What a Young Woman Ought to Know Part 15

Talk over business matters. Find out what your lover's ideas are as to the wife's right to a pecuniary recognition of the value of her labor in making the home. Does he think that she earns nothing, and that what he gives her of his money is a donation for which she gives no return? I know a young woman who had been self-supporting before her marriage who felt timid about asking her husband for money. So she wore her wedding garments until they were shabby, went without money when her own funds were exhausted, and kept silent for five years, and her husband--a young clergyman--never thought to ask her if she needed anything, never observed her growing shabbiness. When at last she summoned courage to tell him her needs, he was overwhelmed with regret for his own lack of thought and observation, and yet he could not understand why she should hesitate to ask for money. "Why, it is all yours, dear," he said. "You were only asking for what already belongs to you." And many young husbands are just as obtuse, therefore they should receive in advance the instruction that is needed to prevent a possibility of such neglect. Have it understood that if you are worthy to be trusted as a bearer of the name and a sharer of the fortunes of a man, you are worthy to share also the burden of the knowledge of his business experiences, and to bear the responsibility of economically guarding his interests in the expenditure of money which, by your love and care and labor, you have helped him to earn.

I think a young woman should know something of the personal habits of her future husband. Does he like fresh air, or does he want the windows hermetically sealed at night. Is he a believer in the G.o.dliness of cleanliness? I have just read of two people who married after a six week's acquaintance, knowing nothing of each other's antecedents, personal habits, caprices or principles. The man proved to be a regular hypochondriac, taking medicine constantly, at one time with five doctors prescribing for him. He counted his pulse at every odd moment, and looked at his tongue instead of at the eyes of his wife, as he had done when a lover. He had a dread of pure air, and was as averse to bathing as a cat. The woman had lived in the open air, taken a daily morning bath, and was disgusted with those who did not do likewise. The writer says, "She stormed, took her baths, and opened the windows; he cried, took no baths, shut the windows, and called the doctors." There is no need to depict the unhappiness of the home, and yet no doubt the girl would have been shocked had anyone suggested that she inquire into these facts concerning her lover. But if she had been less romantic and more practical, if she had remembered that the marriage contract would bind her for life to one who would be more closely connected with her than anyone else could be, and this union for life, by day and by night, constant, continuous, and not to be annulled by any such small matters as bad breath or unpleasant personal habits, perhaps she would have considered it no small matter to discover the possible causes of disgust before they became fixtures in her life.

And perhaps, also, she would have given her own personal habits more consideration. True love will endure much, but it sometimes dies in the presence of untidiness, of carelessness as to dress or room, or lack of sweetness of person or of breath. If you demand much of a husband, he has a right to demand just as much from you. If there are habits concerning which you would rather he as a lover should be ignorant, believe me that it is even more important that as a husband he should not know them. Therefore employ your available time before marriage to rid yourself of them. If a lover would be disenchanted to see the room from which his blooming, beauteous adored one had departed, bearing the marks of carelessness and disorder, with soiled clothing, unmade bed, shoes, hose and dresses all in tumbled heaps on chairs and floor, remember that the marriage ceremony does not make such a room more attractive to the husband, who must not only see but share its discomforts.

In addition to the knowledge of each other's personal peculiarities there should be an understanding of each other's ideas as to the duties and responsibilities of their proposed relation to each other.

I lately received a letter from a young woman who asks, "How freely do you think two engaged young people may talk concerning their future life? Would it not be indelicate for them to discuss their future relations, the possibility and responsibilities of parenthood, etc.?"

I answer, that depends on the young people. If they have false ideas, if they have little or no scientific knowledge, if their thoughts are filled with wrong mental pictures, they will not know how to talk wisely and beneficially. But these two young people are intelligent, are scientifically educated, are Christians. Their hearts are pure, their standards high, their motives praiseworthy. It would seem that they might talk as freely as their inclination would prompt. In fact there seems to me more indelicacy and more danger from long evenings spent in murmuring ardent protestations of love and indulging in embraces and endearments than in a frank, serious conversation on the realities and responsibilities of marriage, an exchange of earnest thoughts, voiced in chaste, well-chosen language--a conversation which by its very solemnity is lifted out of the realm of sense-pleasure into the dignified domain of science and morality.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

ENGAGEMENTS.

