Consequently it is raving, frothy, of a mushroom growth, making
mere bubbles, and completing its work in an evaporation of all that it
operated upon, passing away like the morning cloud and the early dew.
True love is very different. It is substantial, reasonable, moral, acting
according to law, temperate in all things, keeping the heart from extremes,
permanent, and based upon principle. Passion, without love, may keep you in
a state of pleasurable intoxication until the knot is tied, when you will
soon get sober again, only to see, however, your folly and to contemplate
the height from which you have fallen, and then, with the recklessness of
sullen despair, to pass over into the opposite extreme of stoical
indifference and misery. All emotions are transient, and hence no proper
standard of judgment in the serious matter of a marriage choice. The heart,
unguided by the head, is, in its emotions, like the flaming meteor that
passes in its rapid, fiery train across the heavens. It flames only for a
time, and soon passes away, leaving the heavens in greater darkness than
before.
Neither is wealth a true basis for the marriage choice. "The love of money
is the root of all evil;" and when it is the primary desideratum in
marriage, it acts like a canker-worm upon domestic peace and happiness.
With too many in this day of money-making, marriage is but a pecuniary
speculation, a mere gold and silver affair; and their match-making is but a
money-making, that is, money makes the match.
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