Class. 
 Book. 
 
 QT2.fe& 5 
 
 
 w~i?s&: 
 
 
 v*** 
 
 '•*5t-;"^ -vjyugs: / 7v-r 
 
 IT ^W^N^T' 
 

 1« 
 
 Fftri 
 
FROM THE 
 
 Marriage License 
 Window. 
 
 An Analysis of the Characteristics of the Various 
 Nationalities. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS MADE, AND INCIDENTS TOLD. 
 
 FACTS FROM EVERY-DAY LIFE. 
 
 By Mf'SALMONSON, -H :.'. 
 u 
 
 EX-MARRIAGE LICENSE DEPUTY FOR COOK COUNTY. ILLINOIS. 
 
 CHICAGO : 
 
 John Anderson & Co., Printers. 
 
 1887. 
 

 
 ji/fc 3 
 
 6 ■' 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1887, by 
 
 M. SALMONSON, 
 in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 
 
 RIGHT OF TRANSLATION RESERVED. 
 
 LC Control Numb* 
 
 tmp96 026379 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I.— The Window — The Human Heart— The 
 Thermometer of Love — A Philosopher's View — 
 Socrates. 
 
 CHAPTER II. — Marriage a Practical Affair — Mar- 
 riage contra Divorces — The Marriage Instinct — 
 Man Needs a Partner — Marriage a Lottery — Rela- 
 tive Happiness — The Feeling of Responsibility 
 
 CHAPTEB III. — Encouraging to Marriage — Nihilistic 
 Views — Malthus — Early Marriages — Optimistic 
 Views. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. — Peculiarities of Languages — Difficul- 
 ties — Beautiful Peculiarities — A Graceful Lan- 
 guage — A Matter-of-Fact Language — The Language 
 of Abstract Philosophy — A Melodious Language. 
 
 CHAPTER V. — Some American Characteristics — The 
 Busy American — The Sedate American — Irish Amer- 
 icans. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. — Patrick — His Devotion to His Church — 
 His Hope of Liberation. 
 
 CHAPTER VII.— Stern Faces — Orthodox Poles — Free- 
 hinking Bohemians — German Profundity — Do You 
 Speak German ? — Philosophical Dispositions — So- 
 cialism — Sociability. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII "The Melancholy Dane "— Religious 
 
 Tolerance — Norwegian National Pride — The Typi- 
 cal Norwegian — The Frenchman of the North — 
 Religious Views — Swedish Pride. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. — Models for Artists — Italians — A Beau- 
 tiful Couple — A Bohemian Bride and Groom — A 
 Hackman — From Hand to Mouth — Cooperation — 
 Economical Deductions. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER X. — Disagreeably Surprised — A Girl of Age 
 
 — A Reasonable Doubt — An Angry Mother — Pa- 
 rents' Punishments — Subtraction. 
 
 CHAPTER XI.— An Old Couple — Some Motives — Dar- 
 ing Experiments — Old Age and Blooming Youth — 
 Disproportion 
 
 CHAPTER XII. — Forcing Circumstances — Horny Hands 
 
 — Different Directions — Only Three Fingers — A 
 Military Salute — An Amusing Incident — The Silk 
 Hat — Runaway Couples — From a Neighboring State. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII.— Not in a Hurry — Many Excuses — A 
 Gratified Demand — Suppressing — Delicate Cases — 
 The License List — Exceptions — A Surprising Ques- 
 tion — A Queer Groom — Closely Watched — Demands 
 on the Memory — Interrogation — Many Names — A 
 Colored Philosopher — A Practical Man — Good Un- 
 til Used — Unhappy Girls. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV.— Intricate and Plain Questions — Si- 
 lent Applicants — Loquacious Candidates — A Jail 
 M arr iage — Compulsion . 
 
 CHAPTER XV. — Applicant from Russian Poland — He- 
 brew Signatures — Jacob and Rachel — Celestial 
 Marriages. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. — In Excellent Humor — An Invitation 
 to " Stand Up " — Black and White — Mixed Marriages. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. — Superstition — A Wedding Postponed 
 — "Call Again" — Saturday — Monday — The Farmers' 
 Day — Certificates. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII.— Busy Days — A Comical Error— A 
 Dramatic Scene — Cupid's Hunting Season. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. — Given Names — From the Old and New 
 Testament — Historical and Dramatic Names — Com- 
 plicated Names — Names Translated — "Rats." 
 
