Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Marriage in the States
This indifference of parents does not always remain quiescent. The more resolute oppose by secret or open means the approach of suitors for their girls. And emplo the arts of persuasion and satire to delay the marriage of their sons. How cleverly this is done among the simple would surprise the experienced. Here is an illustration the family had eight children of marriageable age, good examples of the irish-american stock, bright, alert, sociable. The mother, without a single utterance against the marriage state itself, and behind a cordial reception to suitors, man aged a campaign of satire and ridicule against the young men which secured for them a lively rejection of their matrimonial proposals; with the result that the four girls died early and unmarried, quite satisfied that they hadescaped the burdens of married life. Of the four boys one married early, but could never bring his wife to meet his mother; a second married after the mother's death and was then over fifty, for the determined old lady lived long; the other two remained bachelors. The extraordinary prava lence of these instances, and the various forms which they assume must be well known to pastors. A shrewd old father with a good working family, foreseeing his helpless old age, highly appreciative of a comfortable bcme, but deprived by death of his wife's aid, will play the game himself with success; or an 'der sister left in charge of the family will scheme against matrimonial invasion of her inheritance. My attention was at first attracted to this strange condition by the apparent failure of certain families in the third generation. For example, here would be a father and mother of Irish birth, whose brother; and sisters numbered perhaps a dozen, who had endured the hardships of emigra tion and of getting a footing in new lands with splendid strength, who presented the country with ten fine children, and who saw their old age honored with four grandchildren! This phenomenon should open the sleepiest eyr and yet it is as common as our daily bread. Four children in the third generation where there should have been forty. Examina tion showed many causes for this extraordinary failure, but in my experience the chief was the absence of marriages, or late marriages, among those children; and the source of the trouble was a jealous and foolish old woman, determined to keep her children at her side while she lived. And her old age was as garrulous against the married state as her middle age had been critical of suitors. A large family brought up in this hostile atmosphere, reduced to a comfortable and harmless routine, succumbs more easily to disease than an active marrying family. These determined old wow haveoften suffered the double punishment of seeing their chil dren perish before their time, while the marrying family next door multiplied on the earth and trooped back on occasions with companies of children to gladden the home of the grandparents. My children had every advantage, one old mother said me, and half of them are dead, and the other half look as old as mesclf. But the Cronins that lived on potatoes and buttermilk and got no training at all, at all, and married at the crossroads - there's no end to them. It would be useless to tell her that she had culti rated carefully her own misfortunes, that the married state has been so blessed by the Creator that its duties and te sponsibilities develop strength, health, longevity, cheerful ness, resource, and that for most people it is the natural condition in the third decade.
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