No. Bachelor as I am, I have a higher idea of Marriage than this. The
social advantages which it is fitted to produce ought to extend beyond
one man and one woman, to the circle of society amid which they move.
The light of its beauty must not be shut up within the four walls which
enclose the parents and the family, but must flow out into the world, and
shine upon the childless and the solitary, because it has warmth enough
and to spare, and because it may make them, even in their way, happy too.
I began these few lines by asking sympathy and attention for the interest
which a man's true friends have, when he marries, in his choosing a wife
who will let them be friends still, who will even help them to mingling in
closer brotherhood, if help they need. I lay down the pen, suggesting to
some ladies--affectionately suggesting, if they will let me use the word,
after some of the bold things I have said--that it is in their power to
deprive the bachelor of the sole claim he has left to social recognition
and preeminence, by making married men what many of them are, and what
more might be--the best and truest friends that are to be found in the
world.
SOCIAL GRIEVANCES.--V.
MRS. BULLWINKLE.
Ladies and gentlemen. Give me five minutes' sympathy and attention. I have
something serious to say to you.
I am a married man, with an income which is too miserably limited to be
worth mentioning. About a month since, my wife advanced me one step nearer
to the Court for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors, by presenting me with
another child. On five previous occasions, her name had appeared in the
List of British Mothers which adorns the daily Supplement of the Times
newspaper. At each of these trying periods (I speak entirely of myself
when I use the word "trying") she was attended by the same Monthly Nurse.
On this last, and sixth, occasion, we were not so fortunate as to secure
the services of our regular functionary. She was already engaged; and a
new Nurse, with excellent recommendations, was, therefore, employed in
her stead. When I first heard of her, and was told that her name was Mrs.
Bullwinkle, I laughed. It was then the beginning of the month. It is now
the end of it, and I write down that once comical name with a settled
gravity which nothing can disturb.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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