THE HASTY MARRIAGE.
A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE.
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BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE BRIDAL.”
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How few “look before they leap,” even in an affair of so much moment as matrimony. We fear the fault is in our system. We educate our daughters superficially—for display rather than usefulness—to catch the eye rather than win the heart. Our girls are taught in early life, either directly or indirectly, that marriage is the great object of woman’s ambition, and in endeavoring to secure that object, and to surpass in the race of conquest their companions and rivals, they sometimes wed rashly and to the sacrifice of happiness. Difficult, we are aware, is the task of discrimination with the young and inexperienced. Pure and artless themselves, they are apt to imagine the possession of like virtues by all others, and to conceive it impossible for a fine form and a handsome face to be associated with a false heart. Alas! how often are they disappointed! How frequently do the sudden attachments of early life prove hollow and unsubstantial! How often is it discovered that the first dream of love, which has been so extravagantly eulogized by poets and romancers, was a mere delusion that would not bear the test of time and of reason! With what bitterness of disappointment have many started from this dream! Stripped of the rainbow coloring with which the fancy is apt to paint an object of idolatry, how prominent appear the darkness and the deformity! How broad the contrast between the just view of truth and the rapid and prejudiced survey of passion! How often do we see beings standing before the altar, pledging themselves to each other for weal and for wo, who, comparatively speaking, were strangers but yesterday! Knowing little of each other’s lives and dispositions, merits or demerits, they are willing to risk peace of mind for long years, and to identify destinies for time, perhaps for eternity! Can we wonder that strife sometimes mars the domestic circle—that wives are left lonely and deserted—that the agency of man should so often be invoked to part beings who have been joined together by an ordinance of God!
A happy union is indeed a scene upon which, without irreverence, we may suppose the angels in Heaven gaze from their bright places of abode with delight and approval. An unnatural or a discordant marriage, on the other hand, must form a source of delight to the arch enemy of mankind, for in it he can recognize the soul of evil. That the young should seek for and cling to a kindred spirit is natural. The undivided possession of a pure heart is perhaps the very acme of human felicity. “One home, one wife, and one God,” is the sentiment of one of the wisest of his race, and it is only when man is on the shady side of fifty that he begins to appreciate the truth of this philosophy in all its solemnity and force. Then his pleasures of life are derived as much from the past as the future, and the associations of that past, if mingled with virtue, fidelity, patriotism and religion, are indeed blissful.
We pity the lonely and the desolate—the loveless and the unloved—the being without a wife or a friend—without one trusting and confiding spirit, to whom the heart may turn in its hour of sorrow and pour out its inmost and saddest thoughts. The cold and selfish mortal who passes year after year without experiencing the delightful concord of sentiment to be found in a kindred soul, is indeed the most miserable of his species. Even his joys are robbed of half their delight, because unshared by another, by one to whom he is allied by love and friendship. Wretched indeed is the isolated individual who, mingling with the multitude, can single out no destiny identified with his—no faithful and devoted heart, the breath of whose existence seems bound up with his. Nature has denied to such a being the holiest impulses that warm and agitate the human breast. Even the birds are mated, and without a ministering angel “a sweet companion,” the first born was lonely and desolate in the garden of Eden. So it must ever be with the frail and feeble things of mortal existence. If Paradise could not be appreciated and enjoyed alone, how can man reconcile loneliness to his fallen condition? The desire of the heart is for sweet companionship—the inward craving of the spirit is for a being to love. Can we wonder then that in this country, where early marriage is taught to be desirable, so many should choose rashly?
We remember Annette Delisle as a being of yesterday. She sang well—she danced well—and in many respects she was a beauty. Not one of our beauties at the time, for her form was too slight and sylph-like,—her joy was too gushing—her spirits too redundant. She dressed from early childhood with taste and elegance, and wore her dark hair in long ringlets over her shoulders. She had many friends, and even at sixteen her admirers were liberal in number and profuse in flattery. Her mother, a weak and vain woman, was proud of her daughter—proud of the attention that daughter received, and eager to display her on every occasion. Thus she not only frequently accompanied her to public balls, which were then more fashionable and somewhat more select than at present, but she permitted her to accept of numerous invitations to parties, and to mingle almost nightly during the winter season in the gay scenes of our metropolis. The father, good-natured man, was a manufacturer, and was so wedded to business, that he could not spare time even for the proper care of his favorite child. Alas! this good nature in fathers! It sometimes degenerates into a sad vice, and is the source of much misery in after life. The man who lacks the energy to control his own household,—who is either too negligent, or too weak to point out the true path and to direct the footsteps of his offspring therein, is guilty of much that is unpardonable.