Wilson County, NC – Marriages – Married to the Wasp

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                      SAM JONES ON MARRIAGE

     It is putting money above manhood and womanhood.  This is a 
besetting sin.  When a father puts a premium of a hundred thousand 
dollars upon his daughter the young man often esteem the fortune above
the girl, and wherever money is put above manhood you weaken the whole 
business and let down the foundation upon which society rests and happy 
married life must be based.  The old goose don't know that the 
hardships he underwent made him what he is.  Take the average girl.  
She will get up at 9 in the morning and call her servant.  She will tie 
one end of her corset string to the bed post and get the negro hold of 
the other end, and see-saw until she gets herself as near as she can 
into the shape of a wasp.  She goes down stairs; the breakfast is all 
over, and it disarranges everything for her to have her breakfast, and
then it's not as good as the other breakfast, and she will raise cain 
with the house girl, for she has the disposition of a wasp as well as 
the shape of one.  She has thrown herself out of shape until her vital
organs are no more where God put them than if a Chinaman had built her.  
And by and by this girl, along with the money her father gives her, 
gets married, and she is to be a mother to the boys and girls of this
country, and by the time she is thirty she is pale and haggard and worn 
out mentally and physically.  Then she spends the balance of her time 
making her husband unhappy and her home unpleasant.

     The girl marries if she is let alone the fellow she loves, if he 
is a bootblack or her fathers carriage driver.  More boys are hunting 
rich girls than girls hunting rich boys.

Source:  The Advertiser.  Wilson, North Carolina newspaper.  
27 October 1888 issue.

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This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by
Grace Williamson Turner
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