Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 72, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 April 1918 — Pity for Unmarried [ARTICLE]

Pity for Unmarried

When we consider the ordinary lives of unmarried men, we must give them our pity, for they have deprived themselves of anxiety, says W. L. George, in Harper’s Magazine. Nearly all earn as much as they need, and nearly all, in their isolation and purposelessness, learn to need all that they earn. Their work done, their pockets full enough, there is no mortgage on their time, no compulsion as to their residence, no demand that they should interest themselves in the occupations or ideas of wife, or child or friendin anything, indeed, except themselves, a limited field for one’s Interest, for soon one can know one’s self too well, and intimacy may breed contempt. Marriage releases you from the unreal by giving you many real things to think about, by satisfying your need for association with the solid earth. That need satisfied, your spirit is free to wander in the unreal, in abstract thought, In artistic desire, instead of being bound by the continual aspiration of the unmarried to the real things they do not possess.