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AS a single man, I have spent a good deal of my time in noting down the infirmities of Married People, to yself for those superior pleasures, which they tell me I have lost by remaining as I am.I ot say that the quarrels of men and their wives ever made any great impression upon me, or had much tendency tthen me in those anti-social resolutions, which I took up long ago upon more substantial siderations. What ofte offends me at the houses of married persons where I visit, is an error of quite a different description; -- it is that they are too loving.
Not too loviher: that does not explain my meaning. Besides, why should that offehe very act of separating themselves from the rest of the world, to have the fuller enjoyment of each others society, implies that they prefer one ao all the world.
But what I plain of is, that they carry this preference so undisguisedly, they perk it up in the faces of us single people so shamelessly, you ot be in their pany a moment without being made to feel, by some i hint or open avowal, that you are not the object of this preferenow there are some things which give no offence, while implied or taken franted merely; but expressed, there is much offen them. If a mao accost the first homely-featured or plain-dressed young woman of his acquaintance, and tell her bluntly, that she was not handsome or riough for him, and he could not marry her, he would deserve to be kicked for his ill manners; yet no less is implied in the fact, that having access and opportunity of putting the question to her, he has never yet thought fit to do it. The young woman uands this as clearly as if it were put into words; but no reasonable young woman would think of making this the ground of a quarrel. Just as little right have a married couple to tell me by speeches, and looks that are scarce less plain than speeches, that I am not the happy man,the ladys choice. It is enough that I know I am not: I do not want this perpetual reminding.
The display of superior knowledge or riches may be made suffitly mortifying; but these admit of a palliative. The knowledge which is brought out to insult me, may actally improve me; and in the rich mans houses and pictures, -- his parks and gardens, I have a temporary usufruct at least. But the display of married happiness has none of these palliatives: it is throughout pure, unrepensed, unqualified insult.
Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not of the least invidious sort. It is the ing of most possessors of any exclusive privilege to keep their advantage as much out of sight as possible, that their less favoured neighbours, seeing little of the be, may the less be disposed to question the right. But these married monopolists thrust the most obnoxious part of their patent into our faces.
Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire plad satisfa which beam in the tenances of a new-married couple, -- in that of the lady particularly: it tells you, that her lot is disposed of in this world: that you have no hopes of her. It is true, I have none; nor wishes either, perhaps: but this is one of those truths which ought, as I said before, to be taken franted, not expressed.
The excessive airs which bbr></abbr>those people give themselves, founded on the ignorance of us unmarried people, would be more offensive if they were less irrational. We will allow them to uand the mysteries belonging to their own craft better than we who have not had the happio be made free of the pany: but their arrogance is not tent within these limits. If a single person presume to offer his opinion in their presehough upon the most indifferent subject, he is immediately silenced as an inpetent person. Nay, a young married lady of my acquaintance, who, the best of the Jest was, had not ged her dition above a fht before, in a question on which I had the misfortuo differ from her, respeg the properest mode of breeding oysters for the London market, had the assurao ask with a sneer, how su old Bachelor as I could pretend to know any thing about such matters.
But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to the airs which these creatures give themselves when they e, as they generally do, to have children. When I sider how little of a rarity children are, -- that every street and blind alley swarms with them, -- that the poorest people only have them in most abundance, -- that there are few marriages that are not blest with at least one of these bargains, -- how ofteurn out ill, a the fond hopes of their parents, taking to vicious courses, whid in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, &c. -- I ot for my life tell what cause for pride there possibly be in having them. If they were young phoenixes, ihat were born but one in a year, there might be a pretext. But when they are so on -
I do not advert to the i merit which they assume with their husbands on these occasions. Let them look to that. But ho are not their natural-born subjects, should be expected t our spices, myrrh, and inse, -- our tribute and homage of admiration, -- I do not see.
"Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, even so are the young children:" so says the excellent offi our Prayer-book appointed for the churg of women. "Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them:" So say I; but then do him discharge his quiver upon us that are onless ; -- let them be arrows, but not to gall and stick us. I have generally observed that these arrows are double-headed: they have two forks, to be sure to hit with one or the other. As for instance, when you e into a house which is full of children, if you happen to take no notice of them (you are thinking of something else, perhaps, and turn a deaf ear to their i caresses), you are set down as untractable, morose, a hater of children. Oher hand, if you find them more than usually engaging,if you are taken with their pretty manners, a about in earo romp and play with them, some pretext or other is sure to be found for sending them out of the room: they are too noisy or boisterous, or Mr. -- does not like children. With one or other of these forks the arrow is sure to hit you.
I could five their jealousy, and dispeh toying with their brats, if it gives them any pain; but I think it unreasoo be called upon to love them, where I see no occasion, -- to love a whole family, perhaps, eight, nine, or ten, indiscrimio love all the pretty dears, because children are so engaging.
I know there is a proverb, "Love me, love my dog:" that is not always so very practicable, particularly if the dog be set upon you to tease you or snap at you in sport. But a dog or a lesser thing -- any inanimate substance, as a keep-sake, a watch or a ring, a tree, or the place where arted when my frie aon a long absence, I make shift to love, because I love him, and any thing that reminds me of him; provided it be in its nature indifferent, and apt to receive whatever hue fancy give it. But children have a real character and an essential being of themselves: they are amiable or unamiable per se; I must love or hate them as I see cause for either in their qualities. A childs nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appeo another being, and to be loved or hated accly: they stand with me upon their own stock, as much as men and women do. O! but you will say, sure it is an attractive age, there is something iender years of infancy that of itself charms us. That is the very reason why I am more nice about them. I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them; but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it should be pretty of its kind. One daisy differs not much from another in glory; but a violet should look and smell the dai. -- I was always rather squeamish in my women and children.
