The First Year of Married Life
By Lucy S. White
ELAINE is soon to be married. This morning she comes into Aunt Lettie's sitting-room with a troubled and perplexed look on her usually bright face. "Aunt Lettie," she says, as she tosses her hat on the table and sits down on a hassock close by her aunt, "you and Uncle Fred have the most ideal marriage that I ever knew or heard of. Your home is a paradise, and would be, I believe, if you lived in one room, on bread and water. All the husbands who come here go away enchanted with you, and the wives go away enraptured with Uncle Fred, while we neutrals are charmed with both of you." "Really, Ellie, did you come all the way over here on purpose to tell me this very astounding and rather-to-be-doubted piece of news?" asks Aunt Lettie, with an amused smile. "Our marriage is happy, dear, but it isn't a bit more 'ideal' than yours and Tom's will be, nor are we any more 'enrapturing,' or 'enchanting,' or 'charming,' than you two." "Well, see," said Elaine, "my Christian at Work came yesterday, and I've brought it over to show you this article. See the title—'?' Now I want you to answer it for me with an! that is, I want some affirmations. Are you prepared to stand in the witness-box this morning?" "If it will do you any good, dear. What's the trouble?" "Oh! I don't know. This article rather frightens me. Aunt Lettie, was your first year of married life your most unhappy one?" "No year has been the 'most unhappy,' Ellie. To be sure, each year is happier than the last, but that is only because our capacity for happiness, and our appreciation of what constitutes it is yearly increasing. 'Unhappiness,' in any degree whatsoever, is not to be mentioned in connection with our married life." "Well, then, when did you 'get acquainted,' so that you were 'able to trot along in the matrimonial harness without balk or friction?" "Elaine Stanton!" exclaimed Aunt Lettie, half laughingly, and yet very much in earnest, "I won't have you speak of Uncle Fred and me as if we were a pair of country farm horses, nor of marriage as a 'harness!' Where did you get such pitiful notions, child? Take care or you'll start me off on my favorite hobby." "Just what I want to do," cried Elaine. "You have ridden your hobby to such good purpose all these years, that was just why I came to you of all others to help me disentangle my ideas. Please answer my last question, auntie. And I've a dozen others. Is the first year such a 'crucial test?' Must my temper be made more 'pliant and malleable?' Does Tom think me an 'angel' now (I can't imagine why he should), and will he be so afraid of me by and by that he will learn to choke down his cup of coffee in silence rather than 'bandy words' with me? That is, am I a virago under the guise of an angel? Will I find Tom less dear and charming in his shirt sleeves than I do now in his best coat? Won't he give me any more gentle 'attentions' when once we are married? Won't he love me if I ever appear in crimping-pins? Must we 'put on our spectacles to scrutinize each other,' the minute we are fairly tied? Is marriage just a jogging along in 'matrimonial harness,'—a process requiring a vast amount of Christian grace?" "Ellie, what are you talking about?" exclaimed Aunt Lettie, half bewildered. "Wait, child, till I can get my breath. Now, then, one at a time, dear. Any kind of life, to be lived well, requires a vast amount of Christian grace; married life no more than any other. Indeed, most girls seem to think it requires more grace to live unmarried than married. Still, if all these questions referred to the ordinary run of marriages, as they are, I might, perhaps, answer, 'Yes, you have all these perils to dread.' But if you refer to marriage as it ought to be and may be, as I know it and as you will know it, I say you are talking nonsense, Ellie—stuff and nonsense." And gentle Aunt Lettie set her work basket down with a bang which was very pronounced, for her. "Glad of it!" said Elaine, promptly. "I hoped it was stuff and nonsense, but I didn't quite know. Now, Aunt Lettie go on, and tell me how you did it." "Achieved such a perfectly beautiful marriage." "It is no more beautiful than any marriage might be made, Ellie," answered Aunt Lettie, earnestly. "The rule for it is simple, and you and Tom are following it. We—Fred and I—knew each other and loved each other. We did not wait till the first year of marriage to get acquainted. Those who are foolish enough to become engaged in a week after introduction, and married in another week, must wait so for their acquaintance, and will suffer for their folly. Those who never see each other before marriage except in 'dainty ringlets,' or 'broadcloth and shining boots,' at the 'German, concert, or opera,' must wait for their acquaintance, and suffer for their waiting. We did not do so. In truth we began by disliking each other (that is by no means necessary, however), but the courtesies of everyday life threw us together; we could not be rude, so we became civil, then friends." "Finally, after many months, we became engaged. Circumstances were such that we could not marry very soon, and I shall never cease being grateful for that. Now we began to 'get acquainted.' We were much together. We discovered that our tastes were very similar, but our mental characteristics very different. But we grounded ourselves firmly, from the very first, on the rock of intense love, and perfect mutual confidence, and on that rock we have always stood. While we were engaged we read and discussed the same books. Fred saw me in nearly every imaginable circumstance. He saw me well and pleasant, he saw me sick and—must I confess it?