Don’t marry a fast man or woman. Something tells us that black logs will darken the whitest garments. The edge of virtue once dulled is never quite so keen afterwards. It may be very well to speak slightingly of wild oats, but who cares to know that their oats are a second crop? Who is willing to believe that they are the last resort of one who has pleaded and pledged to hundreds or even dozens before her, or waits an opportunity to make as many more pledges as occasion may offer? Fast men are not satisfied with one vice merely, but follow on to many. They may drink, gamble, sport, and venture, and step by step indulge in the kindred vices of lewdness, till disease shall fasten its clutches in their burning blood and run in their veins for a lifetime. They are rarely satisfied with one home, one wife, and one family.
Don’t marry a foreigner,—one who comes from a far-away country and returns to it. It is very uncertain; think ahead carefully. The new and strange customs of his country may and may not be congenial. They may be a dreary dream of home and early separation. Think of the ties of friendship, the cords of affection twined and woven around your nature; ties that are not severed without many pangs of sorrow. Life is a short, strange journey, and, make it when we will or where we will, it is pleasant to be made with company. Those who know us best will love us most if we deserve it, and few will continue on in friendship long after we go to strange and unknown countries. A stranger neighbor soon comes nearer than a long-absent friend whom we never hear from.
Don’t marry a spendthrift. The habit of living is formed early. Either one is bent on rising or going lower. As water seeks its level, so men seek their ambition and find it. Prosperity comes not on silver trays, ready-made and ready for use to everybody; most men work for it, strive for it, and deserve it. The sons of the rich, who inherit property and have formed the habit of useless spending, are a little bit lower than the poor. It is not disgraceful at all to be born poor; but to become so after once being rich, and that through reckless spending, is a dishonor to any one. “One thing we can be proud of,” said Ingersoll; “we’ve made some improvement on the original implements and the common stock.”
A young man who lives on his father’s earnings has very little to boast of, but one who squanders his inheritance in riotous living is an object of contempt and ridicule. “He is one of the old man’s pensioners,” said a business man lately of a rich man’s son. “But for his father’s thrift he would be a beggar; he lives like a refined beggar on the food furnished by another. What a brilliant genius he is!”
Don’t marry your cousin. It may be very tempting; relatives are often warmly attached to each other from long and intimate acquaintance. Remember that constantly thrown in each other’s society will often create such attachments. With many persons, marriage of blood relations will more or less lead to deafness, blindness, or deformity. It may skip one generation and find another. It may result in disease and weakness. It may be all right, but seven to eight it is risky and uncertain, and you can’t afford to be uncertain in such matters.
Don’t marry too far above or below you. There is no such thing as station in this country, like the titles and surroundings of Europe; but ignorance mated with refinement must be lost and confused, and ill at ease every hour.
Such matches are hasty, and poorly considered. They lead to gossip and resentment of relatives, and an uncomfortable ill-feeling, seldom cured for a full generation. If one has beauty and refinement and is poor, never mind the poverty; the good qualities are more than a balance. But the marriage of a millionaire’s daughter with a coachman is supreme folly. It ends in disunion, and never in harmony. Water and oil will as soon mix as such elements. Avoid them.
Don’t marry a doubly divorced man or woman: it’s risky. Something is wrong surely. One divorce should cure any one. Two is a profusion. It may be that the doubly divorced is innocent,—he will claim to be; but if he seeks a new party to a possible divorce case (it will be a habit by this time), tell him to wait a little longer. Grass widows may be very lovable creatures, but unless their other halves were clearly blamable, beyond reasonable question, give them a wide road and avoid them entirely. It is a very bad sign, possibly a habit, that a man and woman mate and divide soon after; the fault may belong to either, and most likely relates to both, in similar proportions.
Don’t marry a miser. Of all the old “curmudgeons” on earth, deliver me from crabbed, narrow-minded, pinch-penny, miserable misers.
They begrudge you your meals and clothing. They count your shillings and control your pin purchases; they make life a burden, by owning much and using little, and eternally twit you of every quarter used ever so sparingly.