t visit her face too roughly"? "Is
it fair treatment of the expected husband," Mr. Messinger asks, that a
girl "should be habituated to live without work and then be handed
over to her husband with nothing but her clothing and bric-a-brac?"
Yes, it is quite fair treatment. If the husband with his $1,100 a year
elects to marry a girl not habituated to work, he does it of his own
choice: the father of the girl is probably not at all desirous of his
alliance; then why should the father deprive himself of the results of
his own labor and economy to undo the folly and vanity of the young
man's selection? As for the girl, if she has deliberately preferred
her lover to her father, mother, home, and to all the advantages of
wealth, she has the desire of her heart. It may be quite fair that she
should have this desire, but it may be very unfair that her father,
mother, and perhaps her brothers and sisters, should be robbed to make
her desire less self-sacrificing to her. For if the young man with his
poverty is acceptable to both the daughter and her parents, the latter
may be safely trusted to do all that is right in the circumstances.

The most objectionable part of Mr. Messinger's argument is the servile
and mercenary aspect in which it places marriage. "What equality can
exist," he asks, "where one (the man) supplies all the means of
subsistence and performs all the labor?" That a husband should provide
the means of subsistence is the very Magna Charta of honorable
marriage; and nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand so
accept it. It is the precise point on which all true husbands feel the
most keenly sensitive. They want no other man--no matter what his
relationship or friendship--to support their wives. And under no
circumstances does the husband perform all the labor resulting from a
marriage. That he may be a true man, a father and a citizen, it is
necessary that he have a home; and in the care of the home, in the
bringing-forth and the bringing-up of the family, in the constant
demands upon her love and sympathy, the wife performs a never-ceasing
multitude of duties that tax her heart and her body in every
direction,--a labor of love in comparison with which her husband's
daily routine over his "entries" or his "orders" is a trifling drain
of vitality. For a wife and mother must keep every faculty and feeling
"at attention;" but a clerk over his ledger keeps a dozen faculties
on the premises to do the work o