WH SECOND MARRIAGES HEN a widower marries again, as he is prone to do, after a decent interval, it is usually felt by his friends, that his desolate loneliness made companionship in the bereft home a necessity. If he has children, it is evident that he needs somebody to aid him in bringing them up. A widower with young children is much more helpless than a widow in the same condition. She can take in sewing or washing, if she is poor, and bring up her boys and girls in some sort of comfort and respectability, though often enough they have a hard row to hoe. He, being poor, cannot fend for himself and his bairns at home, cannot cook or make or mend for them, and as he has not the wherewithal to pay a housekeeper, he must needs marry and get one who will work for board and lodging. People in easy circumstances have not the excuse of poverty, and, it would seem, might remain longer than they do, faithful to the memory of the vanished hand and the sound of the voice that is still. But human nature starves on mere memories, and it is often those whose first marriages were most successful, having brought them a rich harvest of love and joy, who seek refuge from loss and pain in a second union. To those who knew and loved the one who is gone, there is usually a sharp pang when cards come for the second wedding. There is the thought of the wife in her grave, of the husband who toiled so hard and died so soon. A jealous sense of the injury death did these, who fell so early in the crowded ways of the world, and who so swiftly have been forgotten, is as natural and as inevitable on the part of the observant outsiders, as the reaction from a far deeper grief has been on the part of those who remarry. Life is too stern, too clamorous, too insistent in its demands, to allow any but exceptional souls to plod on alone, if they can form new and congenial ties. It is not probable that anyone forgets wholly the past, or the comrade who made the past a delight, in beginning anew with some one else. The other scenes are over. Finis is written at the end of the other page. But in the back of the mind, ineffaceable, deeply graven, lingers, unobliterated, the image of the first love. A curtain is dropped over it; that is all. And a devotion as real, an enthusiasm as fresh and keen, may accompany the second love as glorified the first. The hearth is swept, the new fire is laid, the flames shall kindle again, and house and heart grow warm in the cheery glow. Though stepmothers are invariably suspected, and often scorned, with an injustice as old as the race, stepfathers are less harshly criticised, and are generally commended. A man can seldom have the chance to be unkind in little ways, and, to do him justice, he seldom wants to be less than generous in his adoption of a wife's family into his love and care. Many women are wonderfully gentle and self-denying stepmothers, but few get the credit their goodness deserves. T THE LOVE THAT LASTS HOUGH every part of the swiftly moving year has its chime of marriage bells, yet October is the month most highly favored by brides, and the pomp of early autumn lends itself most graciously to the processional march that leads to the altar. Notwithstanding the fact that easy divorce is the shame and disgrace of our country, happily and steadfastly, loyal marriages are the rule, and the exceptions only emphasize its well-nigh universal scope and reign. The wide land over, cheerful and loving home life prevails. Men go to their work in the morning and come home at night to the dear ones, and women and children dwell in peaceful security under roofs that are bulwarked by fidelity and affection. We need never fear for the stability of the republic while far from our congested towns, in rural neighborhoods, in little villages, in quiet farmsteads, husbands and wives live in mutual confidence and the security of reciprocal understanding, and a trust that admits neither suspicion nor doubt. Jealousy, which eats like corroding rust into the pure circlet of the wedding ring, is the foe of home happiness, but it is the exception, not the rule. In the glow of the bridal hour, it never seems possible to either of the contracting parties that anything shall cast so much as a transient shadow on their felicity. Each honestly thinks the other perfect. Each tries to yield to the other, finding delight in small sacrifices, and anticipating every unspoken wish, with eager zest, each hastens to brim with some new surprise of gladness the other's cup of blessing. From this high plane of exalted idealism, there is often a decline to lower levels in the commonplaces of every-day existence. When the honeymoon is over, the bride and groom of necessity lay aside, half unconsciously, whatever of company manners they wore, and appear in their own proper characters. One may be sometimes unreasonable. The other may be irritable. Either may be occasionally hasty and say sharp words soon regretted. Now comes the testing time of the Passion may wane. love that lasts. It is the mere efflorescence of true love that if it be of the right and noble kind, grows deeper with the years. Says Emerson, pithily, A ruddy drop of manly blood The world uncertain comes and goes, The lover rooted stays. Old husbands and wives, by a thousand little threadlets of daily communion, a thousand unconsidered acts of imitation, grown more and more similar and more and more intimate, actually come to look alike. The same expression animates the two dear old faces, that in youth were in contrast of line, shape and color. The love that lasts transfigures and illumines our clay and makes it half divine. Let the young people who shall be married in the coming autumn days, beware of the first quarrel. It is the little rift within the lute That by and by shall make the music mute. No difference of opinion should cause friction. Two grown persons, brought up in opposite environments, may not always reach identical conclusions at once, but sensible married couples may now and then agree to differ. A good plan is never to let the day end in controversy. If there is need of pardon asked and granted, let it be done hefore night draws its curtain round the home. Where there is never a first downright quarrel, with its sequence of heartache, there will never be a second. Yet unbroken harmony may approximate stagnation. Where two love one another, the monotony of the days may be diversified by little contests of wit, and little passages at arms, which mean nothing but kindness, and add spice to the daily brew. The love that lasts is of sterling stuff. It does not go to pieces because the sea is not as smooth as a mill-pond. Given entire confidence, congenial tempers, a common creed, decent self-restraint on both sides, and a due degree of demonstration, the tenderness and beauty of marriage will weaken every gale. There are those who kill love by fault-finding, or freeze it by cold indifference, or stab it by infidelity. God pity them and forgive their folly! But God be praised, they are in the minority. The great majority drinks a cup that is honeysweet, to the last drop in the end of life. |