THE RIGHT AGE TO MARRY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 204, 2 October 1909, Page 4

THE RIGHT AGE TO MARRY.

CJIKL TENNIS CHAMPION AND HER BETROTHAL. Tin; absorbing question of what is the? right age to marry has once more been brought to the fore by Miss May Suttoi,. the famous American lawn tennis player, who when quite a girl won the English , championship at Wimbledon in 15)07. Miss Sutton had created an exlraordin-, ary sensation in California by her ori- \ ginal way of announcing that her be-; trothal to Mr. Ceorge 11am, the son of a ! Mexican banker, is broken ojf because she is not old enough. "Call it jolly,' j .Miss Suiton is ipioied as saying. 'At' all events, lam foot and fancy free, ami J intend going to England to play the jiame of my life." 1 The noted lady tennis player, in the! course of an interview, developed views jji matrimony in the following positive terms. "No woman," she said, "shou'd marry before twenty-live, i stand by that'statement. In the lirst place, -no woman before that age is sullieieiitly matured. She does not know her own mind, and llHtj not had experience enough. !l iocs not seem to me right that a woman should have to learn her duties after she 's married. She should be ready to steo into her place iu society as a full-lledged natron when she becomes a wife. "In America a woman has more to do ivith the selection of a husband th<n in :he older countries. Parents have little lo do with her choice beyond advising, uid when a girl is young such advice is lot appreciated. Hence it is of the utmost importance that the American \ ivoman at all events should have a large ixperience of men and the world before she takes the important step of choosing i partner for life. "1 do not mean to say that all youthful marriages are unhappy, but many, many of them are. Look at the divorce sourts of America. They have a terrible but entirely deserved notoriety, because the divorce evil is appallingly on the increase. Divorces in this country are due in my opinion to the large number of youthful, ill-considered marriages. "Until I am perfectly sure, therefor*, that my true love hath my heart and I his I 6hall remain in 'maiden meditutioi, fancy free.'" THE COUNTESS OF CARDIGAN'S ADVICE. The Countess of Cardigan, who was born only just after the days of the Regency and married the most popular hero of her day, thus expressed her views on the subject. "I was married in 1858," said the countess. "aiH mv opinion is that no girl knows her own mind in her teens; | or at least she did not when 1 was young. | It is all very romantic and charming at i eighteen, but no girl really knows the, heart »f a man until she is in the twenties. A man at twenty-eight is fortyeight in experience, and how can a schoolroom beauty permanently depose the adorable She who has filled the happy youthful years of a man's life? "Cynics scot! at these turned-down pages. Believe me, they are the most sacred of any. For the beauty of real isation give me the fulness of a man's love, the perfect marriage, when, after years of disappointment. h:> meets tii" one woman who gently knits up his lost ideals and bids him forget. Not that forgetting brings happiness, but it brings repose. •*r married, as my first husband, the most chivalrous and popular hero of the Crimean War. I had known him when a mere girl, and my girlhood'* admiration had gradually ripened into love. Lord Cardigan never disappointed me. .1 was no longer in my teens, but with the loss of the lirst glamor, of youth there eame the appreciation of maturity I could recognise the salient points of the ma?), far more than I conid judge them from the critical standpoint of o girl who has nothing to forgive. THE HAPPIEST MARIIIACES. "My ;uivice is: Never marry too young. The ehiin of love becomes intolerable when it i> hampered with the links of doubl sind disillusion which ciVig round iaie r Jov.". Far better is it to meet on common ground, as mutual sym. 'wthisers. each eager to forgive the ithers faults and to say: 'Let us begin , ..gain.' than to begin hoping and live »»i-

satisfied. "No. the happie.s| marriages are those that understand all. and forgive all. as the l'reuch say. Know your own mind thoroughly, its capacity for forgiveness, its power of sympathy, before you ask any woman to face life's hat ties with you. And, dear young people, never lose your friend when you gain your lover! "F agree with Miss May Sutton in her ideas as to the marriageable age. She is -quite right, but as to the ideals in marriage, what could T quote belter Ilia 1 the most human and charming wordspoken by Jessica Falconer in "The Cho r Invisible': "'Oh. if you ever marry, don't make the mistake of treating the woman as an ideal! Treat her in every way as a human being, exactly like yourself, with some mercy on yourself despite your faults, have some nierev 011 her desir.'.e hers.'"

j On the other hand, Mrs, Stmmard. t.Ho novelist, who is well known as "John I Strange Winter," gives her opinion in | favor of early marriage, disagreeing up n I this point with both Lady Cardigan and | Miss May Sutton. Mrs. Stannard say.?; 1 '"Can Lady Cardigan, or even a cham | pion tennis player, go one better than |\'ature? 1 doubt it. It is the fashion | to-day to cry out upon marriage, to rejgard it as an antiquated, obsolete custom only really necessary for the bent- ' fit of colonies and family estates. But I that is wrong. We were made, all of ns, : to marry; and those of us who, for some reason bess known to ourselves, do or can not, marry are, to put it mildly, making a mistake or are unfortunately placed. Most women, and all men, are more truly happy when they are married, {\nd the sooner they marry the better chance of happiness they will have. "I not only believe in boy-and-giri marriages, but I believe they are prae'.ically the only marriages. And I am the more firmly convinced as I progress on niy journey through life that, in the evenUof second marriages or late marriages which have been delayed for good reasons, those who do marry should be within at most five years of each other m age. Only yesterday a lady told me quite seriously that men ought to marry women much younger than themselves I because women age more quickly : men. She could briny no ♦pecial evidence to Ivvir on the argument, but was possessed of a general idea to that effect. "T believe f.'hat l>dy Cardigan hers"lf married when she wib well over thirty, and it must not be forgotten that >iie married a hero, and also 'that lie only lived for ten years. Marriage, in tiif usual experience, is for a longer time fhit 11 (his; it is for life, I venture to say. therefore, that Lady Cardigan '< not i?i a position to speak personally. 1 should not touch upon this point if she did not cite her own marriage as an instance.

"At the same time 1 cannot forg't that mv grandmother and my mother-in-law were both married at eighteen -- one man being twenty-two. the other twenty-one: both had large families, ami both retained the unswerving afTeetbii of iheij- husbands to the day of their death.

"I some years ago asked a fneml o f mine who had married wheu he was i/twentv-one a girl of seventeen how he felt about early marriages after luk experience of fourteen years. He thought fo r a minute and then he said: 'Well, it might have made a difference; but nothing on earth could give me back those fourteen years.' ' "No, no; in marriage let there be 110 binding up of wounds, no forgiving and forgetting, no patching up of bygone mistakes. But let marriage be what it was meant to be in the beginning—the perfect union of perfect love. If this were the rule, and there were not so many mercenary considerations brought into the marriage question, we should have very little work for the divorce courts. Fathers and mothers would 'be nearer of an age to their children, and therefore more sympathetic to them." 1