This story of chances is an old, old story. It is a failing of human nature. There isn't a young woman in the world who has been gazed at admiringly by a young man, but has imagination strong enough to convert that look into a chance. That story won't do. I want something more definite.
In the second place, I would like to know if any of my correspondents who have had so many chances improved one of them and got married? If so, I would like again to know, what in the world you are complaining of? Is it quite complimentary to your other half, who buys your bonnets, provides your beefsteaks, pays your washerwoman, and looks after the pocket-book side of your marital contract? With that estimable man in your eye—and I should hate to deny in your presence, Madame, that he was not estimable—how can you have the assurance to deny that there are women who would marry, if they had the chance? Are the grapes which grow on your vines soured? Has the honeymoon grown bitter in its waxings and wanings? Have you put your finger in the fire and been burned?
I hope not, but it looks so, my dear—it looks so.
I have a letter from still another correspondent—written in a savage, vinegary sort of chirography—who lugs in that stale crowd, Anna Dickinson, Miss Anthony, etc., to prove that women will not always marry when they have a chance. I do not recognize anything womanly in these clamorous individuals bawling from stumps, and crying themselves hoarse for rights which any of them can have if they have sense enough to take them. If a woman will deliberately unsex herself, she has no right to expect chances. If she ever, by some mysterious dispensation of Divine Providence, gets a chance, it is kindness to the dumb brute who gave her the chance, when she refuses it. The good God, when He established the relation of the sexes, never intended that man should ally himself to a woman with ice-water in her veins and a head full of syllogisms. He might as well marry a treatise on metaphysics and have done with it. I am sick of this crowd of one-idea women who are invariably trotted out when it is necessary to do or say anything. They are exceptions to all rules, and prove nothing. A cow with five legs and a hen with no tail furnish no data from which to judge of the general family of cows and hens.
It is rather curious that nearly all my correspondents hurl my Maiden Aunt in my face to prove that I am wrong in asserting that every woman would marry if she had a chance. The Maiden Aunt did have a chance, and would have accepted the chance, had not Death stepped in and taken it away from her. She could not love twice, and so she preferred to wait until she could be united to him eternally. It would have been the crowning glory of her life, if she could have married him for whom she wore the forget-me-not so long, and her life therein would have been more perfect than it was. She was ready to marry when she had the chance, but Fate ordered it otherwise, and she bowed her head and submitted to the decree which forbade the chance, but could not forbid the love. And they who were divided in life were united in death, and I know are quite happy now.
September 4, 1869.
