l girl, a pure girl.' And, worse luck, if he is eligible, as the world calls eligible, all the mammas with marriageable daughters hasten to throw their spotless girls into the polluted creature's arms. Now a word for the girls. Whab kind of wives go to make up the whole ? Tbeie are slovenly wives>, careless wive?, discontented , wives, drunken wives, naeging wives (and from that last I would excuse any man who threw himself into the nearest pond to escape her) ; and the whole thing is brae, d back to their upbi'inging, trusting that Providence — that ready excuse for your lazy, thriftless, shiftless humanity, when bhey themselves have no mind bo do their own work — willtakecareofbhem, and so they grow ud without any definite training. With their libtleLatin and less Greek, having no fortune at the death of their improvident parent, and not sufficiently trained in any one point to earn a living, they naturally turn bo marriage for a home, and food, and clothe?. And with such high mobives for a girl unibing herself for life to one man, cati it be wondered at that the result is nob quibe satisfactory ? And who is to blame for bhis ? Why, man. There is a saying, ' A woman is ab bhe bottom of everything.' All nonsense. The Devil tempted Eve. The Devil is masculine, therefore . . . Why do women make such terrible efforts to be married ? Why, to save themselves from the reproach of men. In these days a woman can't afford to stop and weigh the merits of the man. who proposes to her as to whether he is one she can love, and honour, and obey, and for whom she considers it no sacrifice to give up body, soul, and friends to devote herself to him and his children, to push him on in the world whose ambition — and all women are ambibious — is satisried in him, co itent to shine in his reflected light, for unless a man is thoroughly vitiated by wealth, high living, and toadies or parasites, a good woman can always maintain an influence, and in nine cases out of ten a successful man owes his success to his wife. No ' no ! .She has no bime for the*e reflections. While she pauses, another accep's him, and she loses her chance of escaping the deadliest reproach levelled at her by tongues of men viz., of being an ' old maid.' To avoid this terrible sbigma a girl moves earth, air, and water to get^'married, and revenges herself on the man who utters the sneer by marrying him bo escape it, and serve him right. Often have 1 paid to a man, 'I& not Miss So-and-So very nice ?' : Reply : ' Oh, she's passee.' Or perhaps : I i ' Miss So-and-So ! Pooh! She's thirty.' ! Why, in my own case, did nob that eminent ■ counsel, Mr Winslow, Q.C., M.P. (I think . that's right— the,y are all Q.C., M.P.'s) in an appeal case before bhe Masber of bhe • Rolls, af ber racking his brains in vain for i gome damaging statement against me, , brighten visibly on being prompted by his • instructing solicitor, and exclaim : 'But, [ My Lord, she's a woman of forts 1 / and t nothing to look at ?' , Surely Lord Esher » should have given him judgment after that. Another reason for marriage being a failure is the Divorce Court, an institution ■ for the promotion of legal prostitution ; for

the woman who leaves one man and in that man's lifetime livos with another man $q his , wife is as surely a prostitute, though' the" way has been 'paved by the decree 1 ' nisi, followed, by the deoree absolute, as tho unfortunate being, who parades the street, "without, her excuso, for the latter has possibly been driven there by force of circumstances, and, be sure, detained there by her own sex, for, Heaven help us, women are cruel to each other. Leb a girl walking lightly over the pathway of lifo trip ever .so slightly, the woman nearest her puts forth her dainty arms and flings her down before shehas time to regain her moral equilibrium; then she sends and calls all her neighbours together (female, of course), saying, Rejoice With me, a sister lias fallen, mid they rejoice thereat exceedingly. Oh ! will women never learn to practice towards women the ' charity that fchinketh no evil,' the ' charity that eovereth a multitude of sins ?' Unfortunately,- most unfortunately, this institution is a very popular one with all grades of societj. Its sayings and doing* are chronicled by high and low, arid the papers crowd aside monotonously respect , able matter to leave larger space for the fullest details, and we see one, two, three columns of this fashionably mprning paper given up to describe in bho'. minutest and* most graphic manner what John Jeamcs saw when he carried the tea'into my lady's boudoir, and whtlt Miss Abigail discoveied by a lengthened application of her eye to the keyhole, and trow the jury proceeded \\ ilh becoming gravity in a body to view the keyhole-through which Abigail looked,, and to gazo on the sofa on which the pair ! weie sitting when John Jeames brought in j the trny, and the posters proclaim, ' Great Divorce Case. Sensational Disclosures,' and what a rush is made tor the papers, and the proprietors are in clover, and tho paper is openly read by men in their clubs, and secretly perused by ladies in their boudoirs, and sutieptitiously devoured by young ladies in then bedrooms, and laughed over in the servants' hall, and so the mind allowing itself to dwell on subjects impure, immoral, sensual, become^ in time itself impure, immoral, sensual. Returning to London after a couple of months' absence, I hastened to buy a paper at Dover. I opened it at random and read as follows : — ' D case continued.' 'The third clay of these proceedings oxcitod as great interest as on the two previous days, crowds assembled outside the Courts to see the parties as they came out.' So people not in hiffh life, who would never luiao been heard of if they had lived morally and respectably, find themselves Jamom. A premium to \ iee — nothing is so successful as success. Lot a married woman run off wioh a man, and he neglects to mairy her, thtn, indeed, is she scouted and flouted, and women draw their skirts aside, feaiing, if she show any leniency, the world may seek for thp cause of it, and rind out that little secret in her own past life that she would fain have kept concealed, and, ttntre uou^, that is why so many women hasten to throw the first stone at the sinner. But, on the other hand, let a woman run away from the man whom she swore before the Almighty to have till ' Death us do part ' (and death alone frees, in epite of the Divorce Court), and let her desert her children given her to train for weal or woe and get married to a Cokoxkt— and no clergyman objects to perform the ceremony if it is a title. Ah ! there is all tho difference. Society forgives an indiscretion when it ends in pos&essing a coronet, and she becomes a leadei of society. Or let a woman bemanied in the orthodox mannei, in the regulation diess, with the proper number of bridesmaids at Hanover ISquaie, > and then publish the sequel to her marriage by appearing in the Divorce Cou its with a tail of co-respondents, and retain tho most ' eminent counsel, who will make witty speeches and pocket 0! such hea> y fees ; and provided the details are sufficiently disgusting and filthy, translated by the ! papers by the one word— -Sensationa* then her position is secured far more effectually than a presentation at> tho May Drawingroom, or an invitation to the State Ball, and her sayings and hei doings, and her dress and her bon moth, or the bon mots | manufactured for her, aredulyand untiringly chronicled by society papers. i The whole system is debasing, dem oral is ing, and rendeis ridiculous the mairiage ! clause, 'till Death us do part.' For Death read Divorce. If man and woman did but know that the partner he or she had taken for better or wor-e must be kept for better or woise, they would try and make the be.st of it, and so marriage might become in time what it was meant to be, instead of what it | is now, a good enough situation till we fiml a better. MIhUKEU LANIiWORTIIY.