“I am very much in love with a man of fifty who is a widower with four children, the oldest being only fifteen. Would you advise me to marry him? He has no money of his own—is working on a small salary.
“Abbie S.”
No, we do not advise you to marry him. The position of step-mother to four children is not an enviable one. No doubt, he wants you to be a mother to his children, a wife to him, cook, housekeeper, needle-woman and perhaps laundress. We advise you to look farther before you marry.
“I have read every number of ‘Marion Marlowe,’ and I can hardly wait for the weeks to come around. I know a young man who is exactly like ‘Bert Jackson,’ and I mean to catch him for a husband, if possible. Do you blame me?
“Nora.”
I do not indeed, and I wish you success! Young men like “Bert Jackson” are very rare. We advise you to do all that you can, modestly and properly, of course, to make Bert’s counterpart fall in love with you. We are sure it will be a happy marriage.
“I am about to be married, my dear Miss Shirley, and I am sure it will surprise you to learn that I am very unhappy. All my life I have heard and read of the ‘perfect bliss’ which a young girl feels on the eve of her marriage, yet I am to be married in a week, and I spend half of my time in crying. I think that I love my future husband very dearly, yet I can’t bear to give up my girlhood and be a married woman, and then I am beset by the responsibilities and uncertainties of the future. Am I different from other girls, or is this a natural feeling? I cannot talk to my mother on this subject. She is a very peculiar woman and only laughs at my anxieties.