Epitaph (verse)
Reely, Mary Katharine
378 I'ttE COMMONWEAL February 9, 1927 So I prefer, in order to advance my contention, to regard marriage as a contract into which people have entered in good faith. They have come together...
...Certainly, she cannot be so self-deceived as to imagine that by working up a spurious ease which may legally liberate her, and by announcing a new marriage, that she is deceiving anyone but herself as to the validity of this relation...
...A man who buys something, and who gives his notes to bind the purchase, must see that these notes are duly met even though he finds grave financial difficulties in living up to his bargain...
...Remarriages are entered into over the state border-line...
...This may not be admitted by many, yet a study of biology emphasizes the truth of the purpose...
...this is what separates it from mere sexual gratification...
...because they lack patience and discipline...
...In the majority of cases, how frequently there is an intentional perversion of truth...
...This is what raises it to dignity...
...A few brief passing days of time, He came to rest beneath their roots...
...A young woman who had been divorced several times, casually remarked to me after a few months of conjugal solitude, that she had never before been so long without a husband...
...The natural objective of marriage, despite the modernists, is child-bearing...
...The contract is broken with the same lack of integrity as existed when it was made...
...If men and women who wish to become divorced, would be honest and strip the procedure of all flimsy excuses and of all faking influences, they would often stand so denuded of any legitimate ground even in their own eyes that they might try and stick to their bargains...
...These recurrent dissolutions become more skilled in the handling as they become more automatic in practice...
...Their credit is thereby impaired...
...because they are unwilling to play the game...
...She had acquired the habit, and was lost without a wedding ring...
...If a man and woman who marry are honestly barren of offspring, then society should pity them because, with every good disposition, their union has been robbed of its legitimate purpose...
...They have undertaken, in theory at least, to found and to maintain a home, and to make their contribution to the human race by bringing children into the world...
...How the young green tender shoots Hold their hands up to the skies...
...In asking for an explanation, I am often told that to be married makes things easier when a couple has to register in a hotel l Personally, I believe that the French method of upholding the outward semblance of family respectability, although the parents may lead their private lives apart, is far better than to proclaim infidelities from the housetops, and to toss children about from one parent to the other, or to leave them to the care of someone who happens to furnish a convenient solution for their guardianship...
...They have come together agreeing to certain stipulations which are assumed to be obligatory in their execution...
...relations which are frankly illicit become legal...
...Here he lies...
...because they want to take and not to give...
...8pitapA See a man's life entwined with trees...
...Fictitious proofs of adultery, the naming of imaginary co-respondents, are mere subterfuges, framed to falsify testimony and to mislead justice...
...MARY' I~ATHARINE REELY...
...because deception is easier than truth that people rush into the divorce courts upon the merest provocation, and replace the wedding rings with the same facility as any other ornament that they wear...
...If those in business regarded obligations as lightly as do the present-day seekers of divorce, they would soon lose their standing as people of integrity, and would be considered so unreliable that no one would dream of doing business with them...
...They are not people of integrity with whom to do business...
...The men and women who marry have assumed certain responsibilities toward society...
...378 I'ttE COMMONWEAL February 9, 1927 So I prefer, in order to advance my contention, to regard marriage as a contract into which people have entered in good faith...
...Perjury is in order, and misstatements hold sway...
...and thus a foundation of lies merely erects another building of cardboard...
...This contract, like any other business undertaking, is not contingent upon the adverse conditions which may arise...
...These--he planted in his youth, Watched and tended in his prime...
...After a while, this microbe of divorce is as recognizable as is any other disease-germ...
...It frequently becomes chronic...
...It is easy, indeed, to indulge in sophistries which offer plausible excuses for any line of conduct, but I have yet to find anyone who is more fertile of selfexoneration than the man or woman who wishes to rid himself or herself from a present marital encumbrance for the purpose of making another matrimonial experiment...
...The mystery to me is why a woman who has no scruples whatever in being the mistress of a man, seems insistent upon the marriage ceremony...
...It is mainly because they work up a case of grievances...
...If birth control is to be advocated, why then should not marriage be abrogated...
...Why should not people live together because of sex urge, without any further sense of moral responsibility than to enjoy each other so long as the appeal endures ? Investigate the facts which induce the average divorce of today...
...The law does not accept the excuse that since he signed the contract, his income has decreased...
...What are they...
...because they are selfish and self-indulgent...
...because they are wilful and egotistical...
...If they ignore these obligations, they have deliberately entered into a contract under false pretenses...
...There never was any honest intention to keep it, nor was there any fear of consequences when it was broken...
Vol. 5 • February 1927 • No. 14
