to many people. Your lover is
unknown to the public, a man in the private walks of life. Therefore you
think if he loves you as he should to become your husband, he ought to
give up his own name and take yours, or at least add yours to his own.
You assure me it is merely a matter of habit, that women have
obliterated themselves on the altar of marriage, and that it is time a
new order was instituted. You think the hour calls for pioneers to
establish new boundaries, in a new world where woman will be allowed to
keep her individuality after marriage. Meantime your lover does not feel
that you really love him, when you ask him to take this somewhat radical
step for your sake, or for the sake of all women, as you put it.

And there you both stand, with only this ridiculous barrier between you
and happiness.

You are still influenced by the intellectual drug, and it hinders your
heart from following out its best impulses. You have not yet learned
more than the A B C of love, or you would know that the greatest
happiness in loving lies in sacrifice. To take and not give, to gain
something and give up nothing, is not loving. Now I think I hear you
saying, "But why should not my lover give this proof of devotion as well
as I? Why should not he be ready to sacrifice a tradition, and a name,
to please me? Why am I more unloving, or selfish, than he, to refuse to
give up my name?"

My answer follows.

Any woman who asks a man to give up his name and take hers (unless some
great legal matter which involves the property rights of others hangs on
so doing) asks him to make himself ridiculous in the eyes of the world.
She indicates, also, that her family name and her own achievements are
dearer to her than his. No woman loves a man enough to be happy as his
wife, if he is not dearer to her than any mere personal success, however
great.

The man who asks a woman to take his name obeys a tradition and a
custom, to be sure, and the woman who accepts it does not display any
especially heroic trait. Therefore, what you demand of your lover is a
far greater proof of devotion than what he asks of you. No woman who
fully understood the meaning of love could ask this of her future
husband. If he occupied the place in her life which a husband should, no
matter what were her personal attainments, she would glory in adding his
name to her own, and in having its shelter to hide under at times from
the glare of publicity.

Should you choo