There now sparkles on your finger a ring that symbolizes the promise you have given to become a wife. You are engaged, and there now arises in your mind the query as to the conduct of yourselves during this period of engagement: How much of privilege shall you grant your lover? As you are promised to each other for life, are you not warranted in a.s.suming towards each other greater personal familiarity?

May you not with perfect modesty allow endearments and caresses that hitherto have not been permissible?

I take it for granted that you are not one of those unwise young women who permit themselves to become engaged for fun; who consider an engagement as of so little seriousness that it may be made and broken without regret. I have known girls who even enter into engagements just in order to feel justified in greater freedom of conduct without compunction of conscience. If such engagements do not violate the code of conventionalities they certainly infringe upon the moral code.

It is not strange that girls should fail to see all the dangers of such conduct--that they should not comprehend that thus they become sources of temptation to their lovers, and may even imperil their own safety.

But your engagement is an honest one, your love is true, based upon thorough acquaintance; you have mutual respect and entire confidence in each other. May you not now throw aside much of the restrictions that have surrounded your a.s.sociation and manifest your affection in reciprocal demonstrations?

We often read the advice to young people not to enter upon long engagements, and the reason given is that it exacts too much in the way of self-control, is too great a nervous strain, is too full of peril. I would like to quote just here a few words by Dr. C.W. Eaton:

"Away with the s.e.xual argument against engagements, and let us all set about that cultivation of will and purpose which can make the weakest a tower of strength and the arbiter of his own destiny; and let us say to our appet.i.tes, Thus far shalt thou come and no farther, neither shalt thou presume to deny to thy master the best earthly companions.h.i.+p which may come into his life. It may be a far harder task than the ardent and poetical lover allows himself at first to think, but the hardest battles are best worth the fighting; and what manner of men should we become if we systematically evaded life's conflicts, instead of meeting them squarely and fighting them through manfully? Dr. Bourgeois says: 'The ancient custom of betrothals is the safeguard for the purity of morals and the happy a.s.sociation of man and wife. This inst.i.tution was known to the Greeks, the Hebrews, the Romans, and during the Middle Ages. In Germany it has still preserved its poetical and moral character. The young people are sometimes affianced many years before their marriage. We see the young man, thus betrothed, with heart full of his chaste love, absent himself for a time in order to finish his education, to perform his studies of science or art, his apprentices.h.i.+p to a trade, and to prepare himself for manly life. He returns to his betrothed with a soul which has remained pure, with a reason enlarged and fortified. Then both are ripe for the austere duties of marriage.

"'Chaste love, consecrated by betrothals, can be cultivated in the midst of work. It lightens toil, it banishes _ennui_, it illumines the horizon of life with delightful prospects; it excites in the young man the manly courage and the high intelligence to create for himself a position in the world; in woman, the n.o.ble ambition to perfect herself to become a worthy companion and good adviser.

"'During the stormy period of youth it is the only means of preserving the virgin purity of the heart and of the body. Does anyone believe that young men who in good season have in their hearts a love strong and worthy of them would profane themselves, as they so often otherwise do, in vile affections, in those relations of a day, giving themselves a holocaust to beauty without soul, or even to licentiousness without beauty?'"

Emerson says: "If, however, from too much conversing with material objects the soul was gross, and misplaced its satisfaction in the body, it reaped nothing but sorrow, body being unable to fulfill the promise which beauty holds out; but if, accepting the hint of these visions and suggestions which beauty makes to his mind, the soul pa.s.ses through the body and fails to admire strokes of character, and the lovers contemplate one another in their discourses and their actions, then they pa.s.s to the true palace of beauty, more and more inflame their love of it, and by this love extinguis.h.i.+ng the base affection, as the sun puts out fire by s.h.i.+ning on the hearth, they become pure and hallowed. By conversation with that which is in itself excellent, magnanimous, lowly and just, the lover comes to a warmer love of these n.o.bilities, and a quicker apprehension of them. Then he pa.s.ses from loving them in one to loving them in all, and so is the one beautiful soul only the door through which he enters to the society of all true and pure souls. In the particular society of his mate he attains a clearer sight of any spot, any taint which her beauty has contracted from this world, and is able to point it out, and this with mutual joy that they are now able, without offense, to indicate blemishes and hindrances in each other, and give to each all help and comfort in curing the same. And beholding in many souls the traits of the divine beauty, and separating in each soul that which is divine from the taint which it has contracted in the world, the lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, by steps on this ladder of created souls."