 CHAPTER XX. — Girls as Applicants — Nervous Men — 
 " Under the Weather" — Hypnotism. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Window. — The Human Heart. — The Ther- 
 mometer of Love. — A Philosopher's View. — 
 Socrates. 
 
 PERHAPS it may be superfluous to call at- 
 tention to the fact that there is a window 
 in the county clerk's office bearing the 
 inscription, "Marriage Licenses." Those who 
 have not personally seen that window, a mere 
 framework, however, surmounted on a desk, 
 may have read about it in the daily journals, 
 where the licenses are chronicled day after day 
 all the year round. Spring and summer, fall 
 and winter, this window is literally open to those 
 who, on the right side of our matrimonial laws, 
 are approaching the connubial life. And from 
 the time that the office is opened in the morning 
 till it is closed in the evening the pilgrimage to 
 this window is incessant. Now it is a solitary 
 wanderer, whose mind for a long while has been 
 bent on the matrimonial Mecca. Soon a group 
 
of several individuals, each faithfully and pa- 
 tiently waiting for his turn to make oath 
 — hats off and hands erect — to the effect that 
 he is the possessor of all the qualifications pre- 
 scribed by law entitling him to have the knot 
 tied which is to unite him to the choice of his 
 heart or intellect, as the case may be. And 
 the number of all these applicants is growing, in 
 the course of a year, to quite vast proportions, 
 the total of which may be estimated in round 
 figures at twenty-two thousand souls. 
 
 What a sum of love, intellect and sentiments 
 this number represents! But what if we could 
 follow these many souls on their wanderings 
 through life, say only a couple of years after 
 their marriage, how would we not, in hundreds of 
 instances, be surprised at the change of love, at 
 the sorrows, disappointed expectations, miseries 
 and calamities, as results of inharmonious matri- 
 monial unions? The human heart is not always 
 beating in the sweet tempo of love. It is full of 
 passions and will sometimes harbor feelings in 
 direct contrast to the saying that man is the 
 noblest of all creation. The young couple who 
 adore each other to-day, while they are engaged, 
 may two years after their wedding curse the 
 fate that united them in wedlock. 
 
As everybody knows, a great deal of poetry 
 and prose has been written in honor of love. 
 Poets of both sexes have at all times, and will 
 most likely to the last day continue to do so, 
 extolled in writing and speech this feeling or 
 abstraction, or illusion, a single definition of 
 which is meaningless. It is with love as with 
 cold or hot air; it is measured according to its 
 degree of strength. A thermometer of love, 
 properly constructed, would show a great many 
 divisions. According to the notions of our days 
 the Platonic love is below zero, for the great 
 philosopher advocated a mere spiritual love 
 without animal desire. It is a cold love, abso- 
 lutely out of fashion, void of passion, admiring 
 its object at a respectful distance through the 
 coldest and most unimpassioned contemplation. 
 A little above zero the degree will show the 
 chivalrous love, a form well-known from the 
 middle ages. A chevalier of that time would 
 not dare to propose, and a lady would not accept, 
 until he in the arena had broken a lance in honor 
 of her. We certainly have chevaliers in Chicago, 
 but instead of breaking lances after the olden 
 fashion, nowadays we make our fights in another 
 manner. We are diplomats and good calcu- 
 lators, and we do not want to go back to quasi- 
 
8 
 
 barbarian modes to win a girl ; and, on the other 
 hand, she does not wish her lover to enter an 
 arena even if he had only to fight the famous 
 John L. It would be an insurmountable task to 
 describe all the degrees of such a thermometer. 
 Its climax would show the blood-heat love with 
 all its subdivisions,— the enthusiastic, the fanatic, 
 the blind, the deep, the unrequited, the selfish 
 love, and so on. The noblest of all the degrees 
 is by far that which bears the inscription "pure." 
 It predominates among young girls everywhere, 
 and particularly among those from happy homes. 
 The pure love is the triumph of the heart over 
 all ignoble feelings, for it is unselfish. It is love 
 for love's sake alone. — If we are not pessimistic, 
 we cannot but believe that a matrimonial union 
 between young people is founded upon some- 
 thing better than an egotistic calculation. It is 
 unnatural with young hearts to unite in wedlock, 
 that is intended to last until death separates 
 them, without being animated with a deep feel- 
 ing for each other. But the strength of this 
 feeling has, however, to be measured according 
 to the intellectual standpoint of the parties con- 
 cerned, according to their mental qualifications, 
 the culture of mind and heart. Love amongst 
 peasants is not the same as love amongst people 
 
