From the marriage license window

Front matter

Class.

Book.

QT2.fe& 5

Contents

CHAPTER I.— The Window — The Human Heart— The Thermometer of Love — A Philosopher's View — Socrates.

CHAPTER II. — Marriage a Practical Affair — Marriage contra Divorces — The Marriage Instinct — Man Needs a Partner — Marriage a Lottery — Relative Happiness — The Feeling of Responsibility

CHAPTEB III. — Encouraging to Marriage — Nihilistic Views — Malthus — Early Marriages — Optimistic Views.

Chapter I

The Window. — The Human Heart. — The Thermometer of Love. — A Philosopher's View. — Socrates.

PERHAPS it may be superfluous to call attention to the fact that there is a window in the county clerk's office bearing the inscription, "Marriage Licenses." Those who have not personally seen that window, a mere framework, however, surmounted on a desk, may have read about it in the daily journals, where the licenses are chronicled day after day all the year round. Spring and summer, fall and winter, this window is literally open to those who, on the right side of our matrimonial laws, are approaching the connubial life. And from the time that the office is opened in the morning till it is closed in the evening the pilgrimage to this window is incessant. Now it is a solitary wanderer, whose mind for a long while has been bent on the matrimonial Mecca. Soon a group of several individuals, each faithfully and patiently waiting for his turn to make oath — hats off and hands erect — to the effect that he is the possessor of all the qualifications prescribed by law entitling him to have the knot tied which is to unite him to the choice of his heart or intellect, as the case may be. And the number of all these applicants is growing, in the course of a year, to quite vast proportions, the total of which may be estimated in round figures at twenty-two thousand souls.

What a sum of love, intellect and sentiments this number represents! But what if we could follow these many souls on their wanderings through life, say only a couple of years after their marriage, how would we not, in hundreds of instances, be surprised at the change of love, at the sorrows, disappointed expectations, miseries and calamities, as results of inharmonious matrimonial unions? The human heart is not always beating in the sweet tempo of love. It is full of passions and will sometimes harbor feelings in direct contrast to the saying that man is the noblest of all creation. The young couple who adore each other to-day, while they are engaged, may two years after their wedding curse the fate that united them in wedlock.

As everybody knows, a great deal of poetry and prose has been written in honor of love. Poets of both sexes have at all times, and will most likely to the last day continue to do so, extolled in writing and speech this feeling or abstraction, or illusion, a single definition of which is meaningless. It is with love as with cold or hot air; it is measured according to its degree of strength. A thermometer of love, properly constructed, would show a great many divisions. According to the notions of our days the Platonic love is below zero, for the great philosopher advocated a mere spiritual love without animal desire. It is a cold love, absolutely out of fashion, void of passion, admiring its object at a respectful distance through the coldest and most unimpassioned contemplation. A little above zero the degree will show the chivalrous love, a form well-known from the middle ages. A chevalier of that time would not dare to propose, and a lady would not accept, until he in the arena had broken a lance in honor of her. We certainly have chevaliers in Chicago, but instead of breaking lances after the olden fashion, nowadays we make our fights in another manner. We are diplomats and good calculators, and we do not want to go back to quasibarbarian modes to win a girl ; and, on the other hand, she does not wish her lover to enter an arena even if he had only to fight the famous John L. It would be an insurmountable task to describe all the degrees of such a thermometer. Its climax would show the blood-heat love with all its subdivisions,— the enthusiastic, the fanatic, the blind, the deep, the unrequited, the selfish love, and so on.

The noblest of all the degrees is by far that which bears the inscription "pure." It predominates among young girls everywhere, and particularly among those from happy homes. The pure love is the triumph of the heart over all ignoble feelings, for it is unselfish. It is love for love's sake alone. — If we are not pessimistic, we cannot but believe that a matrimonial union between young people is founded upon something better than an egotistic calculation. It is unnatural with young hearts to unite in wedlock, that is intended to last until death separates them, without being animated with a deep feeling for each other. But the strength of this feeling has, however, to be measured according to the intellectual standpoint of the parties concerned, according to their mental qualifications, the culture of mind and heart. Love amongst peasants is not the same as love amongst people of society; the romantic and idyllic love that may be found with young country people is not the kind of love that may be found with the young, go-ahead people of large cities. Love with individuals of the lower strata of society is not the same as that with the higher classes. This product of feeling and imagination, as some define it, has its limits within the fixed periphery where birth, education and habits of life have placed its victim. The higher the intellectual development, the stronger also the inherent power of subduing the sensual desire existing in all relations of love between man and woman; the lower the intellectual development, the weaker the power of resistance to sensuality.

