While there are, perhaps, fewer purely mercenary marriages in our country than in any other, it can not be denied that a large proportion of enterprising young men act, consciously, or unwittingly, on the advice of the Scotchman who warned his son not to marry for money, but in seeking a wife, “to gae where money is.”
“Is he marrying her fortune, or herself?” asked one gossip of another when an approaching bridal was spoken of.
“They say he is very much in love with her!” was the answer, uttered dubiously. “I fancy, however, that he would have repressed his passion, if she were a poor girl.”
Which brings us to a much more delicate matter than the division of the income earned, or inherited, by the bridegroom.
It is a fact that may have much significance—or none—that the bride makes no mention of endowing her husband with all, or any portion, of her worldly goods. It is likewise significant that laws (of man’s devising) take it for granted that her property goes with her, so that in most of our states it is his without other act of gift than the marriage ceremony.
MARRYING FOR MONEY
The man who marries for money has no scruples as to the acceptance and the use of it. Sometimes it is squandered; sometimes, but not often, it is hoarded; most frequently “it goes into the husband’s business” and is invested by him for the benefit of himself and his family.
THE BRIDE’S DOWRY
The nicer issue with which we have to do is how our conscientious John, who would have married his best girl if she had not possessed one penny in her own right, is to comport himself with regard to the fortune, modest or considerable, which she brings to him as dowry.