To avoid much lecturing, only two examples are given at any length, in the form of stories. These are as near to the real characters as the writer can safely relate them, being founded on actual romantic and unromantic marriages. As marriage is the first question that every family will discuss, it is well to treat it with exact candor.
Don’t marry for beauty merely. Very few have a supply that would last a full dozen years in a married life that should continue for three decades.
And, more than that, beauty is not the only requisite to happiness. Very handsome people are almost always vain, often exacting, and generally live on their form, paying little or no attention to the rarer qualities of manhood or womanhood.
If one seek beauty alone, he will find it in the fields and flowers and gardens, in paintings, art works, and things of nature; while the real pleasures of life may be found in a thousand ways outside of the worship of beauty.
There are a dozen considerations beyond beauty that should govern the choice of a companion. Think for a moment whom you admire most, trust implicitly, and love more ardently than all others. Truly, it is not the wax-doll face in a milliner’s window; were that so, why not marry the model and get the perfection of beauty? The day will come when the “rain beats in at the heart windows.” The time may run along so fast till the summer is over and the winter snow-drifts shade your locks with silver, when one by one of your friends will visit at the fireside, when some one will love you for your mind and heart and nobleness. Some one suited to your silver-age condition and disposition will be beautiful without any name for beauty; as the soldier said of Grant’s face, after Shiloh’s bloody battle, “That was the handsomest face I ever saw;” yet it was plain and dusty and rugged.
Prize-winners in matrimony have been women of finer mould than mere beauties. Women who have won the hearts of statesmen, and painters and poets, and the good and great of all time, were women of fascination, or what the Southern ladies call sweet women, and not alone noted for their beauty.
Many a one has been known to have been plain but social; not always unhandsome, but never beautiful. They are the best wives and noblest mothers who have more to commend them than mere grace of features, shade of skin, or color of eyes, or art of beautifying. Some are frivolous, and more are flattered into danger. The most miserable man I know is married to one of the most beautiful women. He is jealous; she is exposed to insults unawares. Their home is a Hades six days out of seven. I’ve heard him wish she were less attractive!
Don’t marry a man for money. If money is your real object, the older and uglier he is, the better; for nothing should come between you and the chosen idol of your affection. If you marry one for his money, he will find it out shortly.
What sublime contempt a man must have for one who simply loves his pocket-book! Why not love his farm, or lumber-yard, or herd of cattle? The love of money is a miserly pretence of affection that leads to discontent, distrust, and disgust when they find it out.