There are people who assert that true love, as it is called, can only be found in wedlock, all other love before the accomplished marriage being untrue. It is not a long while ago that a French philosophical physician delivered a lecture, the essence of which was reproduced in the press of all civilized nations. The doctor holds that all human beings, himself of course included, are more or less insane, and consequently the brain during the time we make love, or during the days of engagement, is in a more than usually abnormal condition, a disease that, however, may be partly remedied in marriage. The theory of the mental disease of all humanity is not a new one. An old Spanish adage says that all men are a little of a poet, a little of a doctor, and a little insane. Most people have had a smaller or greater dose of this disease, if it be one, and all will admit that they never felt better or happier than during the days when they commenced their courting attempts that finally were crowned with success. The peculiar condition of a youth smitten with love may be of shorter or longer duration, but it is seldom of a dangerous nature. It is not until all hope is gone that his or her mind may be so clouded that a suicide is committed. We read sometimes in the papers of such results of unrequited love, and the coroner's jury will never fail to give a verdict in accordance with the facts produced, viz.: That the deceased came to his death by his own hand in a fit of insanity.

Without laying any particular stress upon the first part of the French doctor's theory, we must admit that matrimony is the school in which true love must stand its test. No two persons know each other until after marriage. During the time of engagement they are partly blind to their respective faults, or they may conceal these faults, or they will not see them. Women particularly may live during the engagement in a kind of intoxication, in which they never pause a moment to reflect. It is not until after wedlock that they form more rational ideas. Men, as a rule, are more philosophical, but even philosophers may for a while live in a clouded atmosphere of love. It is a question whether the wise Socrates would have united in marriage with Xantippe if he had known her so well as he did after their marriage. Socrates ought to be the model of most husbands. He knew how to make the best of a situation that, according to tradition, does not seem to have been enviable. Nothing could disturb his equanimity. One day, it is told, his lady having given him a terrible lashing of her tongue, he left the house without uttering a word. No sooner had he closed the house door than, from her bedroom window, she emptied a wash-bowl over his body. The cold bath had no effect upon the equanimity of the wise man. He simply took her action as a proof of the fact that there is no cause without effect, declaring that rain is a natural follower of thunder.

Chapter II

Marriage a Practical Affair — Marriage Contra Divorces — The Marriage Instinct — Man Needs a Partner — Marriage a Lottery — Relative Happiness — The Feeling of Responsibility.

JUST as poets have the privilege of singing the praise of love, so the students of political economy and philosophers have taken up the question of the marriage institution. The evolution of marriage is a study not without attractiveness. Marriage has existed at all times. It antedates history, and it will, in spite of the nihilistic and communistic ideas pertaining to the union between man and woman, never cease to exist, for the simple reason that it has its origin in nature. The custom of marriage has varied and changed with time, but there has always, even amongst barbarian tribes, been some rites, and some kind of marriage laws that had to be respected. Nowadays a marriage is considered a very practical affair. We have long ago ceased to consider it a divine institution, the inviolable laws of which are written in heaven. The great masses have no more faith in the divinity of such an institution than they have in the doctrine of kings' and emperors' right to their thrones by the grace of God. Revolutions have done away with the former, and civil laws with the latter ideas. Our divorce courts speak loudly enough of the rights of modern society to loosen the bonds of a marriage; but if we, from the number of yearly divorces, would judge of wedlock in general, we would do it a great injustice. As all human laws, so those pertaining to divorces, are imperfect, and it is no doubt owing to this fact alone whence so many aberrations originate. Naturally the laws are not calculated to produce' divorces, the spirit of these having for its object the protection of the wronged party. Usually pessimists point to the many divorces when matrimony is the topic of conversation. It is an undeniable fact that divorce suits too often give the great public an insight into matrimonial life of a very humiliating and degrading character, but the pessimists are too inclined to forget that it is with the happy marriages as with the best women : they are not made the objects of public criticism, and the happy marriages are, thank God, by far outnumbering the unhappy. Besides, the marriage instinct is lodged in every human being, and the numbers of those in whom the instinct is only weakly developed is fairly compensated by those who enter three, and not so very seldom, four times into marriage, in spite of some very sad former experiences.

