Husband and Wife Ruined before Their “Crane is Hung.”—The Foolish and Ruinous Display at Weddings.—An Illustration Given.—How Wedding Presents Lead to Debt and Unhappiness.—Living Does not Need much Machinery.—Mistake of Copying after People of Large Wealth.—Wise Choice of Furniture.—The best Adornments for the Home.—The Trousseaux of our Foremothers.—The Need of Simplicity.—Artificialities That make a Veil between our Souls and God.

“Be not vain, oh my soul, and suffer not the din of thy vanity to deafen the ears of thy heart.”—Augustine.

“It is possible so to complicate the machinery of living that the very life itself is crushed among the wheels. We may wrap ourselves so in comfort until our breath is smothered in the folds. The man whose wants are few is the man most likely to be found carrying a light heart.”—W. R. Huntington.

Many young married people are ruined before their “crane is hung.” Ruined through the false vanity engendered by the foolish display made in their attempt to follow the fashion in the preparations for the wedding, and their start in life.

This could not be better illustrated than by an article in The Ladies’ Home Journal, which I quote in full. While this does not typify all grades of society, yet the same spirit of show and vanity permeates all.

“A little woman who lives in one of the interminable rows of cheap, turreted, showy houses, came to me a few days ago, pale with anxiety. ‘Kitty,’ she said, ‘is going to be married to young Holt, who is a salesman in one of the department stores, and I’m sure I don’t know how we are to raise money for a wedding breakfast and a full choir.’

“Kitty’s father is also a salesman on thirty dollars a week, and there are four other girls. Oh, the scrimping and saving that have gone on in that house to turn out Kitty and her sisters fashionably clothed. The cheap cuts of meat, the rancid butter, the beds without blankets, the stoves without coal, and the unpaid creditors, scowling out of every shop in the neighborhood when the old man passes by. He toils six days every week, early and late without complaining, and his wife spends his wages for, as she thinks, the best interests of his girls.

“‘White satin, even the sleaziest, has gone[75] up to a frightful price,’ she moaned, ‘and I dare not count what the wedding breakfast will cost.’

“When I asked why there must be a wedding breakfast and a full choir, she said, that every bride in their set had had both this summer, and what would the Holts think if Kitty came creeping like a pauper into their family? ‘The Holts,’ she assured me, ‘are high-flyers. No indeed: there shall be nothing half cut in any way about Kitty’s wedding.’

“The wedding breakfast is served and Kitty, (or Kathryn as she calls herself), is married in the white satin. She begins life in a showy, tiny house, chiefly furnished with her wedding presents. She has no comfortable underclothing or bedding, and not a dollar in her pocket. But Kathryn has her ‘receiving days,’ and is careful to order her cakes and café frappé from the caterer who is patronized by the millionaire who employs her husband.”

Not what would we like, and what can we afford? but, “What do other people do, and what would they think did we do otherwise?”—is the sentiment which controls the preparation of the young people, in all grades of society, in their beginning life together.[76] How refreshing to find occasionally a father and mother who care little what “they say,” and who equip their daughters as becomes their station in life, and their means, regardless of what others about them are doing.

Wedding presents are a happy reminder of a happy occasion, but they often prove a snare in the demand for surroundings that are beyond the means of the recipients. “These are such very pretty and nice things that we really must have pretty things to go with them,” is the thought of the young people, and in setting up much more is spent than they can afford, and they are handicapped by debt, and harassed by worry at the outset; and what should be the happiest and most care-free time of their life is spoiled by this hydra-headed intruder, debt.

It is but a repetition of the old story of the good woman, who must have a new pair of andirons. When they were set up in the best room in all their shiny newness, a new carpet was a thing of necessity. This was followed by new chairs to keep countenance with the carpet; then curtains, walls and all must be transformed and little wonder that the good man was appalled at the cost of one pair of inoffensive andirons.

“Living does not really need so much machinery,” is a trite and true sentiment. Oh for a blessed contentment that will make us happy with that which we can with propriety have.

The trouble begins, but does not end, with the trousseau of the bride. If the means of both parties are moderate, why attempt to copy the style and quantity of those who are not obliged to count their dollars? A simple substantial outfit, with nothing that shall not be useful, and suited to the surroundings and station of the bride and groom, is an evidence of good sense and commendable taste.

Some one has said wisely, “There are no real distinctions among us, and there cannot be unless we change our republic into a monarchy. Rank is a real possession of the Englishmen, but we do not own it and never did, and in trying to set up a sham, pinchbeck imitation of it, we are losing the solid strength and repose and wealth out of our lives.”

When the bridal trousseau is wisely chosen, the home will be furnished with like taste and wisdom. The furniture that is really needed, and that of the best, dresses the house far more elegantly than can a vulgar profusion of showy articles. Tinsel bric-a-brac,[78] cheap cushions and tidies and bed-coverings proclaim the uncultured taste of the home-keeper. Strong honest denim is far more elegant than sleazy satin for sofa pillows, and has this virtue, that it can be easily made as good as new by washing. No hangings at all are better than cheap hangings at windows and doors, unless they are of an honest cheapness that soap and water will not spoil, but make as good as new.

Our foremothers came to their wedding day supplied with chests filled with plain durable linen, of their own weaving and fashioning, bed-linen and quilts and spreads in substantial profusion; but with little in the line of showy outside dress; and their whole after lives were but the expression of the wisdom and good judgment of their beginning.

“The crying need of many of us to-day, is not for more, but less. We have too much, so that our lives are robbed of all simplicity. We are choked by our possessions, as the Roman maiden by the golden bracelets for which she betrayed the city.

“Our artificialities make a veil between our souls and God. We have not mastered them, but they have mastered us.”