p. 214 | Runaway Marriages

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jul 17, 1879

Runaway Marriages.

The marriage laws in Virginia are very strict, a full account of the age, parents' names, occupation and residence being required from both parties before a license is granted. A clergyman who marries minors without the parents' consent is liable to imprisonment and a fine of $20,000. It is probably owing to these safeguards about marriages that divorces are so rare in Virginia.

Before the war a village called Hard-Scrabble, just over the Pennsylvania line, was a sort of Gretna Green, and a quondam shoemaker, who had been chosen justice of the peace, officiated as god of love to join the flying lovers who hied to him to escape the law.

When they were very young, however, the old man often reasoned with them like a father, and more than once sent them home to learn wisdom with age. On one occasion, when the girl was a mere child, Quimby, the shoemaker, laid down his pipe, and fixed his eyes on her blushing, trembling face, "Marry you?" taking up two bits of thread, "Yes, I can marry you as quickly as I can tie this knot,"—and the old man rose solemnly—"only God's hand can cut the knot asunder." For the first time, perhaps, the awful import of her act flashed upon the girl. She burst into tears, and sobbed out, "I want my mother!" "I'll take you to her, my child; as for you, young man, go about your business." They were never married, and to the end of her life the woman had reason to thank the old man for his interference.

The papers have been filled lately with the runaway matches of two young girls, one flying from Vassar College, the other running away with a servant. Girls who have never probably chosen a dress for themselves, in one rash moment fix inexorably the fate of their whole future lives. The only argument they hear in the matter is the good looks of a young fellow of whom they know really nothing. Girls so immature and unreasoning ought not to be trusted to choose their everyday companions. Parents are to blame if these companions lead them into life-long misery.—The Youth's Companion.