HALL'S

JOURNAL OF HEALTH.

VOL. XIX. —JULY, 1872.— No. VII.

THE WEDDING-DAY.

Two healthy persons, with trusting, loving hearts, having been united in marriage, immediate preparation should be made for housekeeping; following the beautiful instincts of the birds of the forest, whose greatest happiness seems to be in preparing a place in which they may nestle with their young. The very labor necessary may well be supposed to be one of love and delight.

For the young pair to enter a splendid mansion, completely and elegantly furnished by parental love, the very day after marriage, does not afford the thousandth part of the pure, enduring, and healthful gratifications which attend those, seemingly less favored by fortune, whose home has to be selected with much previous calculation, and debating, and hesitancy; where every article of furniture has to be talked over; its style and quality to be considered d; what amount of means can be afforded to procure this, that, and the other housekeeping necessity? can the money be spared to obtain that elegant pattern of carpet? would it not be better to take something less costly for a year or two,

then move that up-stairs, and have the more elegant one for the parlor? The very circumstance of having to stop for want of funds long before the furnishing is completed, when in a plain way, is not without its advantages, its springs of lovingness; for these things bring the young husband and wife to counseling together; the wife's native pride and fine taste, and the young man's prudence, balancing against each other. His devotion urges him to gratify the woman whose happiness is his highest aim, and his secret thought, that a little more energy, a little more application, a little longer staying at his place of business, will enable him to make it up: then comes the fear of debt; of being hampered; of possible failure of this, that, or the other plan. On the other hand, the wife fears that he cannot afford it; that it may require him to work too hard; then comes the indefinite apprehension of sickness and suffering, and all to gratify her; and she resolves to do without it. He insists that she ought to have it; and then they begin to skirmish, and make their little feints and pretenses, and practice their filmy infinitesimal falsities, to the end that the woman eventually has her way in the first battle of married life: she stoops to conquer; she governs in the future by yielding now, resolving that she can do without the coveted article for the present; telling him that in a short time it may be better and more safely afforded. The young man straightway looks upon the blossom before him with a greater devotion, a deeper, purer, warmer love, and resolves in his own mind that she is worthy of all the efforts he can make for her happiness, and that all the energies within him shall be exerted with a will to gratify every desire of her heart; and thus, before they know it, they have been wedded together in a closer, stronger bond than any clerical formula ever forged; for in this they have learned to "take counsel together," to defer to each other's views, and arguments, and wishes. Each has seen in the other a disposition to mutual sacrifices, and a habit of giving up one's own will for the gratification of the other is begun, and one of the broadest