Many ways of Love.

Youth deems it heresy, but I sometimes wonder if our English speaking way is quite the best.  I discussed the subject once with an old French lady.  The English reader forms his idea of French life from the French novel; it leads to mistaken notions.  There are French Darbys, French Joans, many thousands of them.

“Believe me,” said my old French friend, “your English way is wrong; our way is not perfect, but it is the better, I am sure.  You leave it entirely to the young people.  What do they know of life, of themselves, even.  He falls in love with a pretty face.  She—he danced so well! he was so agreeable that day of the picnic!  If marriage were only for a month or so; could be ended without harm when the passion was burnt out.  Ah, yes! then perhaps you would be right.  I loved at eighteen, madly—nearly broke my heart.  I meet him occasionally now.  My dear”—her hair was silvery white, and I was only thirty-five; she always called me “my dear”; it is pleasant at thirty-five to be talked to as a child.  “He was a perfect brute, handsome he had been, yes, but all that was changed.  He was as stupid as an ox.  I never see his poor frightened-looking wife without shuddering thinking of what I have escaped.  They told me all that, but I looked only at his face, and did not believe them.  They forced me into marriage with the kindest man that ever lived.  I did not love him then, but I loved him for thirty years; was it not better?”

“But, my dear friend,” I answered; “that poor, frightened-looking wife of your first love!  Her marriage also was, I take it, the result of parental choosing.  The love marriage, I admit, as often as not turns out sadly.  The children choose ill.  Parents also choose ill.  I fear there is no sure receipt for the happy marriage.”

“You are arguing from bad examples,” answered my silver-haired friend; “it is the system that I am defending.  A young girl is no judge of character.  She is easily deceived, is wishful to be deceived.  As I have said, she does not even know herself.  She imagines the mood of the moment will remain with her.  Only those who have watched over her with loving insight from her infancy know her real temperament.

“The young man is blinded by his passion.  Nature knows nothing of marriage, of companionship.  She has only one aim.  That accomplished, she is indifferent to the future of those she has joined together.  I would have parents think only of their children’s happiness, giving to worldly considerations their true value, but nothing beyond, choosing for their children with loving care, with sense of their great responsibility.”