Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/222



The habit alike of early marriage and of universal marrying, had been our increasing social feature since the great educational and other reforms that characterized the closing nineteenth and opening twentieth century. Every young man and every young woman looked forward, as matter of course, to being a husband or a wife; and each, upon due occasion, took his or her own case in charge in the most methodical and business way, and with altogether undisguised purpose. But, in order to be suitably mated, the great object on either side was not merely the ordinary family or domestic happiness, which was mostly a sure enough prospect in those fairly well-ordered times; still less was it anything about pecuniary settlements, that prime consideration of some previous centuries. What the expectant wife might possibly be even more concerned about than mere domestic bliss, was the prospect of an active and successful joint participation in the current science or business of the time, so that life might be spent to some purpose, and the departing spirit, at the end, feel that, during the occupation of the body, there had not been a mere useless cumbrance of the busy ground. Deathbeds might thus be at times a sad but not unedifying spectacle, when they were disturbed by a sense of irrevocably wasted time. The strength, freshness, and comparative leisure of youth were in general diligently given by either sex, to lay a solid foundation of acquirements for the pursuits of maturer life. Even diet, as well as exercise, began to be universally regulated so as to result in the greatest