Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 January 1899 — That Mt- Ayr Elopement. [ARTICLE]

That Mt- Ayr Elopement.

Although people seem to naturally sympathize with young people when they run away to get married, yet there are feuch cases where thß parents of one or both of the elopers deserve sympathy more than the 'elopers. Such perhaps is the case with Mr. and Mrs. Crisler, the parehts of Glenna Crisler, the 14 year old girl who lately elpped with the young Percy Lakin. They are reported to be grieved beyond measure by their daughter’s action. In rtiis connection, it is only justice to say that the statement previously published that they objected to the marriage, on the grounds of the girl’s youth, is apt to convey a wrong impression. In fact they had never knowingly permitted her to go with Mr. Lakin at all, nor with any other young men, to any extent. , At the night of the elopement she had gone out ostensibly to attend a temperanoe committee meeting. It was learned that she was not there, and her brother then went out to look for her, and found that she had gone to a dance, some miles in the country. The brother procured a team and started to -find and bring her home. Some , young fellows, knowing his object, mounted horses and outrode him to where the dance was, and informed the girl of her brother’s approach, and she and young-Lakin and another couple who came in the same conveyance, left at once, and the eloping couple took the early train here for Wisconsin, the following morning. The marriage may turn out happily, but considering the youth of the girl and there previous slight acquaintance, it is at least very uncertain that it will. The chances are very much greater of such marriages resulting unhappily than when the girl has reached a reasonable uge and has the consent of her parents in the one she is to marry. A moral that might be pointed here is that headstrong and disobedient girls are apt, very apt, to wreck their own happiness, by those qualities. And perhaps still apother moral is also suggested by this case. If so it is that parents, by too much sternness and repression of their children,,sometimes burry them into doing the very things they are most anxious for them not to do.