Vermont Watchman And State Journal

Fredrika Bremer on Married Men.

I confess, then, that I never find, and never have found a man more loveable, more captivating, than when he is a married man; that is to say, a good married man. A man is never so handsome, never so perfect, in my eyes, as when he is married—as when he is a husband, and the father of a family—supporting in his manly arms wife and children, and the whole domestic circle, which in his entrance into the married state, closed around him, and constitute a part of his home and his world. He is not merely ennobled by this position, but he is actually beautified by it. Then he appears to me as the crown of creation, and it is only such a man as this who is dangerous to me, and with whom I am inclined to fall in love.—But then propriety forbids it. And Moses, and all the European legislators declare it to be sinful, and all married women would consider it a sacred duty to stone me. Nevertheless I cannot prevent the thing. It is so and cannot be otherwise; and my only hope of appeasing those who are excited against me is in my further confession, that no love affects me so pleasantly; the contemplation of no happiness makes me so happy, as that between married people. It seems to me that I, living unmarried, or mateless, have with that happiness little to do—but it is so, and it always was so.