Men marry beauty and talent and accomplishments
as though any of these things were solid enough to maintain their
prospective fortunes and women betroth themselves to men and manners,
and are satisfied that if they have nothing to eat, they will always
have something to look at. The great majority of rejected men in the
higher walks of civilization, as the word is used in our day, are
whole-souled fellows, whose clothes have the misfortune to fit awry,
whose shoes are clumsy, and whose ways are natural. It omens ill for
the human race that in spite of its much vaunted development and
progress, there should be such a mental poverty and moral weakness
prevailing among the representative classes. It is nothing else than a
serious reflection upon this self-glorifying century of ours, to note
how subservient our people are to harmful, social regulation, and how
indifferent they have become to those moral restrictions that encroach
upon the liberty of these questionable conventionalities.
These, however, are not the people that are ever associated with the
mention of the nobler and grander phases of human life. We pity them
for sacrificing their better selves to so thankless and perishable a
cause, and we would redeem them by gentle persuasion if they were
willing, but there are aspects of the situation upon which our eager
solicitude may not trespass, and having reached this limit we must
turn away with a shrug of the shoulders and leave them to their own
hazardous guidance.
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