9 
 
 of society; the romantic and idyllic love that 
 may be found with young country people is not 
 the kind of love that may be found with the 
 young, go-ahead people of large cities. Love 
 with individuals of the lower strata of society is 
 not the same as that with the higher classes. 
 This product of feeling and imagination, as 
 some define it, has its limits within the fixed 
 periphery where birth, education and habits of 
 life have placed its victim. The higher the in- 
 tellectual development, the stronger also the 
 inherent power of subduing the sensual desire 
 existing in all relations of love between man and 
 woman; the lower the intellectual development, 
 the weaker the power of resistance to sensuality. 
 There are people who assert that true love, as 
 it is called, can only be found in wedlock, all 
 other love before the accomplished marriage 
 being untrue. It is not a long while ago that a 
 French philosophical physician delivered a lec- 
 ture, the essence of which was reproduced in the 
 press of all civilized nations. The doctor holds 
 that all human beings, himself of course in- 
 cluded, are more or less insane, and consequently 
 the brain during the time we make love, or 
 during the days of engagement, is in a more 
 than usually abnormal condition, a disease that, 
 
10 
 
 however, may be partly remedied in marriage. 
 The theory of the mental disease of all humanity 
 is not a new one. An old Spanish adage says 
 that all men are a little of a poet, a little of a 
 doctor, and a little insane. Most people have 
 had a smaller or greater dose of this disease, if 
 it be one, and all will admit that they never felt 
 better or happier than during the days when 
 they commenced their courting attempts that 
 finally were crowned with success. The peculiar 
 condition of a youth smitten with love may be 
 of shorter or longer duration, but it is seldom of 
 a dangerous nature. It is not until all hope is 
 gone that his or her mind may be so clouded 
 that a suicide is committed. We read some- 
 times in the papers of such results of unrequited 
 love, and the coroner's jury will never fail to 
 give a verdict in accordance with the facts 
 produced, viz.: That the deceased came to his 
 death by his own hand in a fit of insanity. 
 
 Without laying any particular stress upon the 
 first part of the French doctor's theory, we must 
 admit that matrimony is the school in which 
 true love must stand its test. No two persons 
 know each other until after marriage. During 
 the time of engagement they are partly blind to 
 their respective faults, or they may conceal these 
 
11 
 
 faults, or they will not see them. Women par- 
 ticularly may live during the engagement in a 
 kind of intoxication, in which they never pause 
 a moment to reflect. It is not until after wed- 
 lock that they form more rational ideas. Men, 
 as a rule, are more philosophical, but even philos- 
 ophers may for a while live in a clouded atmos- 
 phere of love. It is a question whether the wise 
 Socrates would have united in marriage with 
 Xantippe if he had known her so well as he did 
 after their marriage. Socrates ought to be the 
 model of most husbands. He knew how to 
 make the best of a situation that, according to 
 tradition, does not seem to have been enviable. 
 Nothing could disturb his equanimity. One 
 day, it is told, his lady having given him a ter- 
 rible lashing of her tongue, he left the house 
 without uttering a word. No sooner had he 
 closed the house door than, from her bedroom 
 window, she emptied a wash-bowl over his body. 
 The cold bath had no effect upon the equa- 
 nimity of the wise man. He simply took her 
 action as a proof of the fact that there is no 
 cause without effect, declaring that rain is a 
 natural follower of thunder. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Marriage a Practical Affair — Marriage Con- 
 tra Divorces — The Marriage Instinct — 
 Man Needs a Partner — Marriage a Lot- 
 tery — Relative Happiness — The Feeling 
 of Responsibility. 
 
