The stock on hand must be disposed of, in order to give place to the new stock of odes and sonnets on Spring, and contributions on "the violet" and the "skipful lamb." THOUGHTS ON MARRIAGE. |Marriage is, to a man, at once the happiest and saddest event of his life. He quits all the companions and associations of his youth, and becomes the chief attraction of a new home. [Illustration: 9188] Every former tie is loosened, the spring of every hope and action is to be changed, and yet he flees with joy to the untrodden paths before him. Then woe to the woman who can blight such joyful anticipations, and wreck the bright hopes of the trusting, faithful, fragrant, masculine blossom, and bang his head against the sink, and throw him under the cooking range, and kick him into a three-cornered mass, and then sit down on him. Little do women realize that all a man needs under the broad cerulean dome of heaven is love--and board and clothes. Love is his life. If some woman or other don't love him, and love him like a hired man, he pines away and eventually climbs the golden stair. Man is born with strong yearnings for the unyearnablc, and he does not care so much for wealth as he does for some one who will love him under all circumstances and in all conditions. If women would spend their evenings at home with their husbands, they would see a marked change in the brightness of their homes. Too many sad-eyed men are wearing away their lives at home alone. Would that I had a pen of fire to write in letters of living light the ignominy and contumely and--some more things like that, the names of which have escaped my memory--that are to-day being visited upon my sex. Remember that your husband has the most delicate sensibilities, and keenly feels your coldness and neglect. The former may be remedied by toasting the feet over a brisk fire before going to bed, but the latter can only be remedied by a total reform on your part. Think what you promised his parents when you sued for his hand. Think how his friends, and several girls to whom he had at different times been engaged, came to you with tears in their eyes and besought you not to be unkind to him. Do these things ever occur to you as you throw him over the card table and mop the floor with his remains? Do you ever feel the twinges of remorse after you have put an octagonal head on him for not wiping the dishes drier? Think what a luxurious home you took him from, and how his mother used to polish his boots and take care of him, and then consider what drudgery you subject him to now. Think what pain it must cause him when you growl and swear at him. Perhaps when you went away to your work you did not leave him wood and coal and water; does he ever murmur or repine at your neglect?