CHAPTER VI
The Question of Age--Young Lovers--Young Men who Woo Maturity--Old Men who Court Youth--Middle-aged Lovers.
The Question of Age.
At what age should the responsibilities of the married state be undertaken? In the best years of life if possible. Not in the physical and mental immaturity of early youth. How can the child-wife of seventeen fulfil all the duties of her position, and endow her child with the needful strength for the journey of life? How can the boy of twenty be expected to work for three without getting weary before his day has well begun? And how can either of them really know wherein true happiness lies? Most probably such a pair will learn to curse their folly before they reach maturity.
But marriage should not be shelved, and driven off to the vague period called middle-age, without excellent reason. The woman of thirty-eight and the man of forty-five will spoil their children immoderately while they are little, and be out of touch with them as they grow up. The average mother of sixty is unable to keep pace with her young daughter. The man who is nearing seventy has travelled very far away from his son who is just starting life under present-day conditions.
The Best Age.
What is a suitable disparity between the ages of man and woman? A girl of two- or three-and-twenty and a man of twenty-eight or thirty are my ideal of a suitably matched couple.
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Young Lovers.
"Love at twenty-two is a terribly intoxicating draft," says a writer, and the sight of young lovers is one that softens all but the most cynical. We smile at their inconsequence; tremble, almost, at their rapturous happiness; yawn, it may be, over their mutual ecstasies, still we know they are passing through a phase, they are lifted for the time being out of the commonplace, and we make excuses.