 JUST as poets have the privilege of singing 
 the praise of love, so the students of polit- 
 ical economy and philosophers have taken up 
 the question of the marriage institution. The 
 evolution of marriage is a study not without 
 attractiveness. Marriage has existed at all 
 times. It antedates history, and it will, in spite 
 of the nihilistic and communistic ideas pertain- 
 ing to the union between man and woman, never 
 cease to exist, for the simple reason that it has 
 its origin in nature. The custom of marriage 
 has varied and changed with time, but there has 
 always, even amongst barbarian tribes, been 
 some rites, and some kind of marriage laws that 
 had to be respected. Nowadays a marriage is 
 considered a very practical affair. We have 
 
 (12) 
 
13 
 
 long ago ceased to consider it a divine institu- 
 tion, the inviolable laws of which are written in 
 heaven. The great masses have no more faith 
 in the divinity of such an institution than they 
 have in the doctrine of kings' and emperors' 
 right to their thrones by the grace of God. 
 Revolutions have done away with the former, 
 and civil laws with the latter ideas. Our divorce 
 courts speak loudly enough of the rights of 
 modern society to loosen the bonds of a mar- 
 riage; but if we, from the number of yearly 
 divorces, would judge of wedlock in general, 
 we would do it a great injustice. As all human 
 laws, so those pertaining to divorces, are imper- 
 fect, and it is no doubt owing to this fact alone 
 whence so many aberrations originate. Natur- 
 ally the laws are not calculated to produce' 
 divorces, the spirit of these having for its object 
 the protection of the wronged party. Usually 
 pessimists point to the many divorces when 
 matrimony is the topic of conversation. It is an 
 undeniable fact that divorce suits too often give 
 the great public an insight into matrimonial life 
 of a very humiliating and degrading character, 
 but the pessimists are too inclined to forget that 
 it is with the happy marriages as with the best 
 women : they are not made the objects of public 
 
14 
 
 criticism, and the happy marriages are, thank 
 God, by far outnumbering the unhappy. Besides, 
 the marriage instinct is lodged in every human 
 being, and the numbers of those in whom the 
 instinct is only weakly developed is fairly com- 
 pensated by those who enter three, and not so 
 very seldom, four times into marriage, in spite 
 of some very sad former experiences. 
 
 Most of us have come across young people 
 who are willing to swear that they never will 
 raise a family. It is nonsense. The very same 
 young man who is determined not to marry, 
 may some fine day meet a girl who, with good 
 and sound arguments, or with no arguments at 
 all, will convince him of the hollowness of his 
 determination, and he will not only yield, but be 
 anxious to name the day for their wedding. We 
 remember a young man who ridiculed a friend 
 of his who took out a license. " You will never 
 catch me," he said very emphatically, and in 
 less than two months he was a married man. 
 When reminded of his sarcasm he simply re- 
 marked that he was unconscious of the perils, 
 and that his girl had not appeared on the scene 
 at that time; he was not only cured, he meant, 
 but also a good victim for the tutelary genii of 
 wedlock. 
 
15 
 
 It is a law of nature to raise a family, and the 
 life of an old bachelor or old maid is not enviable. 
 No matter how deeply interested for a while a 
 man or woman may feel in the study of a branch 
 of science, of art, or any other avocation that 
 tends to elevate and enrich the human mind, 
 the day is sure to come when he or she will feel 
 the emptiness of a solitary life. Man needs a 
 partner to share not only his sorrows, but also 
 his joys. Against this assertion has often been 
 quoted Socrates' answer to the young Athenian 
 who asked him whether he should marry or re- 
 main single. The reply was not a definite one, 
 for Socrates told him that whether he married 
 or remained single he would repent it. And 
 even if we construe the answer as a choice be- 
 tween two evils, the most sensible thing to do is 
 to choose the lesser evil, which by all means the 
 conjugal union is, provided it is not altogether 
 barren of sunshine. 
 