But this is not the worst: one must be admitted into their familiarity at least, before they plain of iion. It implies visits, and some kind of intercourse. But if the husband be a man with whom you have lived on a friendly footing before marriage,if you did not e in on the wifes side, -- if you did not sneak into the house irain, but were an old friend in fast habits of intimacy before their courtship was so much as thought on, -- look about you -- your tenure is precarious -- before a t<big></big>welve-month shall roll over your head, you shall find your old friend gradually grow cool and altered towards you, and at last seek opportunities of breaking with you. I have scarce a married friend of my acquaintance, upon whose firm faith I rely, whose friendship did not eer the period of his marriage. With some limitations they ehat: but that the good man should have dared to enter into a solemn league of friendship in which they were not sulted, though it happened before they knew him, -- before they that are now are man and wife ever met, -- this is intolerable to them. Every long friendship, every old authentitimacy, must he brought into their office to be amped with their currency, as a sn Prince calls in the good old mohat was ed in sn before he was born or thought of, to be new marked and minted with the stamp of his authority, before he will let it pass current in the world. You may guess what luck generally befalls such a rusty pieetal as I am in these new mintings.
Innumerable are the ways which they take to insult and worm you out of their husbands fidence. Laughing at all you say with a kind of wonder, as if you were a queer kind of fellow that said good things, but an oddity, is one of the ways -- they have a particular kind of stare for the purpose -- till at last the husband, who used to defer to your judgment, and would pass over some excresces of uanding and manner for the sake of a gen<bdi></bdi>eral vein of observation (not quite vulgar) which he perceived in you, begins to suspect whether you are not altogether a humorist, -- a fellow well enough to have sorted with in his bachelor days, but not quite so proper to be introduced to ladies. This may be called the staring way; and is that which has ofte been put in practice against me.
Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way of irony: that is, where they find you an object of especial regard with their husband, who is not so easily to be shaken from the lasting attat founded oeem which he has ceived towards you; by never-qualified exaggerations to cry up all that you say or do, till the good man, who uands well enough that it is all done in pliment to him, grows weary of the debt of gratitude which is due to so much dor, and by relaxing a little on his part, and taking doeg or two in his enthusiasm, sinks at length to that kindly level of moderate esteem, -- that "det affe and plat kindness" towards you, where she herself join in sympathy with him without much stretd violeo her siy.
Another way (for the ways they have to aplish so desirable a purpose are infinite) is, with a kind of i simplicity, tinually to mistake what it was which first made their husband fond of you. If aeem for something excellent in your moral character was that which riveted the which she is to break, upon any imaginary discovery of a want of poignan your versation, she will cry, "I thought, my dear, you described your friend, Mr. -- as a great wit." If, oher hand, it was for some supposed charm in your versation that he first grew to like you, and was tent for this to overlook some trifling irregularities in your moral deportment, upon the first notice of any of these she as readily exclaims, "This, my dear, is yood Mr. ----." One good lady whom I took the liberty of expostulating with for not showing me quite so much respect as I thought due to her husbands old friend, had the dour to fess to me that she had often heard Mr. -- - speak of me before marriage, and that she had ceived a great desire to be acquainted with me, but that the sight of me had very much disappointed her expectations; for from her husbands representations of me, she had formed a notion that she was to see a fiall, officer-like looking man (I use her very words); the very reverse of which proved to be the truth. This was did; and I had the civility not to ask her iurn, how she came to pitch upon a standard of personal aplishments for her husbands friends which differed so much from his own; for my friends dimensions as near as possible approximate to mine; he standing five feet five in his shoes, in which I have the advantage of him by about half an inch; and he no m..ore than myself exhibiting any indications of a martial character in his air or tenance.
These are some of the mortifications which I have entered in the absurd attempt to visit at their houses. To ee them all would be a vain endeavour: I shall therefore just gla the very propriety of which married ladies are guilty, of treating us as if we were their husbands, and vice versa -- . I mean, when they use us with familiarity, and their husbands with ceremony. Testacea, for instance, kept me the ht two or three hours beyond my usual time of supping, while she was fretting because Mr. -- did not e home, till the oysters were all spoiled, rather than she would he guilty of the impoliteness of toug one in his<tt>?t> absehis was reversing the point of good manners: for ceremony is an iion to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love aeem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It endeavors to make up by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the greater. Had Testacea kept the oysters bae, and withstood her husbands importuo go to supper, she would have acted acc to the strict rules of propriety. I know no ceremony that ladies are bound to observe to their husbands, beyond the point of a modest behaviour and de: therefore I must protest against the vicarious gluttony of Cerasia, who at her own table sent away a dish of Morellas, which I lying to with great good will, to her husband at the other end of the table, and reended a plate of less extraordinary goose- berries to my unwedded palate in their stead. her I excuse the wanton affront of -
But I am weary of stringing up all my married acquaintance by Roman denominations. Let them amend and ge their manners, or I promise to record the full-length English of their o the terror of all such desperate offenders in future.
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