go to church with on Sunday, but on weekdays
marriage is no moonshine, I can tell you. It's a practical matter. Just
an arrangement for making a home, and getting a family, and bringing up
children--that's what marriage is, if you ask me."
"But don't you think love is necessary?"
"Depends what you mean by love. If you mean what they talk about in
poetry and songs--bleeding hearts and sighs and kisses and all that
nonsense--no!" said my aunt, with a heavy bang on her ironing.
"That's what people mean when they talk about marrying for love, and it
generally ends in poverty and misery, and sensible women have nothing to
do with it. Look at me," she said, spitting on the bottom of her iron,
"do you think I married for love when I married the colonel? No indeed!
'Here's a quiet respectable man with a nice income,' I said, 'and if I
put my little bit to his little bit we'll get along comfortably if he
_is_ a taste in years,' I said. Look at your mother, though. She was one
of the marrying-for-love kind, and if we had let her have her way where
would she have been afterwards with her fifteen years as an invalid? And
where would you have been by this time? No," said Aunt Bridget, bringing
down her flat-iron with a still heavier bang, "a common-sense marriage,
founded on suitability of position and property, and all that, is the
only proper sort of match. And that's what's before you now, girl, so
for goodness' sake don't go about like the parish pan, letting every
busybody make mischief with you. My Betsy wouldn't if she had your
chance--I can tell you that much, my lady."
I did not speak. There was another bang or two of the flat-iron, and
then,
"Besides, love will come. Of course it will. It will come in time. If
you don't exactly love your husband when you marry him you'll love him
later on. A wife ought to teach herself to love her husband. I know I
had to, and if. . . ."
"But if she can't, Auntie?"
"Then she ought to be ashamed of herself, and say nothing about it."
I
Notka biograficzna
Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine CH, KBE (May 14, 1853August 31, 1931), usually known as Hall Caine, was a British author. He is best known as a novelist and playwright of the late Victorian and the Edwardian eras. In his time he was exceedingly popular and at the peak of his success his novels outsold those of his contemporaries. Many of his novels were also made into films. His novels were primarily romantic in nature, involving the love triangle, but they did also address some of the more serious political and social issues of the day.
Harold MacGrath (September 4, 1871 - October 30, 1932) was a bestselling American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. Also known occasionally as Harold McGrath, he was born in Syracuse, New York. As a young man, he worked as a reporter and columnist on the Syracuse Herald newspaper until the late 1890s when he published his first novel, a romance titled Arms and the Woman. According to the New York Times, his next book, The Puppet Crown, was the No.7 bestselling book in the United States for all of 1901. From that point on, MacGrath never looked back, writing novels for the mass market about love, adventure, mystery, spies, and the like at an average rate of more than one a year. He would have three more of his books that were among the top ten bestselling books of the year. At the same time, he penned a number of short stories for major American magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Journal, and Red Book magazine. Several of MacGraths novels were seriali
Mabel Collins (9 September 1851 - 31 March 1927) was a theosophist and author of over 46 books. She was born in St Peter Port, Guernsey.