“We have not sighed deep, laughed free,
Starved, feasted, despaired—been happy.”
“It used to take two to start a home in colonial days,” Mary would say. “I am really an old-fashioned woman. I helped to make this home. We had twelve hundred dollars in the bank when I stopped working, and John was pretty well established.
“I don’t regret it,” she went on, still speaking as a woman of the future, “even for the children. Of course I do wish we had started earlier. But I would have wanted to wait a while for the children in any case. People risk too much when they start a family before they become sufficiently used to marriage and to each other to know that they can keep on loving 33 each other and to know that they have in them through their mutual, continued happiness the power to make a happy home, a noble home, for children to live in.”
As for the number of children she will have—we reserve that subject for future discussion. We call attention here only to this:
That the facts which were cited from the Smith College records are harmonious with many other facts and records tending to show that the fertility of the modern wife has been considerably underrated, just as the fertility of the colonial wife has been considerably exaggerated.
And this:
That Mary got to her childbearing period sooner than she would have if she hadn’t insisted on marrying John before he was ready to support her. Those two years would have been childless years in any case. But they would probably, if it hadn’t been for Mary’s money, have been lengthened into four or five.
Of course, later marriages in themselves tend to reduce the number of children. As to quality, however, the evidence is not clear. There 34 is even some reason to think that a moderate postponement is conducive to an improvement in quality.
Did you ever read Havelock Ellis’s book called “A Study of British Genius”?