 It is not unusual to compare marriage with a 
 lottery, in which some draw a big prize, some a 
 small one, some again a very little one, or, 
 finally , some a blank. The happiest marriages, 
 however, have not always commenced with an 
 ardent love, and the most unhappy are not sel- 
 dom in an inverse proportion to the imagined 
 
16 
 
 love from the days of engagement. The fact 
 is, that marriage has no room for sentimental 
 love. Sentimentality is relieved by more realistic 
 views. Nothing being wholly perfect, so happi- 
 ness in marriage has its drawbacks. It is a great 
 art to know oneself, and it takes sometimes a 
 long while before two married persons are per- 
 fectly conversant with each other's views. Hap- 
 piness is, besides, a very relative notion, just as 
 relative as our claims on it. That a certain share 
 of the world's goods is a necessary condition for 
 a happy marriage is evident. No person in ab- 
 solute poverty feels well; love alone will not 
 suffice. Abundance, on the other hand, is so far 
 from being a guarantee for happy marriages 
 that it often is effective in calling forth situa- 
 tions that end with a divorce. The happiest 
 marriages are undeniably those where both 
 parties have a correct understanding of each 
 other's shortcomings or faults, and a sufficient 
 feeling of humanity and forbearance. These 
 are the two factors that constitute the main 
 elements in a happy marriage. Our faults, as a 
 matter of course, must not degenerate into 
 vices ; under that form all happiness is forfeited. 
 In reading the reports from our divorce courts, 
 we cannot fail to observe that drunkenness and 
 
17 
 
 unchastity are the two causes most frequently 
 pleaded as reasons why a decree should be 
 granted. Each of these vices is sufficient to 
 make a person unhappy, to say nothing of a 
 husband and wife or a whole family. 
 
 Besides the two mentioned there is a third 
 factor tending to increase the happiness of 
 married life: the feeling of responsibility, and 
 particularly so in cases where the union has 
 been blessed with children. For each child 
 born to the world the responsibility of the 
 parents is growing, and it is an old and just 
 view that for each duty a child owes to its 
 parents, the parents are manifoldly indebted to 
 their child, or, in other words, parents have 
 greater obligations to fulfill towards their chil- 
 dren than children towards their parents. Where 
 this sentiment is intense, the marriage is seldom 
 a failure. Our children are the centre round 
 which all our ideas are revolving. They con- 
 stitute our happiness, being the greatest binding 
 power between husband and wife. To them is 
 transferred the love that is freed from the pas- 
 sions of our youth. They furnish value to our 
 life; we feel we have something to live for. 
 
 Marriage License Window. 2. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Encouraging to Marriage — Nihilistic Views — 
 Malthus — Early Marriages — Optimistic 
 Views. 
 
 IN the present time, the most critical since the 
 fall of man, marriage is a theme more eagerly 
 debated than any other. However, it is more 
 women's rights in relation to their husbands, 
 their position in society, that is forming the 
 foundation of the many varied discussions, and 
 less the very fact of entering married life. No 
 government will to any extent earnestly try to 
 prevent the sons or daughters of a country from 
 becoming husbands and wives. On the con- 
 trary, any government noticing an alarming 
 decrease in the number of marriages, will try 
 by all conceivable means to encourage the ycuth 
 to marry; all pens will be put in activity to 
 remedy the alleged evil. And this is naturally 
 so, being due to very practical reasons. It is an 
 old maxim that one of the main pillars on which 
 
 (18) 
 
19 
 
 society at large is resting, and without which it 
 would go to pieces, is the family. The modern 
 communistic ideas have no regard for family 
 life, their advocates being fully aware of the 
 fact of its tending to conservatism. Most nihil- 
 ists are single persons, or, if married, their 
 family ties are of a very loose texture. They 
 take a consistent view of the order of things in 
 opposing the conjugal union, knowing that if a 
 general abolition of marriage were possible they 
 would easily carry their point, viz. : the destruc- 
 tion of one of the main factors of a well-regu- 
 lated society. Those in the unmarried state 
 will commit many sexual offenses that are liable 
 to be dangerous and a burden to charitable insti- 
 tutions. As to the old European societies, the 
 existence of the great military armies would be 
 sadly threatened if young people should give up 
 the idea of marriage. 
 
