person would do this, but it is this wholesale marrying of girls in
their teens, this rushing into an unknown plane of life to avoid work.
Avoid work! What housewife dares call a moment her own?

Marriages might be made in Heaven, but too often they are consummated
right here on earth, based on a desire to possess the physical
attractions of the woman by the man, pretty much as a child desires a
toy, and an innate love of man, a wild desire not to be ridiculed by the
foolish as an "old maid," and a certain delicate shrinking from the work
of the world--laziness is a good name for it--by the woman. The
attraction of mind to mind, the ability of one to compliment the lights
and shadows in the other, the capacity of either to fulfil the duties of
wife or husband--these do not enter into the contract. That is why we
have divorce courts.

And so our independent woman in every year of her full, rich,
well-rounded life, gaining fresh knowledge and experience, learning
humanity, and particularly that portion of it which is the other gender,
so well as to avoid clay-footed idols, and finally when she does consent
to bear the yoke upon her shoulders, does so with perhaps less romance
and glamor than her younger scoffing sisters, but with an assurance of
solid and more lasting happiness. Why should she have hastened this;
was aught lost by the delay?

"They say" that men don't admire this type of woman, that they prefer
the soft, dainty, winning, mindless creature who cuddles into men's
arms, agrees to everything they say, and looks upon them as a race of
gods turned loose upon this earth for the edification of womankind.
Well, may be so, but there is one thing positive, they certainly respect
the independent one, and admire her, too, even if it is at a distance,