And this all means that when the thought of the s.e.x-relation const.i.tutes in the mind of either the idea of marriage, then the wedding ceremony will be supposed to remove all restrictions, and the only limit of gratification will be the limit of desire. Under these circ.u.mstances the close familiarity of a long engagement would be a mental and physical tax, because the self-control exercised is felt to be only temporary, and will be no longer needed when the wedding ceremony has been said.

But if the idea of marriage is n.o.bler, if the s.e.x-relation is consecrated to its highest purpose of reproduction, if marriage is felt to be only an added opportunity for self-control, which will be more difficult then because there will be no restraint except that which is self-imposed, then the engagement will be felt to be a time of gradual preparation for that closer relations.h.i.+p which needs more will-power because opportunity is greater.

Under these conditions the lovers will be aiming towards an ideal which recognizes that in wedded life all that is lasting in affection, in tender courtesy, in most intimate companions.h.i.+p, in sweetest demonstration, is possible without the physical union, which in itself is the most transitory of pleasures, but which in unlimited indulgence becomes the most domineering of pa.s.sions, exhaustive of physical power and of mental vigor, and absolutely annihilating all true love.

If you ask why there should exist this marvelous drawing of the s.e.xes towards each other if their relation is not based upon the exercise of s.e.x-functions, I reply that s.e.x is more than its local expression; it is inherent in mind as well as body, and therefore s.e.xual power may be expressed in masculine courage, energy or daring, or in feminine constancy, self-abnegation, or sweet courtesy. s.e.xual attraction is not limited to the local expression, nor creative power to reproduction of kind, but may give a stimulus to the intellectual companions.h.i.+p of men and women, and result in the creation of n.o.bler ideals and grander aspirations.

Having settled in your mind your att.i.tude towards your lover, let us consider what it shall be towards your family during these days of the engagement. Naturally you will not feel a separation from the home circle as keenly as do the other members of your family. You two are so absorbed in each other, are so busy exchanging ideas, in becoming acquainted, that you are oblivious to the change brought about in your family. You think you two ought to be allowed the privilege of _tete-a-tetes_, for of course you cannot talk freely together in the hearing of others. This is true. You should have times of seclusion, when, without a sense of oppression through fear of criticism or jesting, you can rhapsodize, or quote poetry and open your hearts'

treasures to each other. But you still owe a duty to your home.

Doubtless your mother is not now as necessary to your happiness as you are to hers. She is thinking of you with most tender solicitude, she misses your presence, she already begins to feel the loneliness of the inevitable separation. If you are thoughtful you will see to it that the separation does not begin sooner than is necessary. Then, too, your parents need to get acquainted with this new member whom you are to introduce into the family, and he needs to know them. He will think none the less of you if he sees that you do not allow him to monopolize you entirely, that you recognize your obligations to the family and that you expect him to recognize them also, and, in addition, his obligations to show them due courtesy and attention. He is not to absorb you entirely, to take you out of the home circle, but he is to come in and be a part of it, even as you are to become one in the home of which he is a member. You need to remember that he is son and brother to women who loved him long before you knew him, and that he still owes them attention and thoughtful, affectionate courtesy.

Never allow yourself to feel jealous of his mother or sisters. The fact that he is a loving, thoughtful son and brother is in a measure a guarantee that he will be a loving, thoughtful husband.