 With a mere politico-economical object in 
 view, the famous English philosopher Malthus 
 wrote his "Essay on Population." As a good, 
 religious man he naturally could not make any 
 attack on the marriage institution, but he 
 opposes early marriages as one of the pro- 
 moters of over-population. Malthus holds that 
 a population of a civilized world should be in 
 
20 
 
 proportion to the means of existence, (not to 
 exceed the supply of food). He naturally cast 
 his eyes upon America, admitting that we for a 
 long while yet are justified in entering into early 
 marriages, recommending, however, the work- 
 ing classes all over the world to regulate the 
 size of their families by using moral restraint, 
 condemning all other preventatives as vice. It 
 is a matter of fact that the adherents of Malthus* 
 theories are becoming less numerous. It is get- 
 ting more and more evident that the world is 
 not suffering from over-population, the means of 
 subsistence being in abundance. We are suffer- 
 ing from over-production, so at least we are told 
 by the practical student of labor questions. 
 Well, then, it is not likely that the young men 
 and women of Chicago have any particular 
 knowledge of Malthus' theories, and, even if 
 they had, it does not stand to reason to believe 
 that they would take his theories to heart. 
 There is a tendency with the native-born popu- 
 lation to contract too early marriages, very often 
 both the contracting parties being so surpris- 
 ingly young that we, for the sake of their 
 own interest, may wish them to postpone the 
 wedding a couple of years. What experience 
 can a young man of eighteen or twenty be 
 
21 
 
 harboring, and what knowledge has a girl of 
 sixteen or seventeen of housekeeping or of the 
 duties of a mother? And at these ages many 
 marriages are contracted in Cook county. 
 
 As to the foreign-born element, a study of 
 the marriage license list will reveal the fact that 
 they, as a rule, follow the practice of the coun- 
 tries whence they emigrated. In the northern 
 and eastern parts of Europe the marriage age 
 varies between twenty-five and thirty for men, 
 and between twenty and twenty-five for women. 
 These ages are particularly adaptable to the 
 working classes in Europe, where the fight for 
 a living is by far harden than in America. 
 Besides, the military service is a great impedi- 
 ment to conjugal inclinations in most parts of 
 Europe. What newry-married man would like 
 to leave his young wife and, perhaps, children, 
 to put on the military uniform? If we had a 
 compulsory military service in America, there 
 is no doubt but that most young men would 
 postpone their wedding till said service was 
 over. In southern Europe, and in the oriental 
 countries, we find things somewhat otherwise, 
 but the bloom of the women in these regions 
 falls in the ages between thirteen and eighteen. 
 
22 
 
 It is the fear of an increasing pauperism, as in 
 the old societies, that the pessimists of America 
 have in view when they oppose early marriages, 
 and while there is a good reason to stop and 
 reflect over the causes of an increasing poverty 
 in any community at any given time, yet nobody 
 can with any certainty assert that the early 
 marriages contracted at twenty-two or twenty- 
 four for the man, and between eighteen and 
 twenty-one for the girl, are the reasons why our 
 charity institutions are in a crowded condition, 
 at least at a certain season of the year. It is to 
 a great extent the paupers from Europe that fill 
 these institutions, and the optimists are undoubt- 
 edly right when they reason and argue the ques- 
 tion of marriage in about the following way : 
 
 America in general, and Chicago in particu- 
 lar, is greatly indebted to Europe for the many 
 talented and clever laborers it has sent to the 
 United States. These men have faithfully con- 
 tributed their share to justify the proverbial 
 saying that Chicago is the wonder city of the 
 nineteenth century, and we are not "only in- 
 debted to Europe for dancing and music teach- 
 ers," as Beecher jokingly remarked in the course 
 of a lecture on free-trade; but as a link in the 
 development of the whole Union we need a 
 
23 
 
 native-born population, knowing of no other 
 fatherland, loving America, its language, its 
 flag, its institutions. We constitute an artificial 
 population, and, loyal and law-abiding as are the 
 masses of our people, it naturally lives on the 
 memories from the old countries. And for a 
 person born, brought up, and educated in one of 
 the European countries, it is no easy matter to 
 get rid of these memories, for they cling to the 
 human mind, and they are furthermore refreshed 
 through the correspondence between relatives 
 and friends. And the preserving of the memo- 
 ries is furthermore strengthened through the 
 press in the different languages. The Irish have 
 their special organs for Irish national affairs; 
 the Germans, the Scandinavians, the Poles, the 
 Bohemians, and the French each have their own 
 journals, appealing at given times to the national 
 feelings. Monuments are erected in honor of 
 European poets and scientists, and public halls 
 are adorned with the colors of foreign nations. 
 Public schools are called after European savants, 
 poets and statesmen, and the population, accord- 
 ing to their nationalities, move together in dif- 
 ferent sections of the city. We have Irish wards 
 and German wards ; we know that the densely 
 populated Swedish wards are to be found on the 
 