Most of us have come across young people who are willing to swear that they never will raise a family. It is nonsense. The very same young man who is determined not to marry, may some fine day meet a girl who, with good and sound arguments, or with no arguments at all, will convince him of the hollowness of his determination, and he will not only yield, but be anxious to name the day for their wedding. We remember a young man who ridiculed a friend of his who took out a license. " You will never catch me," he said very emphatically, and in less than two months he was a married man. When reminded of his sarcasm he simply remarked that he was unconscious of the perils, and that his girl had not appeared on the scene at that time; he was not only cured, he meant, but also a good victim for the tutelary genii of wedlock.

It is a law of nature to raise a family, and the life of an old bachelor or old maid is not enviable. No matter how deeply interested for a while a man or woman may feel in the study of a branch of science, of art, or any other avocation that tends to elevate and enrich the human mind, the day is sure to come when he or she will feel the emptiness of a solitary life. Man needs a partner to share not only his sorrows, but also his joys. Against this assertion has often been quoted Socrates' answer to the young Athenian who asked him whether he should marry or remain single. The reply was not a definite one, for Socrates told him that whether he married or remained single he would repent it. And even if we construe the answer as a choice between two evils, the most sensible thing to do is to choose the lesser evil, which by all means the conjugal union is, provided it is not altogether barren of sunshine.

It is not unusual to compare marriage with a lottery, in which some draw a big prize, some a small one, some again a very little one, or, finally , some a blank. The happiest marriages, however, have not always commenced with an ardent love, and the most unhappy are not seldom in an inverse proportion to the imagined love from the days of engagement. The fact is, that marriage has no room for sentimental love. Sentimentality is relieved by more realistic views. Nothing being wholly perfect, so happiness in marriage has its drawbacks. It is a great art to know oneself, and it takes sometimes a long while before two married persons are perfectly conversant with each other's views. Happiness is, besides, a very relative notion, just as relative as our claims on it. That a certain share of the world's goods is a necessary condition for a happy marriage is evident. No person in absolute poverty feels well; love alone will not suffice. Abundance, on the other hand, is so far from being a guarantee for happy marriages that it often is effective in calling forth situations that end with a divorce. The happiest marriages are undeniably those where both parties have a correct understanding of each other's shortcomings or faults, and a sufficient feeling of humanity and forbearance. These are the two factors that constitute the main elements in a happy marriage. Our faults, as a matter of course, must not degenerate into vices ; under that form all happiness is forfeited. In reading the reports from our divorce courts, we cannot fail to observe that drunkenness and unchastity are the two causes most frequently pleaded as reasons why a decree should be granted. Each of these vices is sufficient to make a person unhappy, to say nothing of a husband and wife or a whole family.

Besides the two mentioned there is a third factor tending to increase the happiness of married life: the feeling of responsibility, and particularly so in cases where the union has been blessed with children. For each child born to the world the responsibility of the parents is growing, and it is an old and just view that for each duty a child owes to its parents, the parents are manifoldly indebted to their child, or, in other words, parents have greater obligations to fulfill towards their children than children towards their parents. Where this sentiment is intense, the marriage is seldom a failure. Our children are the centre round which all our ideas are revolving. They constitute our happiness, being the greatest binding power between husband and wife. To them is transferred the love that is freed from the passions of our youth. They furnish value to our life; we feel we have something to live for.

Chapter III

Encouraging to Marriage — Nihilistic Views — Malthus — Early Marriages — Optimistic Views.

IN the present time, the most critical since the fall of man, marriage is a theme more eagerly debated than any other. However, it is more women's rights in relation to their husbands, their position in society, that is forming the foundation of the many varied discussions, and less the very fact of entering married life. No government will to any extent earnestly try to prevent the sons or daughters of a country from becoming husbands and wives. On the contrary, any government noticing an alarming decrease in the number of marriages, will try by all conceivable means to encourage the ycuth to marry; all pens will be put in activity to remedy the alleged evil. And this is naturally so, being due to very practical reasons. It is an old maxim that one of the main pillars on which society at large is resting, and without which it would go to pieces, is the family. The modern communistic ideas have no regard for family life, their advocates being fully aware of the fact of its tending to conservatism. Most nihilists are single persons, or, if married, their family ties are of a very loose texture. They take a consistent view of the order of things in opposing the conjugal union, knowing that if a general abolition of marriage were possible they would easily carry their point, viz. : the destruction of one of the main factors of a well-regulated society. Those in the unmarried state will commit many sexual offenses that are liable to be dangerous and a burden to charitable institutions. As to the old European societies, the existence of the great military armies would be sadly threatened if young people should give up the idea of marriage.