Let me add to this advice a word more. Do not allow yourself to feel jealous of him in any way. Jealousy is the quintessence of selfishness, and no other pa.s.sion is so destructive of happiness, so full of the contagion of evil. If your lover is not to be trusted, you would be wise to end the engagement at once. If he is to be trusted, that trust should be absolute. I said you should not allow him to monopolize you, neither should you attempt to monopolize him. There are other people in the world besides yourself, and other occupations than the business of waiting on you. If you make him feel that he dare not speak to anyone but you, that he dare not think of anything but you, he will begin to chafe under the restraint and feel a desire to break the bonds that are becoming fetters. If he were not your acknowledged lover, if you were anxious to win his love, but were a little uncertain as to your power to do so, you would not meet him with tears and upbraidings because he had for one moment seemed to forget you, but you would at once use every possible effort to make yourself more attractive in his eyes than any other person could possibly be. You will be wise to use those same tactics now, even though his allegiance is pledged to you. Be so charming that no one else can be considered so entertaining; that no one else can be so wise, so witty, so sympathetic, so altogether lovely, that everything but yourself is forgotten; and then believe in him so absolutely that he could not possibly swerve in his fidelity to you. Have you ever thought that to accuse one of a certain wrong act may be just the way to suggest to him the possibility of committing it? If one trusts you implicitly, that very trust is a constant suggestion to be true, and doubt is a suggestion to act worthy of being doubted.

You must trust each other or you have no sure foundation for future love and happiness. It needs a great deal of good common sense to learn how to live happily in marriage. You may have chosen wisely. The man may be honest, pure, kindly, intelligent, and Christian, but he is human, therefore not perfect. He has faults, peculiarities, moods, perhaps tempers, and he will probably not wait until you are married to begin to show them. There will come differences of opinions, divergences in desires, clas.h.i.+ngs in judgment. Now is the time to display your tact, to learn how to express an opposing opinion without arousing antagonism, to yield a desire for the sake of a greater love than that of self, to adhere to principle without unpleasant discussion; in short, to be dignified and womanly without pettiness or littleness of any kind. You remember the words of Ruskin, that the woman must be "incorruptibly good, instinctively, infallibly wise, not for self-development, but for self-renunciation," and that will be the highest development.

No doubt you will think that some of this advice should be given to young men as well as to young women, and I think so too, and were I talking to your lover I could say many warning words; but just now I am telling you things that he does not need to hear, and I do not need to tell you what, if I had the chance, I would say to him. You are to train yourself and not him, and yet I would not have you ignorant of your power over him in developing in him all that is n.o.blest and best.

You should hold him ever to his highest ideals. He should never feel so absolutely sure of your adoration as to imagine that it will endure a lowering of his standards. You have been posing a little before each other. Doubtless you were not aware of this, but, now that you have each gained the heart of the other, you may sometimes feel that you can relax; but this is a dangerous error. You should continue to be as thoughtful, as courteous, as careful as ever; you should endeavor really to be all that you have tried or appeared to be during these days of courts.h.i.+p. You will be none too perfect even then.

Once, in talking to a group of women, I a.s.serted that a wife should exact of her husband as high a tone of morality as of her lover, that she should not allow him to become lax in his conversation with her any more than with any other woman. One woman thought me too strict.

She said men liked to feel that at home they could do as they pleased, and would resent a wife's interference with their right to be loose in their talk in their own home. I replied that the home is not the man's nor the woman's alone; it is theirs jointly; that each has a right to demand that the other shall not pollute or poison the air, the food, the water or the moral atmosphere; and the wife who allows contamination of the thought-atmosphere of the home is as culpable as if she were to permit poison to be put into the food.

As a man admires the girl who respects herself too much to permit him to tell her questionable stories, so will he reverence the wife who refuses to allow him to degrade himself in her presence either by speech or conduct. Love would not so often fail if wives knew the secret of retaining it, and that is not by sacrifice of principle, nor by tearful reproaches and upbraidings, but by being true to the highest impulses, and while having the good common sense that can make all reasonable allowance for fallibility, still permits no lowering of moral standards, no willful falling short of the very best.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

THE WEDDING.

Said my friend:

There's to be a grand wedding, you know, With no end to the fuss and parade, With sixteen fair bridesmaids to stand in a row, With sixteen young groomsmen to help out the show, One to stand by the side of each maid.

Then there's a reception to be very fine, With all sorts of magnificent things, With silver to glitter and mirrors to s.h.i.+ne, With tropical fruit and famous old wine, With odorous flowers and music divine, Drawn forth from melodious strings.

