feeling was not the sentiment of family and blood,
a sort of base-line in life upon which trouble and
disaster always throw her back? Does she ever
lose the instinct of it? We used to say in jest
that a patriotic man was always willing to sacrifice
his wife’s relations in war; but his wife took
a different view of it; and when it becomes a question
of office, is it not the wife’s relations who
get them? To be sure, Ruth said, thy people shall
be my people, and where thou goest I will go, and
all that, and this beautiful sentiment has touched
all time, and man has got the historic notion that
he is the head of things. But is it true that
a woman is ever really naturalized? Is it in her
nature to be? Love will carry her a great way,
and to far countries, and to many endurances, and
her capacity of self-sacrifice is greater than man’s;
but would she ever be entirely happy torn from her
kindred, transplanted from the associations and interlacings
of her family life? Does anything really take
the place of that entire ease and confidence that one
has in kin, or the inborn longing for their sympathy
and society? There are two theories about life,
as about naturalization: one is that love is enough,
that intention is enough; the other is that the whole
circle of human relations and attachments is to be
considered in a marriage, and that in the long-run
the question of family is a preponderating one.
Does the gate of divorce open more frequently from
following the one theory than the other? If we
were to adopt the notion that marriage is really a
tremendous act of naturalization, of absolute surrender
on one side or the other of the deepest sentiments
and hereditary tendencies, would there be so many
hasty marriages—slip-knots tied by one justice
to be undone by another? The Drawer did not intend
to start such a deep question as this. Hosts
of people are yearly naturalized in this country,
not from any love of its institutions, but because
they can more easily get a living here, and they really
surrender none of their hereditary ideas, and it is
only human nature that marriages should be made with
like purpose and like reservations. These reservations
do not, however, make the best citizens or the most
happy marriages. Would it be any better if country
lines were obliterated, and the great brotherhood of
peoples were established, and there was no such thing
as patriotism or family, and marriage were as free
to make and unmake as some people think it should
be? Very likely, if we could radically change
human nature. But human nature is the most obstinate
thing that the International Conventions have to deal
with.