24 
 
 North Side; that Norwegians and Danes pre- 
 dominate in the northwestern part of the city; 
 that Poles are most numerous in the Fourteenth 
 ward, and the Italians are crowded together in 
 some of the wards on the South Side. And as 
 if all that were not sufficient for keeping up the 
 memories of old Europe, politics comes in with 
 its complementing adjectives. Germans are re- 
 minded of their good and sober judgment, 
 their indisputable ability; Scandinavians get 
 their praise for their conservative perseverance 
 and faithfulness; the Irish national strings are 
 played on, and the sons of Poland get their 
 political hymn. That under such circumstances 
 the masses of foreign-born citizens find a rich 
 nourishment for national pride, is quite natural, 
 but it is evident that, while all this in itself is 
 harmless, it does not serve as a promoter of the 
 unity and harmony which is the main condition 
 for solidarity with the native-born population. 
 
 Adopted children are not the same as children 
 of our own flesh and blood. Chicago needs no 
 longer an artificial population; it can grow 
 strong and healthy in a natural way. Let the 
 young, not too young, people engage in mar- 
 riage, and let the children be the beneficiaries 
 of the greatest fundamental institution of the 
 
25 
 
 United States: the common school. Children 
 in the first generation of an emigrated popula- 
 tion, living with their thoughts in the old socie- 
 ties, may have a little difficulty in emancipating 
 themselves from old traditions, but the next 
 generation will belong to America, helping to 
 strengthen the work of unity that does not 
 kneel to foreign gods, — a generation that loves 
 America for its own sake. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Peculiarities of Languages — Difficulties — 
 Beautiful Peculiarities — A Graceful Lan- 
 guage — A Matter-of-Fact Language — The 
 Language of Abstract Philosophy — A Me- 
 lodious Language. 
 
 ANY person who for a long space of time, 
 day after day, has had an opportunity to 
 hear people of varied descents talk English, 
 need not absolutely possess a linguistic talent to 
 discover, through the pronunciations, which 
 nationality they belong to. It is but exception- 
 ally that a foreign-born person acquires a correct 
 pronunciation, unless he arrived here at a very 
 young age and frequented our schools. He who 
 has got his school education in one of the old 
 non-English speaking countries of Europe will, 
 in most cases, betray his foreign descent. This 
 postulate needs no strong argument to be under- 
 stood. It is naturally so, and is applicable to 
 all who have to speak a language acquired 
 artificially; that is, a language that is not the 
 mother tongue. 
 
 (36) 
 
27 
 
 The intelligent student of a foreign language 
 may acquire a full knowledge of its idioms and 
 finesses; he may even be better versed in the 
 history and literature of the language than the 
 majority of those who have been born with the 
 language at the end of their tongues. We have 
 a good example of the truth of this assertion in 
 the famous naturalized political critic of German 
 parentage. He commands the English language 
 to perfection, and his logical eloquence after 
 classic patterns never trespasses against the rules 
 of English syntax, but his pronunciation will 
 nevertheless betray his German birth. It is, 
 besides, an acknowledged fact that he who has 
 studied several languages will with greater diffi- 
 culty catch the right pronunciation of a foreign 
 language than the illiterate person who never 
 made a study of even his mother language. The 
 cultivated man may, if sufficient time is allowed, 
 compose a well-formed English essay in such a 
 manner that even the keenest critic cannot dis- 
 cover his foreign descent, but if he should under- 
 take to read it before an audience of native-born 
 Americans, his hearers would most likely not be 
 long in discovering that he was not one of their 
 own. 
 
