ARE MARRIED PEOPLE HAPPIER THAN SINGLE?

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 11, 6 February 1909, Page 3

ARE MARRIED PEOPLE HAPPIER THAN SINGLE?

Willi few exceptions jnocler:i uovels cud jus I where they should begin. lie* I u iuii cover and cover they comprise two or three vtar* of amorous vicissitude. Then ihc longed-for opportunity anives at last, the fateful word is spoken, hero and heroine lull on each other's necks, and tile reader is left to Mtrmiae that they live happily ever after. Whether the uovel type of hero and heroine do or could live happiiy ever after is perhaps a question. They conduct themselves so amazingly dit-; fcrent from the normal type of man and maid that people who have gained j | their knowledge of the world in Ine I I school of experience inny be pardoned a doubt. * I

The love affairs of life are by no means ordered as in novels, llow many men and women now married can say | that they made or received the sort of formal proposal which forms the graud 'passion scene of the novelists? Very few, probably. In general, what happens is this. Two \oung people aro introduced, or "get to'know each other." I'Hiding special and peculiar pleasure In each other's company, they seek opportunities for meeting more often. The pleasurable acquaintance ripens into »ove. bach idealises the other in some way; each liuds in the other aii alUnitv. They have many happy walks alone by sunlight and moonlight. They kiss when they meet and they kiss when they part, often risking a cold by lingering overlong at the front door or the garden gate, tor, as Juliet says, "parting is such sweet sorrow.'' They promise lip to lip aud eyes to eyes a thousand con-1 tradictory things, and believe them all. I

Xot a doubt ever conies into their minds that when they marry they will sit and hold hands, and biil and coo, and gaze longingly and lovingly into each other's eyes for long hours as tirelessly as they do now in the dear sweet present. Truth to tell, the modern novelists are right. They will never again be quite as happy as they aro now. There are few married people who would not give much for the power to recall the days of their courtship, with their blissful tenderness and ''linked sweetness long drawn out." Those days linger in their hearts and minds as a fragrant memory. They may still be happy, or they may not; but even when they are happy—anil despite those who sneer at marriage there are many, many thousands of married men and women who are—they arc happy in a different way. For when people marry they chauge subtly, gradually towards, each other. Or perhaps it is that they do not change at all. Perhaps they I merely get fouud out. The ideal of i fades away in the 1 hard test of the real. Marriage discovers us for what we are. Courtship discovers in us only what we may think we are.

This is the reason the novelists close the chapters of romance with that last passionate scene in which the hero folds the maid of liis choice and yearning to his wildly-beating heart. When and if it occurs as they depict, there is only one moment in a lifetime when it is possible, and for a lifetime it must last. Taking the average, people arc less happy, or.at least differently happy, married than single. If the ecstasy of courtship wore to last through all the years, how happy manaed people would be. One wonders sometimes whether in the greater number of cases those who j are the happiest in courtship make the I best and the most of married life. Wretched marriages frequently follow romantic courtships; the happiest often follow matter-of-fact courtships. Romantic people are usually the first to show their disappointment with realities; matter-of-fact ones often make the happiest husbands and wives. They expect less of happiness in marriage than others do, and for this reason, perhaps, they get more out of it by making allowances. when all is said, it is only ''by making allowances" for each other that married folk can expect to be reasonably happy at all.