With a mere politico-economical object in view, the famous English philosopher Malthus wrote his "Essay on Population." As a good, religious man he naturally could not make any attack on the marriage institution, but he opposes early marriages as one of the promoters of over-population. Malthus holds that a population of a civilized world should be in proportion to the means of existence, (not to exceed the supply of food). He naturally cast his eyes upon America, admitting that we for a long while yet are justified in entering into early marriages, recommending, however, the working classes all over the world to regulate the size of their families by using moral restraint, condemning all other preventatives as vice. It is a matter of fact that the adherents of Malthus* theories are becoming less numerous. It is getting more and more evident that the world is not suffering from over-population, the means of subsistence being in abundance. We are suffering from over-production, so at least we are told by the practical student of labor questions. Well, then, it is not likely that the young men and women of Chicago have any particular knowledge of Malthus' theories, and, even if they had, it does not stand to reason to believe that they would take his theories to heart. There is a tendency with the native-born population to contract too early marriages, very often both the contracting parties being so surprisingly young that we, for the sake of their own interest, may wish them to postpone the wedding a couple of years. What experience can a young man of eighteen or twenty be harboring, and what knowledge has a girl of sixteen or seventeen of housekeeping or of the duties of a mother? And at these ages many marriages are contracted in Cook county.

As to the foreign-born element, a study of the marriage license list will reveal the fact that they, as a rule, follow the practice of the countries whence they emigrated. In the northern and eastern parts of Europe the marriage age varies between twenty-five and thirty for men, and between twenty and twenty-five for women. These ages are particularly adaptable to the working classes in Europe, where the fight for a living is by far harden than in America. Besides, the military service is a great impediment to conjugal inclinations in most parts of Europe. What newry-married man would like to leave his young wife and, perhaps, children, to put on the military uniform? If we had a compulsory military service in America, there is no doubt but that most young men would postpone their wedding till said service was over. In southern Europe, and in the oriental countries, we find things somewhat otherwise, but the bloom of the women in these regions falls in the ages between thirteen and eighteen.

It is the fear of an increasing pauperism, as in the old societies, that the pessimists of America have in view when they oppose early marriages, and while there is a good reason to stop and reflect over the causes of an increasing poverty in any community at any given time, yet nobody can with any certainty assert that the early marriages contracted at twenty-two or twenty-four for the man, and between eighteen and twenty-one for the girl, are the reasons why our charity institutions are in a crowded condition, at least at a certain season of the year. It is to a great extent the paupers from Europe that fill these institutions, and the optimists are undoubtedly right when they reason and argue the question of marriage in about the following way :

America in general, and Chicago in particular, is greatly indebted to Europe for the many talented and clever laborers it has sent to the United States. These men have faithfully contributed their share to justify the proverbial saying that Chicago is the wonder city of the nineteenth century, and we are not "only indebted to Europe for dancing and music teachers," as Beecher jokingly remarked in the course of a lecture on free-trade; but as a link in the development of the whole Union we need a native-born population, knowing of no other fatherland, loving America, its language, its flag, its institutions. We constitute an artificial population, and, loyal and law-abiding as are the masses of our people, it naturally lives on the memories from the old countries. And for a person born, brought up, and educated in one of the European countries, it is no easy matter to get rid of these memories, for they cling to the human mind, and they are furthermore refreshed through the correspondence between relatives and friends. And the preserving of the memories is furthermore strengthened through the press in the different languages. The Irish have their special organs for Irish national affairs; the Germans, the Scandinavians, the Poles, the Bohemians, and the French each have their own journals, appealing at given times to the national feelings. Monuments are erected in honor of European poets and scientists, and public halls are adorned with the colors of foreign nations. Public schools are called after European savants, poets and statesmen, and the population, according to their nationalities, move together in different sections of the city. We have Irish wards and German wards ; we know that the densely populated Swedish wards are to be found on the

North Side; that Norwegians and Danes predominate in the northwestern part of the city; that Poles are most numerous in the Fourteenth ward, and the Italians are crowded together in some of the wards on the South Side. And as if all that were not sufficient for keeping up the memories of old Europe, politics comes in with its complementing adjectives. Germans are reminded of their good and sober judgment, their indisputable ability; Scandinavians get their praise for their conservative perseverance and faithfulness; the Irish national strings are played on, and the sons of Poland get their political hymn. That under such circumstances the masses of foreign-born citizens find a rich nourishment for national pride, is quite natural, but it is evident that, while all this in itself is harmless, it does not serve as a promoter of the unity and harmony which is the main condition for solidarity with the native-born population.

