Past her first girlhood, at twenty-nine she engaged herself to a young man eight years her junior, inferior to herself in social position, education, speech, and manner, and with a weekly income of twenty-five shillings, no other money, and relatives who rather needed help than were likely to give it.
She came to ask if I would smooth matters with the relatives, who were grieved and indignant at her folly in thinking of such a union. A little questioning elicited the facts that her savings were to furnish the cottage, pay the wedding expenses, including the bridegroom’s new suit, and that rent alone would absorb six out of the weekly twenty-five shillings. She could not retain her position after marriage, but she hoped to earn something by giving music lessons.
Need I tell you what eloquence I wasted on this wilful young woman, who was old enough to know better, but too old and obstinate to be convinced against her will. I brought figures to bear, put the cost of the barest necessaries opposite to that nineteen shillings of weekly income after payment of rent. But it was all useless. She did not want to be convicted of rashness and folly, but to induce others to agree to them.
You have doubtless foreseen the result whilst listening to the prelude. The marriage took place. The wife’s money was all absorbed at the start, and debts began to be incurred almost immediately. The man was not of the sort likely to win a better position, and the woman, gently nurtured, found in him a hard, selfish domestic tyrant, who made her life of toil doubly bitter by his coarseness and the harshness of his conduct towards the children. Friends had said they would not help; but pity and the old affection for the woman whose childhood they had watched over conquered indignation, and much was done for her, often by stealth, or she and her little ones would have been no better for it. I will not tell the rest of a sad story; but what I have said gives a picture of results where neither conscience nor reason had a voice in deciding the future of two lives.
Every rank of life furnishes samples of ill-advised marriages. A girl may be attracted by a handsome person, and not pause to find out whether the moral and religious character of the man corresponds with it. She may note his pleasant social qualities and admire them; but it would be well for her to find out whether these are equally notable under the home roof. It is good to know what sort of a son and brother a man is.