—cross. He saw me in my fine feathers; he saw me in flannel bloomer suits, in calico dresses, in morning wrappers. But he never saw me untidy, Ellie, or collarless, and he never will." "As for my hair, he saw it crimped, and he saw it plain. When I crimped it, I put it up at night and took it down when I made my morning toilette. Or, if I was obliged to leave it up, I put on a pretty little cap. I never, in all my life, went around in crimping-pins, pure and simple. That wasn't for Fred's sake. I couldn't bear to think of myself as looking so hideous, Fred or no Fred." "Most trying of all, Fred saw me seasick—wretchedly, abjectly seasick—lying on the deck of a small steamer, my calico wrapper and my disheveled hair wet by the spray, a green tin by my side—picture it, Elaine, and you will not wonder that I never could doubt his love. I happened to mention this episode to an aunt of mine, and she was aghast. She exclaimed in holy horror:--" "'Letitia Watton! you didn't let that man see you seasick!"' "'Yes, I did,' I replied, 'and he held my head, too!"' "'You foolhardy girl,' she gasped,' 'I should think you would have been afraid he would break the engagement.'" "'Humph!' I said, 'I should have wanted him to break it if he couldn't stand that much.'" "And I think so now, Ellie. As for me, I knew Fred as well as he did me. I had seen him in his shirt-sleeves, and in muddy boots, many a time. Perhaps we had unusual facilities for getting acquainted. If so I'm thankful for my mercies. But engaged people don't live up to the facilities they have for getting a thoroughly premarital acquaintance. That I know." "And so we married, neither of us thinking the other an 'angel,' but knowing ourselves and each other to be faulty mortals. But our love and confidence carried us through and made the learning of the things we did not know very easy and happy work." "Go on, auntie," said Elaine, delightedly. "My punctuation marks stand in this proportion, now, '!' and I am so relieved, but I want to hear more." "Well," said Aunt Lettie, "what I have already said shows you that the first year was no 'crucial test' for us. We did not have to spend it in rubbing off corners, and learning how to jog along somewhat peacefully in 'matrimonial harness.' O Elaine, dear," she exclaimed earnestly, "Never think of marriage in that inferior way! It is not a 'harness!' It is not a voyage which will plunge you into a 'sea of trouble!' There is no need of 'marital quarrels!' I say all this, not from the stand-point of an unpractical, poetical visionary, but from blessed personal experience. Think of it always as you do now, as a union, a oneness, and your marriage will be as happy as mine." "We were married, as I said. I was only nineteen, Fred somewhat older. You, dear, have the advantage over me, in that you have a good mother who has taught you in all domestic duties, and had many loving, practical talks with you about married life. I had been on my own responsibility after the age of fourteen (my mother, as you know, has long been dead), and I had been brought up with eight or ten servants always at my beck, so to boil an egg, make toast with milk, and chocolate caramels, was literally the extent of my culinary education, and I never had cut or made the simplest garment. So I, if any one, have the right to know whether such ignorance need prove fatal to the peace of a married life. I went right to housekeeping, without a servant, in a little country parish." "Why, auntie, how did you manage?" "In the first place I had courage, and was willing to try. Then I had faith in Fred's patience and love. And I had been to college, you know, and brought to my work education and judgment, trained, at least to some degree. How much service my college course has been to me in my kitchen! More than anywhere else. Whatever disciplines the mind and trains the judgment does just so much toward making a good housekeeper, and something which nothing else can do. I armed myself, too, with a dozen or more cook-books, notably Marian Harland's. That blessed woman has been a tower of strength to me, though I always omitted the wine she so freely advises in cooking. Lastly, I used my common sense, and kept my eyes open. Of course I made my mistakes and had my failures, but of the main results Uncle Fred never complained." "I should think not, indeed," exclaimed Elaine. "I've many a time heard him say that there never was such a cook and housekeeper as you have been from the first. And I am sure all your guests tell the same story." "Thank you, dear," said Aunt Lettie, "but you must make allowance for Uncle Fred's partiality. And now I guess I've said enough to ease your mind, little girl. I have been married fifteen years, and each year has been happier than the preceding. We have had trials, cares, and sorrows, but we have borne them together, with God's help, and they have never made us unhappy. Our love was founded deep, on mutual respect, and was never dependent on 'shining boots,' and 'dainty ringlets,' nor even on a 'well-broiled beefsteak.' We have trusted each other implicitly, and lived in and for each other. Whatever interests one interests the other. I have527discussed election and free will with Fred, while he has been helping me wipe dishes. His pocket-book is mine, and open to my inspection or use, as my saucepans and larder are to his. In short, dear, we are one, in so far as two entities can be one. We have always been too busy in loving and helping each other, training our children, and serving God, to have time to 'put on our spectacles to scrutinize each other,' and to hunt for and magnify the petty foibles each may have. I never had to miss 'gentle attentions,' either, nor hear sharp words. Love God. Love each other. Love God and each other heartily, and your marriage must, and most surely will, be happy. God bless you, dear." "Auntie," said Elaine, with a suspicious shaking in her laughing voice, and a dew in her sunny eyes, "my interrogation is changed into an exclamation or affirmation." And so the "?" was changed into an "!"—Lucy S. White, in Christian at Work.