Young people often rush into marriage without reflection. A young man meets a pretty face in a ball-room, likes it, dances with it, flirts with it, and goes home to dream about it. At length he falls in love with it, courts it, marries it, and then he takes the pretty face home, and begins to know something more about it. All has as yet been "very jolly." The face has hitherto been charming, graceful, artless, and beautiful. It has now to enter upon another sphere of life. It has to be seen much closer; it has to be seen daily; and it has to begin housekeeping.
Most newly married people require some time to settle quietly down together. Even those whose married life has been the happiest, arrive at peace and repose through a period of little struggles and bewilderments. The husband does not all at once find his place, nor the wife hers. One of the very happiest women we know has told us, that the first year of her married life was the most uncomfortable of all. She had so much to learn—was so fearful of doing wrong—and had not yet found her proper position. But, feeling their way, kind and loving natures will have no difficulty in at last settling down comfortably and peacefully together.
It was not so with the supposed young man and his pretty "face." Both entered upon their new life without thinking; or perhaps with exaggerated expectations of its unalloyed happiness. They could not make allowances for lovers subsiding into husband and wife; nor were they prepared for the little ruffles and frettings of individual temper; and both felt disappointed. There was a relaxation of the little attentions which are so novel and charming to lovers. Then the pretty face, when neglected, found relief in tears.
There is nothing of which men tire sooner, especially when the tears are about trifles. Tears do not in such cases cause sympathy, but breed repulsion. They occasion sourness, both on the one side and the other. Tears are dangerous weapons to play with. Were women to try kindness and cheerfulness instead, how infinitely happier would they be. Many are the lives that are made miserable by an indulgence in fretting and carking, until the character is indelibly stamped, and the rational enjoyment of life becomes next to a moral impossibility.
Mental qualities are certainly admirable gifts in domestic life. But though they may dazzle and delight, they will not excite love and affection to anything like the same extent as a warm and happy heart. They do not wear half so well, and do not please half so much. And yet how little pains are taken to cultivate the beautiful quality of good temper and happy disposition! And how often is life, which otherwise might have been blessed, embittered and soured by the encouragement of peevish and fretful habits, so totally destructive of everything like social and domestic comfort! How often have we seen both men and women set themselves round about as if with bristles, so that no one dared to approach them without the fear of being pricked. For want of a little occasional command over one's temper, an amount of misery is occasioned in society which is positively frightful. Thus is enjoyment turned into bitterness, and life becomes like a journey barefooted, amongst prickles, and thorns, and briars.
In the instance we have cited, the pretty face soon became forgotten. But as the young man had merely bargained for the "face"—as it was that to which he had paid his attentions—that which he had vowed to love, honour, and protect.—when it ceased to be pretty, he began to find out that he had made a mistake. And if the home be not made attractive,—if the newly married man finds that it is only an indifferent boarding-house,—he will gradually absent himself from it. He will stay out in the evenings, and console himself with cigars, cards, politics, the theatre, the drinking club; and the poor pretty face will then become more and more disconsolate, hopeless, and miserable.
Perhaps children grow up; but neither husband nor wife know much about training them, or keeping them healthy. They are regarded as toys when babies, dolls when boys and girls, drudges when young men and women. There is scarcely a quiet, happy, hearty hour spent during the life of such a luckless couple. Where there is no comfort at home, there is only a succession of petty miseries to endure. Where there is no cheerfulness,—no disposition to accommodate, to oblige, to sympathize with one another,—affection gradually subsides on both sides.
It is said, that "When poverty comes in at the door, loves flies out at the window." But it is not from poor men's houses only that love flies. It flies quite as often from the homes of the rich, where there is a want of loving and cheerful hearts. This little home might have been snug enough; with no appearance of want about it; rooms well furnished; cleanliness pervading it; the table well supplied; the fire burning bright; and yet without cheerfulness. There wanted the happy faces, radiant with contentment and good humour. Physical comfort, after all, forms but a small part of the blessings of a happy home. As in all other concerns of life, it is the moral state which determines the weal or woe of the human condition.
Most young men think very little of what has to follow courtship and marriage. They think little of the seriousness of the step. They forget that when the pledge has once been given, there is no turning back, The knot cannot be untied. If a thoughtless mistake has been made, the inevitable results will nevertheless follow. The maxim is current, that "marriage is a lottery." It may be so if we abjure the teachings of prudence—if we refuse to examine, inquire, and think—if we are content to choose a husband or a wife, with less reflection than we bestow upon the hiring of a servant, whom we can discharge any day—if we merely regard attractions of face, of form, or of purse, and give way to temporary impulse or to greedy avarice—then, in such cases, marriage does resemble a lottery, in which you may draw a prize, though there are a hundred chances to one that you will only draw a blank.
But we deny that marriage has any necessary resemblance to a lottery. When girls are taught wisely how to love, and what qualities to esteem in a companion for life, instead of being left to gather their stock of information on the subject from the fictitious and generally false personations given to them in novels; and when young men accustom themselves to think of the virtues, graces, and solid acquirements requisite in a wife, with whom they are to spend their days, and on whose temper and good sense the whole happiness of their home is to depend, then it will be found that there is very little of the "lottery " in marriage; and that, like any concern of business or of life, the man or woman who judges and acts wisely, with proper foresight and discrimination, will reap the almost certain consequences in a happy and prosperous future. True, mistakes may be made, and will be made, as in all things human; but nothing like the grievous mistake of those who stake their happiness in the venture of a lottery.