ARE WE CEASING TO MARRY?

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2956, 6 August 1878, Page 2

ARE WE CEASING TO MARRY?

"Is matrimony on the decline ?" anxiously inquires a New England philosopher. No, and it never will be, divorce statistics, criminal annals and neighbor, hood gossip to the contrary notwithstanding, s. Doubts concerning the felicity of domestic life should never be hinged on the examples of human frailty with which the newspapers teem, nor upon the few that pass beneath the individual notice. Women are born to be married, and men are born to marry them, and despite the predictions of cynical ranks and the gloomy forebodings of venerable maids, the business of marrying is bound to proceed as certainly as provisions will be perpetually consumed. Fearless young men Will continue to march to the matrimonial altar to the end of time, and susceptible young women will no more treat lightly the conjugal aspirations of infatuated youths than the Vars will cease to shine after sunset, or sunrise will cease to follow- the dawn. "Hail! wedded love,".will still be the watchword of mankind. Preach the desolute creed of Malthus if you will; portray lovely woman in her lightest aspect; picture man as a brute and home as a battle-ground, and yet the business of marrying will steadily proceed, and the only limit to it will be scarcity of marriageable women. "Is matrimony on the' decline P " Absurd interrogatory! Peruse the hymeneal notices of the daily press; behold the armies of men that array themselves in gorgeous apparel, and go forth to marry and be married; mark even'the rashness of those who have tried the silken fetters and found them heavier than bars of steel. None are so frantic to marry as those who have fled in dismay from the wedded state. Too many weighty commercial interests are also at stake to permit a decline of matrimony. The merchant, milliner, tailor, barber, hatter, furniture dealer—aye, even the butcher and baker and a thousand others are ready to form a mighty league to combat any movement looking to the. discouragement of wedlock. Thq fires of Hymen will glow with bright effulgence long after all present scoffers at matrimony are dead and forgotten. The mother-in-law —abused, derided, shunned and feared— will wave her imperial banner over the most ancient ruins of bachelorhood. She and the conjugal net will continue to ersnare their multitudinous victims, in spite of all that may be thought, said, written, printed or proclaimed on the subject. Woman may be debarred from voting, and she will submit with barely a protest: she may be compelled by law to yield her possessions to her new-found lord the moment the service of union is celebrated, and she will be content; any legal status that masculine selfishness, egotism or presumption may assign her she will accept without a murmer. But when you have the effrontery to propose that she shall not. be married, you will sow a wind to resp a whirlwind of the hughest proportions. She will brave prisons and face I death itself, if necessary, rather than not be married. Let there be no misunderstanding on this question. And so long as her voice is in favor of the long-established marital institution it is fated to endure. So long as she desires to marry there will be found some one daring enough to marry her. The New England philosopher need give himself no Uneasiness. Matrimony is not on the deline. Young men will still have thejfc'^sweethearts; Hymen, as of yore, will officiate at the other end of the lane; there will' still be weddirtgs, wives, mother and mothers-in-law, and when the nation is again in peril there will be millions of brave defenders, and women will be in plenty at home to admire and marry them when the tumult is over. And all this is precisely as it should be. ,