Chapter 51
ROYAL MARRIAGES.
There has lately been such a jingle of bells in St. Petersburg and London that we have heard them quite across the sea. The queen's son has married the daughter of the Russian emperor. We are glad of it. It is always well to have people marry who are on the same level. The famous affiancing in New York of a coachman with the daughter of the millionaire who employed him did not turn out well. It was bad for her, but worse for the coachman. Eagle and ox are both well in their places, but let them not marry. The ox would be dizzy in the eyrie, and the eagle ill at home in the barnyard. When the children of two royal homes are united, there ought be no begrudging of powder for the cannonading, or of candles for the illumination. All joy to the Duke of Edinburgh and his fortunate duchess.
But let not our friends across the sea imagine that we have no royal marriages here in this western wilderness. Whenever two hearts come together pledged to make each other happy, binding all their hopes and fears and anticipations in one sheaf, calling on God to bless and angels to witness, though no organ may sound the wedding-march, and no bells may chime, and no Dean of Westminster travel a thousand miles to pronounce the ceremony,--that is a royal marriage.
When two young people start out on life together with nothing but a determination to succeed, avoiding the invasion of each other's idiosyncrasies, not carrying the candle near the gunpowder, sympathetic with each other's employment, willing to live on small means till they get large facilities, paying as they go, taking life here as a discipline, with four eyes watching its perils, and with four hands fighting its battles, whatever others may say or do,--that is a royal marriage. It is so set down in the heavenly archives, and the orange blossoms shall wither on neither side the grave.
We deplore the fact that because of the fearful extravagances of modern society many of our best people conclude that they cannot possibly afford to marry.
We are getting a fearful crop of old bachelors. They swarm around us. They go through life lopsided. Half dressed, they sit round cold mornings, all a-shiver, sewing on buttons and darning socks, and then go down to a long boarding-house table which is bounded on the north and south and east and west by the Great Sahara Desert. We do not pity them at all. May all their buttons be off to-morrow morning! Why do they not set up a plain home of their own and come into the ark two and two?
The supporting of a wife is looked upon as a great horror. Why, dear friends, with right and healthy notions of time and eternity it is very easy to support a wife if she be of the kind worth supporting. If she be educated into false notions of refinement and have "young ladies' institutes" piled on her head till she be imbecile, you will never be able to support her. Everything depends on whether you take for your wife a woman or a doll-baby. Our opinion is that three-fourths the successful men of the day owe much of their prosperity to the wife's help. The load of life is so heavy it takes a team of two to draw it. The ship wants not only a captain, but a first mate. Society to-day, trans-Atlantic and cis-Atlantic, very much needs more royal marriages.