isa-normaladvance-1909-00140

Description:	140THE N.QRMAL ADVANCEthe real character of a man, by coming intocontact and associating with him. During theseweeks and months, she has an opportunity tosee him when he is not influenced by the unmerciful stares of the critical World. A manmay be a perfect gentleman in a crowded drawing-room or dance hall where he knows he isbeing watched by Miss This and Mrs. That.This is enough to make him be a gentleman, atleast in their presence. ,But under other circumstances he is quite adifferent man his manners have departed forother regions, leaving him as cross as a bear.All his chivalry is gone and he is once againa weak, sinful man, not a gentleman, just aplain, common, ordinary man. A woman oughtto know which kind she is going to marry, thereal gentleman or the sham. But how is she toknow these things? Poor woman! She iswooed and won in such a short time that she ismade dizzy by the rush and hurry, too dizzyto comprehend the situation. But as an oldstory tells us she has plenty of. time to thinkafterwards then, it is, that she finds out thatinstead of marrying a knight she has marriedonly a man. But it is too late now for her toavoid what follows. What follows, I need nottell you you know it yourself without beingtold.Today, love and marriage at first sight is apopular fad. A man meets a woman on a carand a conversation begins between them. Theysepm pleased with each other and agree to stopat the court house to get a marriage license.This does not take long, and after securing it,they board another car and are whirled away tothe ministers. There they say the, wordswhich should unite them for life. But this isnot the end in a few weeks, if we should reada newspaper, we should find that a divorce hadbeen granted to a Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So, thetwo whom we saw on the car. Their lovefor each other had died almost as soon as ithad flamed into life. How different it was inthe old time. It took months and even years fora man and woman to reach an altar together,but when they had taken the solemn vows, theywent away to live together and, if need be, todie together.In a great many cases today where the husband is compelled to make a small sacrifice forhis wife, he is almost killed in the doing ( atleast his pride is). This to some extent is dueto the fact that he had never had an opportunity to show his love for her in this way beforehe married her. Everything was done in sucha hurry and there was not time for such things.It was very different in the old time Johnlearned this lesson long before he could callMary his wife. A great many times he wascompelled to wade through the deep snow andmud because it was too bad to take a horse.Was it ever too bad for John ? No, he wouldhave gone through fire and brimstone beforehe would have stayed away. But the worstthing was yet to come after enduring all thehardships in coming, he could not even talkwith Mary alone, but had to make love to herin the same room where the entire family,grandmother and all, were assembled. Today,it is. quite different. The young man of todayhas only to jump into an automobile or on a carand in a few minutes he is with the girl heloves. They have everything to themselves there is no one to disturb them. , If they donot wish to remain indoors, it does not takethem long to go to one of the many beautifulparks where they are as much alone as theywish to be. ••,..•■...Almost every time we look at a daily paper,we can read a column or more which is devotedto divorce suits. Today, if a man grows tiredof his wife or vice versa, all that needs to bedone is to ask for a divorce and each is free totry again. People seem to be putting intopractice the advice of the old adage that, ifwe did not succeed the first time, we should tryagain. There would not be as many trialsmade, however, if the old style of courtingshould come back into vogue, because each trialwould require so much time that each personwould have to give up all of his time in makingall of the trials and would have no time to, see whether he had succeeded or not.
Source:	http://indstate.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/isuarchive/id/34170
Collection:	Indiana State University Archives

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