A home correspondent writes Among the unsuccessfully married people who invite my advice there are some who admit that they entered marriage through pity.
The "sterner sex" are more susceptible to impulsive compassion of this kind than the weaker sex." A strong man is often moved by the spectacle of a lonely, feeble woman in distress, and he may even mistake his pity for a truly passionate love.
Women are rarely able to deceive themselves in this manner. When they marry for pity, as a considerable number do, they have no illusions concerning the sentiment. They think that the affection growing out of compassion will probably endure as long or even longer than a fervent passion. Pity may be "akin to love," but it is not love itself. An altruist can pity an enemy.
Women are more "practical" and far-sighted in love than men. This is not because they are less capable than men of affection, but because the potentiality of motherhood makes the average woman more cautious than the average man in the selection of a partner.
The vast majority of women look for strength and force of character in a suitor, and for this reason they resist an impulse to marry a weak man merely in order to "mother" him, There is usually a recognition of weakness in the person one pities.
Marrying for pity is a very perilous experiment. It is one of the mistakes that. a noble man or woman may make, A chiwilrous, unsophisticated man meets a forlorn and unhappy woman, and a friendship results. Then the day arrives when the woman weeps on his shoulder, and the man, consumed with a tender pity, which he mistakes for love, says to himself. 'How splendid if I could make this lonely, unloved woman a happy wife!. Isn't it true that by making another happy we gain happiness ourselves?' "And in an avowal of love he proposes that they shall share the burden of life together.
Distiresion any Discoy Alas! we do not always gain happiness by making another happy. This is the great trouble in the ease of those who have confided in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.