President Eliot of Harvard University is quoted as saying that marriage ought to unite two persons of the same religious faith: otherwise it is likely to prove unhappy. President Eliot has said many wise things, but this is not one of them—unless he is shrewdly seeking to produce bachelors and spinsters to upbuild his university. One of Angeline Stickney’s girl friends had a suitor of the Universalist denomination, and a very fine man he was; but the girl and her mother belonged to the Baptist denomination, which was the denomination of another suitor, whom she married for denominational reasons. Abbreviating the word, her experience proves the following principle: If a young woman belonging to the Baptist demnition rejects an eligible suitor because he belongs to the Universalist demnition, she is likely to go to the demnition bow-wows.
For religious tolerance even in matrimony there is the best of reasons: We are Protestants before we are Baptists or Universalists, Christians before we are Catholics or Protestants, moralists before we are Jews or Christians, theists before we are Mohammedans or Jews, and human before every thing else.
Angeline Stickney, like her girl friend, was a sincere Baptist. Had joined the church at the age of sixteen. One of her classmates, a person of deeply religious feeling like herself, was a suitor for her hand. But she married Asaph Hall, who was outside the pale of any religious sect, disbelieved in woman-suffrage, wasted little sympathy on negroes, and played cards! And her marriage was infinitely more fortunate than her friend’s. To be sure she labored to convert her splendid Pagan, and partially succeeded; but in the end he converted her, till the Unitarian church itself was too narrow for her.
Cupid’s ways are strange, and sometimes whimsical. There was once a young man who made fun of a red-haired woman and used to say to his companions, “Get ready, get ready,” till Reddy got him! No doubt the little god scored a point when Asaph Hall saw Angeline Stickney solemnly parading in the “bloomer” costume. Good humor was one of the young man’s characteristics, and no doubt he had a hearty laugh at the young lady’s expense. But Dan Cupid contrived to have him pursue a course in geometry taught by Miss Stickney; and, to make it all the merrier, entangled him in a plot to down the teacher by asking hard questions. The teacher did not down, admiration took the place of mischief, and Cupid smiled upon a pair of happy lovers.
The love-scenes, the tender greetings and affectionate farewells, the ardent avowals and gracious answers—all these things, so essential to the modern novel, are known only in heaven. The lovers have lived their lives and passed away. Some words of endearment are preserved in their old letters—but these, gentle reader, are none of your business.
However, I may state with propriety a few facts in regard to Angeline Stickney’s courtship and marriage. It was characteristic of her that before she became engaged to marry she told Asaph Hall all about her father. He, wise lover, could distinguish between sins of the stomach and sins of the heart, and risked the hereditary taint pertaining to the former—and this although she emphasized the danger by breaking down and becoming a pitiable invalid. Just before her graduation she wrote:
I believe God sent you to love me just at this time, that I might not get discouraged.
How very good and beautiful you seemed to me that Saturday night that I was sick at Mr. Porter’s, and you still seem just the same. I hope I may sometime repay you for all your kindness and love to me. If I have already brightened your hopes and added to your joy I am thankful. I hope we may always be a blessing to each other and to all around us; and that the great object of our lives may be the good that we can do. There are a great many things I wish to say to you, but I will not try to write them now. I hope I shall see you again soon, and then I can tell you all with my own lips. Do not study too hard, Love, and give yourself rest and sleep as much as you need.
Yours truly,
A. Hall. C. A. S.