Adopted children are not the same as children of our own flesh and blood. Chicago needs no longer an artificial population; it can grow strong and healthy in a natural way. Let the young, not too young, people engage in marriage, and let the children be the beneficiaries of the greatest fundamental institution of the

United States: the common school. Children in the first generation of an emigrated population, living with their thoughts in the old societies, may have a little difficulty in emancipating themselves from old traditions, but the next generation will belong to America, helping to strengthen the work of unity that does not kneel to foreign gods, — a generation that loves America for its own sake.

Chapter IV

Peculiarities of Languages — Difficulties — Beautiful Peculiarities — A Graceful Language — A Matter-of-Fact Language — The Language of Abstract Philosophy — A Melodious Language.

ANY person who for a long space of time, day after day, has had an opportunity to hear people of varied descents talk English, need not absolutely possess a linguistic talent to discover, through the pronunciations, which nationality they belong to. It is but exceptionally that a foreign-born person acquires a correct pronunciation, unless he arrived here at a very young age and frequented our schools. He who has got his school education in one of the old non-English speaking countries of Europe will, in most cases, betray his foreign descent. This postulate needs no strong argument to be understood. It is naturally so, and is applicable to all who have to speak a language acquired artificially; that is, a language that is not the mother tongue.

The intelligent student of a foreign language may acquire a full knowledge of its idioms and finesses; he may even be better versed in the history and literature of the language than the majority of those who have been born with the language at the end of their tongues. We have a good example of the truth of this assertion in the famous naturalized political critic of German parentage. He commands the English language to perfection, and his logical eloquence after classic patterns never trespasses against the rules of English syntax, but his pronunciation will nevertheless betray his German birth. It is, besides, an acknowledged fact that he who has studied several languages will with greater difficulty catch the right pronunciation of a foreign language than the illiterate person who never made a study of even his mother language. The cultivated man may, if sufficient time is allowed, compose a well-formed English essay in such a manner that even the keenest critic cannot discover his foreign descent, but if he should undertake to read it before an audience of native-born Americans, his hearers would most likely not be long in discovering that he was not one of their own.

Another hindrance to the more cultivated person is the mere common daily language, the knowledge of which he has greater difficulty in mastering than the illiterate person. Usually he is less practical and more critical. He is thinking in his own language and is transferring his thoughts into the foreign language. To the illiterate or less mentally developed, the common talk comes much easier. It is with him as it is with children, the sound of the words is the essential key to the understanding of each other. Children of various foreign descents have usually no great trouble in understanding each other's language, their ideas moving within a rather limited circle. The horizon of the thoughts of the illiterate man or woman not lying in the extreme periphery, they need not many words to express their ideas in their own language; a few hundred words will suffice, and through a little exercise, perseverance, and diligence they will soon acquire that much knowledge of the number of words of a foreign language that is necessary to make themselves understood. The greatest difficulty, however, is to understand what is told them, and as to that point they share a common fate with all beginners in a foreign language- Hundreds of people who have diligently studied the French language, sometimes for years, and imagine that the) 7 have learned it to perfection, find themselves not a little puzzled when they arrive in Paris, not because they cannot question intelligently, but because they cannot understand the questions put to them by a native-born Parisian. If a person were able to forget his mother language, any obstruction to the acquirement of a foreign language would immediately disappear, but this is an impossibility, growing greater in proportion to the education of the individual. The mother tongue cuts a considerable figure in the feeling generally knov/n and denominated patriotism, and from his standpoint the German chancellor is therefore acting very wisely in trying to extirpate the original languages of the provinces conquered by the empire during the last two decades. The task is not an easy one, especially in regard to languages embracing a great national literature; but still they will have to surrender in the course of time. In Poland the work of destruction is rapidly progressing, and vainly the Polish deputies in the German Reichstag voice the sentiment of their protesting countrymen. In the Danish northern part of Schleswig the present generation is still familiar with the language of their ancestors; but German having been introduced in the schools as compulsive, the next generation will know little or nothing of the Danish language, if quite unforeseen circumstances should not restore the lost province to Denmark.