Some of these girls do marry well – surprisingly so! But they are amongst the few. As for the rest, they make their own lives and their husband's a burden to them. Without having time given them to mature their ideas, these latter are hurried into matrimony while still children, without having formed a conception of the terrible responsibility that attaches itself to every human soul who agrees to join itself to another.
These latter do not make good matches in any one sense of the word. The struggling barrister, the clerk, the curate, the brainless masher – such are their prey; and if they make richer prizes than these, still the match cannot be called good; presently there is dis-union as the clever husband finds the pretty but nonsensical wife utterly unable to follow him through the paths of life that Fate has opened out to him.
It is a common idea that men care only for beauty, and are to be attracted by no lesser virtue – if virtue it may be called. This is a most gross error that even the earliest of our thinkers has laid bare. What says Thomas Carew:
"But a smooth and steadfast mind,
Gentle thoughts and calm desires,
Hearts with equal love combined,
Kindle never-dying fires: —
Where these are not, I despise
Lovely cheeks or lips or eyes."
We see, then, that there are things more desirable to the masculine mind than the mere charms of the flesh. To be beautiful is a good thing, for which we should thank Nature – to be attractive, morally, rather than physically, is, however, a thing for which we should thank Nature even more, if she be good enough to have endowed us with that lasting quality. Let a girl learn once for all that her little schoolgirl airs and graces can please only the unintellectual of her set, that to make a good match, in the most noble sense of the word, is to form herself to be the equal of the man she marries, and all will be right. I speak advisedly, because a girl who has the courage to so plan out her future is very unlikely to wed with any save the most desirable of the other sex.