A Home of My Own: To Marry or Not To Marry
Home Makes a Man
HOME! It is a charmed word. Through that one syllable thrills untold melody, and the laughter of children; the sound of well-known footsteps, and the voices of undying affection.
"Home! Upon that word there drop the sunshine of beauty and the shadow of tender sorrows, the reflection of ten thousand voices and fond memories." "Home! When I see that word in a book or newspaper,” continues Dr. Talmage, ‘‘the word seems to rise, and sparkle, and leap and thrill, and whisper and chant, and pray and weep. If some lexicographer, urged on by the spirit of evil, should seek to cast forth that word from the language, the children would come forth and hide it in the grass and wild flowers, and the wealthy would go forth and cover it with their diamonds and pearls ; and kings would hide it under their crowns ; and after Herod had hunted its life from Bethlehem to Egypt, and utterly given up the search, some bright, warm day it would flash from among the gems, and breathe from among the flowers, and shine from among the coronets ; and the world would read it, bright and fair, and beautiful and resonant, as before. Home!”
What a beautiful outline is this of the joy and happiness of a real home; and it is true, as another writer has said, that a man who avoids matrimony on account of the cares of wedded life, cuts himself off from a great blessing for fear of a trifling annoyance.
The Wonder of the Gods
A real, happy marriage of love and judgment between a noble woman and a worthy man is one of the things so very beautiful that if the sun were, as the Greek poets fabled, a god, he might stop the world in order to feast his eyes upon such a spectacle. This happy state of married life is possible to all, in the degree that the husband and wife are in earnest; in the degree of their love for each other, and their desire for what we mean by a true home.
He must indeed be a poor apology for a man who, in this land of opportunity, cannot get a home of his own. There is perhaps no other country in the world where a young man can so easily become the possessor of a home as in America, provided he is not imbued with the false philosophy which is now so fully believed in by many of both sexes. It is one of the saddest features of our modern civilization that there is this tendency to remain single; and an increase in the number of those who ‘‘ cannot afford ” to get married will be a serious thing for our modern civilization.
Don't Take Too Many Chances
There is, of course, a limit to the chances a make should take of being able to support a wife. He should be sure as it is possible to be that his position will be permanent so long as he is satisfactory to his employers; and his salary should be such that it has enabled him to lay aside a little so that, in case of an emergency, there will be something ahead to encourage him. The girl who has promised to share his lot will, if she has in her the makeup of a true wife, help rather than hinder him in making his little paradise. It may, perhaps, be humble at first, — perhaps always so, if Fortune does not beam on them with a golden smile; but that will not make them unhappy. Naturally the lover (who ought never to be lost in the husband, ) will have many a pang of regret that he cannot support his wife as other men are able to do; but, through it all, through the days of joy and sorrow, — for both will come, — there will be still the same sacred happiness that came to these two, at first in their little home.
Marriage Makes or Mars
There is no doubt that marriage offers the most effective opportunities for spoiling the life of another. Nobody can debase, harass and ruin a woman so fatally as her own husband ; and nobody can do a tithe so much to chill a man’s aspirations, to paralyze his energies, as_ his wife. A man is never irretrievably ruined in his prospects until he marries a bad woman; and nothing much worse can happen to a woman than marrying a bad man. On the other hand, as George Eliot says, ‘‘ What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life, — to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the last parting?” Each is a good half, but an impossible whole ; it is only when the wrong halves are joined that unhappiness follows.
Either sex alone is half itself, and in true marriage lies Nor equal nor unequal; each fulfills Defect in each, and always thought in thought, Purpose in purpose, will in will they grow. ”
What Consideration Would
Ah! if every young couple could on their wedding day realize the responsibility they have undertaken; if they only would believe that love cannot live without nourishment ; that they must be as loving and thoughtful after marriage as in the days that preceded it ; that every passionate, thoughtless word of anger strikes deeper and deeper into each heart, till some day, where love and peace reigned, there shall be, perhaps not strife, but a lasting sorrow and estrangement. If each man and woman whom God and love have joined would resolve that neither pride nor spirit should prevail over love, but be subdued to it, how many homes would be happier today than they are.
" O ye builders of homes, who hold in your hands this great power for good or evil, do not make the fatal mistake of caring for everything else but this; of spending all your time, and exhausting all your energies in pursuit of wealth, society, honor or fame, forgetting that, compared with a happy home, all these are but ‘vanity and vexation of spirit..’”
There’s a bliss beyond all that the minstre! has told, When two, that are linked in one heavenly tie, With heart never changing, and brow never cold, Love on thro’ all ills, and love on till they die. One hour of a passion so sacred is worth Whole ages of heartless and wondering bliss – MOORE
