If we could only get near enough to Genius to comprehend its superior worth; if we could reverence talent and admire integrity and take true measure of prospective greatness, what a fortune we would possess!
Like high-priced lots in large cities, the discoverers of rare locations seldom knew the value of their purchases. It takes time for development; more time in genius and character than we are always ready to wait for; but the far-seeing are always rewarded, so with the prizes of matrimony.
Don’t marry and expect a husband to be wealthy while young. Only the older men should be looked to for high financial standing. In a hopeful country like ours, few are rich under fifty, seldom under sixty.
Young men who earn their education, and begin and learn a business are barely partners at thirty or thirty-five. It takes time to prosper. Several mistakes may be made. Scarcely a wholesale house in New York or Boston has run on twenty years without a failure. Failure is the rule, success the exception. Patience, pluck, and perseverance win the victory, but they who spend freely in the forenoon have little left in the evening. Those who save early double in like ratio later on.
Don’t marry in opposite religious views. If possible, marry near your own belief. This may seem strained, but the story of divorces will confirm its wisdom. Children and parents very often disagree on religious subjects. The farmer’s “Betsey and I are out” controversy, “was a difference in our creed. And the more we argued the matter, the less we ever agreed.”
It is pleasant to agree on a subject so vital in families, more especially so in Protestant and Catholic families, where education is sometimes controlled by church government, and marriages are held illegal in one church if not solemnized by its forms and between regular believers in its faith and doctrines.
Don’t marry a duke, or any man who travels on his title. The most of such men are very common, and the most of young people who seek their company are sold, deceived, and seriously disappointed.
They expect a fortune to begin with, and will be the most exacting of all mortals. This is a mere matter of birth and surroundings. Novels tell many beautiful stories (pretty visions) about brave and noble dukes and their princely palaces, attentive servants, and flower-arbors. Experience tells far different stories.
The history of nine out of ten of such unnatural unions is a record of a half million or so squandered on a petted daughter to satisfy a mother’s ambition, and ending in misery entailed by the dearly bought purchase. Don’t marry so much out of rank as to be a burden, or carry a burden.