Letters of Peregrine Pickle

by George P. Upton

Next comes Smith, whining that his friend Thompson has married unhappily, and he gets off the old story that marriage is a lottery in which there are a thousand blanks to one prize. Bosh! It may be that his friend Thompson deliberately sought happiness in something which was not capable of affording it. Or it may be that he made money the complement of his desires and the goal of his ambition. In either case, he would be and ought to be disappointed. But it is more probable that Thompson, as obtains in ninety-nine out of a hundred of these disappointments, while carrying his head among the stars, stumbled over the stone at his feet, which he would have seen if he had had his head where it ought to have been. Thompson, like scores of others, indulged in a love which smacked both of the romance and the theatre—made it in a style and clothed it with sentiments which have no more to do with common life than the integral calculus has to do with everlasting salvation, and in his terrific flights of the imagination, soared to heights occupied by angels and cherubim, and other creatures who have nothing in common with human life. He assumed without question that his inamorata was an angel, and, while in his amorous embryo, would have throttled you if you had suggested that he might have been mistaken. Of course, when he had chipped off his shell, got his eyes open, and stepped out into the open air of common sense, he saw his mistake. Women are not angels at all, although it may be ungallant to say so. For certain romantic purposes, and by a sort of poetical license, we call them such. They don't believe they are angels themselves; but they accept the assurance from their lovers, just as the lover accepts the assurance from his mistress that he is a hero, both good and noble, when he is nothing but plain Tompkins. Now, Thompson, before he married his wife, was convinced that she was an angel, and would have considered it a serious defect if you, or any one else had imputed human nature as one of her characteristics. If he had married Mrs. Thompson as a woman with a human nature, subject to diseases, old age, sullenness, peevish fits, and other infirmities to which flesh is heir, possessed of the same bad qualities, and capable of showing just as many good qualities, he would have been a happy man, and by combining an even temper with a sensible judgment, he never would have had any trouble. It might as well be settled now as at any time that there are no angels in this world. Angels dwell in quite another place, and have nothing to do whatever with marriage, their time being mainly spent in playing harps, and, if "Gates Ajar" be true, pianos, fiddles, and other musical instruments, and in eating lotus, which is of a better quality up there than that which grows on the Nile. The other class of angels, if the iron-clad theology be true, is down below, engaged in the anthracite coal and brimstone business; but there is no record of any on earth. If Thompson had married a woman instead of a creature whom, without any reason, he supposed to be an angel, he would have been a happy man. It is, therefore, his own fault that he is not happy. And it is the fault of the majority of men who are not happy.

Now, also, on general principles, I contend that it is a man's duty to be married. Man is not complete when single. He is all head without any heart. Man has his work, woman has hers, and no life-work is complete which is not a union of the two.

Man has the work of the intellect to perform; woman the work of the affections. If man does his work alone, it is cold, hard, selfish and one-sided.

Man represents brute strength; woman represents beauty. If man stands alone, not clothing his strength with beauty, he occupies exactly the position of the horse and the ox.

Man, to sum up, is the head; woman, the heart. United, they are perfect; single, they are simply monstrosities. They were made to go together.

And, again, my dear Fitz-Herbert, did you ever happen to think that you were born in marriage? That without marriage the world would have been deprived of your inestimable entity, which, undoubtedly, is good for something, although, at this present moment, I am not prepared to say what? I contend, therefore, that if you persistently choose to remain single you insult the condition in which you were born, and place yourself in the attitude of the foolish Euripides, who always lamented that he had not been produced by some other agency than that of a mother.

Again, Fitz-Herbert, did you ever stop to think that it is the duty, and equally the pleasure, of man to perpetuate himself? And that, if, by refusing to marry, you do not perpetuate yourself, you tacitly acknowledge you are not worth perpetuating? I will not stop here to explain to you the great beauty and blessing of children, or to point out how much better and brighter the world is for their presence, but I will only state the point in its abstract form—that if you do not marry some woman, and issue a little blue-and-gold-edition of yourself, and then another edition revised and corrected, and so on ad infinitum or ad libitum, you simply say to the world, "I am an incapable and good-for-nothing, not worth perpetuating." This point is worth such attention as you can spare from your back hair and neck-tie; and I advise you whenever you have time enough to put your whole mind upon it, to astonish your mind by doing so.

Now, as my last general principle—or, as Parson Creamcheese would say, eighthly and lastly—I assume that God Almighty has pointed out this duty of marriage, and this fact that you are incomplete when single, in every conceivable manner. The whole of Nature is one grand system of marriage, and without it, Nature could not exist for a single minute. Although the animals cannot feel the influence of love, because they are bereft of sentiment, still instinct teaches them they are happiest in pairs, and compels them to recognize the dual principle. You never saw a flower in your life which was not the personification of the marriage principle, the stamens playing the part of a woman, and the pistil that of a man, although you should not follow the botanical analogy too literally, by taking more than one stamen. All ideas, all beauty, all feelings, all effects in the great world of nature and humanity depend for their existence upon this dual principle, which only takes shape and exerts influence in the form of marriage. Now, you see, my dear Fitz-Herbert, it does not look well in you to set yourself against the inevitable tendency of nature and humanity and the fixed purpose of the Creator, by remaining single, merely because you think you are going to "sacwifice your fweedom." As I said before, it is all bosh.

This is a plain statement of the facts in the premises, and now I am going to suggest a remedy for the wretchedness which is consequent upon their violation and a penalty for their violator.