In the minds of many girls the wedding means only this public show, the display of elegant toilets, the reception of costly gifts; and the preparation of marriage means too often merely the making of an elegant _trousseau_. People generally do not ask concerning the fitness of the young people to enter on the solemn duties of life--do not ask how well they have been instructed concerning that which is before them; but the questions are all about clothes and gifts and ceremonials. No wonder, then, that the thought of the young woman centers on these things, to the exclusion of nearly all else; indeed, it may be to the detriment of health and the lessening of true happiness. The prospective husband finds his _fiancee_ so absorbed in sewing, shopping and interviews with dressmakers that she has few moments to give to him, and these few occupied more with the thought of gowns and personal adornments than with ideals of wedded happiness.

Perhaps she even excuses herself for lessening the number of his visits on the plea that very soon now she will be all his, and so he is left to spend his last days of bachelorhood in loneliness, and made to feel that raiment is more than love. Worse still, it may be that on the wedding-day he takes to his heart a bride so wearied, so nervously exhausted by the preparations of the _trousseau_ that she is at least temporarily an invalid. I have known more than one bride so worn out by the preparation for her wedding that instead of bringing brightness, joy and beauty into the new life, she brought illness, anxiety and care, and made demands at once upon the patience and service of the husband, who had a right to expect health and vigor and a power to enjoy.

I knew a sensible girl who said months before her marriage, "I am not going to bring to my new life a remnant of health, a shattered nervous system and a tattered temper," and she kept her word. Her sewing was done by degrees, and was all out of the way weeks before the wedding.

Shopping and dressmaking were never allowed to interfere with the walks and drives, the chats and moonlight strolls. "We shall not be able to repeat this experience," she wisely said, and so her lover found her ever ready to give him her society and her thought. Her _trousseau_ was not elaborate, her wedding-dress was simple, but in it she shone like a flower of the morning, full of brightness and health and joy.

She was wise in other respects. Only her intimate friends were invited to the wedding ceremony, and to these she said, "I want you to feel that it is you I invite, not your gifts. If your love impels you to give me some simple memento of yourself it will be cherished, but I'd rather have a pincus.h.i.+on made by your own hand, or a little flower painted by yourself, than the most costly purchased picture or most elegant piece of silver that you bought, because you thought it was expected. And if, when you come, you bring no gift but your love and blessing, I shall feel that that is the richest treasure."

There was no display of presents to a vulgar curiosity, no collection of duplicate b.u.t.ter-knives or berry-spoons to be secretly disposed of after the wedding. The gifts were few and not costly, but each told its own story of personal affection, and therefore really had a meaning.

This sensible young woman introduced another innovation into her wedding. She would not listen to the suggestion of a bridal tour. "I do not want to be stared at and commented on by strangers," she said.

"Let us go to some quiet spot in the mountains or by the sea, and let us live with each other and with nature." In after years she often said, "I would not miss from my memory the picture of those happy days for anything that any trip on railway trains and sojourns at hotels could give me. We had time and opportunity to learn each other's souls as we could not have done amid 'the madding crowd;' and we have loved each other more truly, I know, because in those early wedded days we sat with Nature and Nature's G.o.d in the true companions.h.i.+p which such solitude alone can bring."

I never see the parade of a fas.h.i.+onable wedding that I am not reminded of her and of a sad contrast to her experience, when two young people were married amid a blaze of light, a rain of flowers, and under the curious eyes of hundreds of strangers took their wedding tour, while the papers glowingly described the dress and beauty of the bride, the necktie and the trousers of the groom, and pictures of the two were labeled "The Happy Couple." In two years the bride came home to her parents wrecked in health and broken in heart.

There is a beauty in a golden wedding that truly celebrates a happy union of half a century. But when life is all untried, when perhaps the two young people know nothing of what is before them, it may be are but little acquainted with each other, and have mistaken the thrill of pa.s.sion for the steady exaltation of love, then it would seem wiser to make the occasion one of most solemn import, free from glitter and show, and full of that deep meaning which makes the heart stand still in reverence for life's deepest mysteries.

O, gallant young groom, it may seem a slight thing To take this young girl as your bride; To place on her finger the plain golden ring, Around her these bright flower-festoons to fling, But have you e'er thought what the future will bring To you in this life so untried?

Have you thought how your temper may often be tried?

That you may grow gouty and old, That the fair smiling face of your bonnie young bride May grow pale and haggard, and wrinkled, beside, Or she prove a sloven and scold?