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The Marriage Blunder I have never been able to understand the peculiar significance of the old and often-quoted maxim that matches are made in heaven, as if Providence had more to do with our marriages, and we ourselves less, than with the other enterprises and acts of our lives. The truth is that nothing we do is transacted with more deliberation than our matrimonial engagements. The talk about rashness, precipitancy, and blindness in the parties between whom the union is formed is all cant, and cant of the most ancient and stale kind. I wonder it is not exploded in an age when old theories and long-established opinions are thrown aside with as little ceremony or remorse as a grave-digger shovels up the bones and dust of past generations. In almost every marriage that takes place, the bridegroom has passed by many a fair face before he has made his final selection, and the bride refused many a wooer. The parties are united after a courtship generally of months; the fair one defers the day of the nuptials from mere maiden coyness, and the lover must have time to provide her a habitation. Religious ceremonies, the forms of law, the preparations for the festivity of the occasion, all interpose their numerous delays. Even where the parties have nothing to do with the matter themselves, it is managed with great reflection and contrivance, with negotiations warily opened and skilfully conducted on the part of their relations. Why, the very making of these matches, which the proverb so flippantly affirms to be made without our agency constitutes nearly half the occupation of civilized society. For this the youth applies himself diligently to the making of his fortune; for this the maiden studies the graces and accomplishments of her sex. I have known persons who for years never thought of any other subject. I have known mothers who for years made it the business of their lives to settle their daughters. The premeditation of matrimony influences all the fashions, amusements, and employments of mankind. What a multitude of balls and parties and calls and visits and journeys are owing to this fruitful cause! What managing and manoeuvring, what the marriage blunder 165 dressing and dancing, what patching and painting, how much poetry and, eke, how much prose, what quantities of music and conversation and criticism and scandal and civility that otherwise would never have had an existence! The result justifies the supposition of deliberation, and most marriages are accordingly made with sufficient wisdom. Talk of the risk undertaken by the candidate for the happiness of conjugal life! The man who marries is not so often cheated as the man who buys a horse, even when the bargain is driven for him by the most knowing jockey. Few are unfortunate in a wife. Marriages are comfortable and respectable things the world over, with a few exceptions. Illnatured people torment each other, it is true, but if they were not married they would torment somebody else, unless they retired to a hermitage; while, on the other hand, good tempers are improved by the domestic affections which the married state calls forth. If marriage happened to a man without his knowledge or consent; if it came upon one unexpectedly, like a broken leg, or a fever, or a legacy from a rich relation, or a loss by a broken bank; if young men and young women were to lay their heads on their pillows in celibacy and wake the next morning in wedlock; if one were to have no voice in the selection of a wife, but were obliged to content himself with one chosen for him by lot – there would, I grant, be some propriety in the maxim I have mentioned. But in a matter which is the subject of so much discussion and deliberation as marriage, not only on the part of the youth and damsel but of all friends and acquaintances, and which is hedged round with so many forms and ceremonies, it is nonsense to talk of any particular fatality. I recollect but two instances of people being coupled together not only without their knowledge or consent, but without even that of their friends. The marriages took place on the same day, in the same church, and from the misery in which the parties lived it might be inferred that the matches were made anywhere else but in heaven. I will relate the story, as it is rather a...

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