We cannot all mount those heights from whose crest one may look over the Sea of Care, past the Isle of Idleness to the Adventurous Main, but there is joy enough on the lowland. Happy indeed is he who, in his journey of life, has escaped the perils of that false Bohemia, crouching on the frontier, and has found his way to the happy forest, met his own people and drunk of the Fountain of Immortal Youth; for there is the warm, beating, human heart of the True Bohemia!
The Bachelor's Advantage
There are enough who think "a young man married is a young man marred" to cause the bachelor to hesitate before renouncing his liberties, and to fight shy of entanglement as long as possible. If he writes down the "pros" and "cons," like Robinson Crusoe, he will find he has many advantages in his single state that must inevitably be forfeited when he weds.
It is not only that "when I was single my pockets would jingle, I would I were single again"; it is not so much, either, that his play-day will be over and he must "settle down," stop butterfly-lovering to and fro, and gathering the roses as he goes, and have no haunting white face sitting up for him at home to ask him why, and how, and where. This licence, if he be a man of sentiment, he willingly foregoes for the larger possibilities of satisfactory comradeship and sympathy. He can pay double rent and taxes, too, without grumbling; take manfully the shock of surprise when expenses jump with the new establishment; he may be initiated in doctors' fees, and submit debonairly to a thousand restrictions of time, place and opportunity. But more piquant than any of these trials is the discovery that he has lost his old-time place and privilege of welcome as a bachelor--that "come any time" hospitality of his dearest friends. He is saddled with a secondary consideration.
Try as he may, no young man can marry to please his whole acquaintance. The world, for the most part, still looks with patronizing approval upon a girl's wedding so long as she chooses or is chosen by a man not hopelessly impossible. She has embraced an opportunity and usually her mother cultivates a grateful fondness for the son-in-law. If he has a scarcity of amiable traits she will even manufacture them for him, and put them on the market with display. Not so the mother of the groom. She analyses the bride with incisive dissection, and it is hardly possible that any woman shall be found quite worthy to mate with her son. It takes a woman to read women, she says, and the little wife has to make a fight for each step of the road from condescension through complaisance to compliment.
The young man's friends, too, are exigent, and he soon finds that, though the two have been made one in the sight of law and clergy, society knows no such miraculous algebra. You may squeeze in an extra chair at the dinner table for a desirable and "interesting young man," but to include another lady, and that his wife, requires a tiresome rearrangement. He does not come alone ordinarily, nor would he if asked, and so he drops out of his little world and must set about the creation of a new one. He may have had latch-key privileges at a dozen houses, free to come night or morning, the recipient of many sudden invitations for theatre, supper or country--but that is all over. It is his turn to do the inviting. The table has been well turned when he sits down to meat!
Is it to be wondered at, then, that the bachelor is selfish? He escapes lightly the lesson of compromise; his whole life is a training in egoism, and he makes the most of his desirability, getting usually far more than he gives. He is free to experiment in acquaintance though it goes no farther than innocuous flirtation. He may make friendships for himself and break them at will, lightly dodging the tie. There are hundreds in every city who need go only where they wish, skipping even "duty calls," sure of forgiveness. He may know men and women he cares for, and, through the lack of experience in a life-long intimacy, he may preserve many illusions as to women. If he has an income, or a profession that demands no abode, he can wander "to and fro in the earth and walk up and down in it" free as Satan. He travels the farthest who travels alone.
Still, this cannot go on forever, and his franchise wanes. With the first pang of middle age Nature asserts her imperious demand for permanent companionship. The "cons" grow heavier, and the "pros" more attractive. He sees maid after maid of his younger fancy pass out of the game without regret, but the first sight of the new generation strikes him to the heart. He is "uncled" by more and more adopted nephews and nieces, and the sight of their fresh eyes awakens the immemorial longing in him. And then, suddenly, another "pro" comes upon the list, an undeniable item of importance, throwing its influence so heavily upon the side of marriage that no number of his foolish little "cons" can ever balance the account. He is in love, and there is but one definition for that state. It is the immediate, ravenous, compelling desire for a wife. There is nothing for it but to renounce allegiance to his old friends and become naturalized into a new citizenship.
But though all over town the doors to which he cried "open sesame" bang sullenly to shut him out, he does not notice it if that one portal lets him in!
The Confessions of an Ignoramus