28 
 
 Another hindrance to the more cultivated 
 person is the mere common daily language, the 
 knowledge of which he has greater difficulty in 
 mastering than the illiterate person. Usually 
 he is less practical and more critical. He is 
 thinking in his own language and is transferring 
 his thoughts into the foreign language. To the 
 illiterate or less mentally developed, the common 
 talk comes much easier. It is with him as it is 
 with children, the sound of the words is the 
 essential key to the understanding of each other. 
 Children of various foreign descents have usually 
 no great trouble in understanding each other's 
 language, their ideas moving within a rather 
 limited circle. The horizon of the thoughts of 
 the illiterate man or woman not lying in the 
 extreme periphery, they need not many words 
 to express their ideas in their own language; a 
 few hundred words will suffice, and through a 
 little exercise, perseverance, and diligence they 
 will soon acquire that much knowledge of the 
 number of words of a foreign language that is 
 necessary to make themselves understood. The 
 greatest difficulty, however, is to understand 
 what is told them, and as to that point they 
 share a common fate with all beginners in a 
 foreign language- Hundreds of people who 
 
29 
 
 have diligently studied the French language, 
 sometimes for years, and imagine that the) 7 have 
 learned it to perfection, find themselves not a 
 little puzzled when they arrive in Paris, not be- 
 cause they cannot question intelligently, but be- 
 cause they cannot understand the questions put 
 to them by a native-born Parisian. If a person 
 were able to forget his mother language, any 
 obstruction to the acquirement of a foreign lan- 
 guage would immediately disappear, but this is 
 an impossibility, growing greater in proportion 
 to the education of the individual. The mother 
 tongue cuts a considerable figure in the feeling 
 generally knov/n and denominated patriotism, 
 and from his standpoint the German chancellor 
 is therefore acting very wisely in trying to ex- 
 tirpate the original languages of the provinces 
 conquered by the empire during the last two 
 decades. The task is not an easy one, especially 
 in regard to languages embracing a great na- 
 tional literature; but still they will have to sur- 
 render in the course of time. In Poland the 
 work of destruction is rapidly progressing, 
 and vainly the Polish deputies in the Ger- 
 man Reichstag voice the sentiment of their 
 protesting countrymen. In the Danish northern 
 part of Schleswig the present generation is still 
 
30 
 
 familiar with the language of their ancestors; 
 but German having been introduced in the 
 schools as compulsive, the next generation will 
 know little or nothing of the Danish language, 
 if quite unforeseen circumstances should not re- 
 store the lost province to Denmark. 
 
 It is wholly in conformity with the national 
 feeling that every nation finds its language so 
 exceedingly handsome, if not the handsomest of 
 all languages. The truth is, however, that any 
 language spoken by cultivated people has its 
 beautiful peculiarities, to which educated ladies 
 in particular will do justice. When the famous 
 French actress Rachel recited the Marseillaise, 
 the language in her mouth sounded as the 
 sweetest music ; she electrified her audience, not 
 only by her correct pronunciation, but also by 
 her perfect interpretation and understanding of 
 the spirit of the song. Rachel could not sing, 
 and yet she was a refined interpreter of songs. 
 But when we here in Chicago sometimes listen 
 to the same national hymn sung by a street 
 singer, accompanied by the organ-grinder, we 
 fail to discover the euphony and elegance of the 
 French language. 
 
 Only he whose ears are closed to the music 
 of language will miss the euphonies of English 
 
31 
 
 spoken by Americans of intellect and culture. 
 It is generally conceded that the English lan- 
 guage, in regard to pronunciation, is the hardest 
 of all modern languages to learn. It takes con- 
 siderable drilling and permanent vigilance for a 
 foreign-born person approximately to reach a 
 tolerable pronunciation. To most foreigners it 
 is easy enough to understand, the periods being 
 short, the grammar not very intricate, and the 
 words with only one gender. It is considered 
 a practical matter-of-fact language, a fact 
 that caused the aristocracy and universities of 
 Europe, outside of the English speaking nations, 
 for many yeats to look down upon it as vulgar, 
 though well adapted to commercial use, not- 
 withstanding Shakespeare, Byron, and the many 
 other heroes of English literature. But tempora, 
 mutantur! Since the downfall of the French 
 empire the English language is gaining ground 
 everywhere, and the European student is no 
 longer satisfied with reading translations, some- 
 times very bad ones, of Stuart Mill, Darwin, 
 Tyndall, or Spencer. 
 
 The German language, embracing so many 
 dialects, has not the many insinuating and sono- 
 rous sounds as the French or other Roman lan- 
 guages, but it is what the Germans themselves 
 
32 
 
 denominate " schwungvoll." Perhaps there is 
 not a language more fit to give expression to 
 abstract ideas than German. It is not what we 
 generally call a graceful language, and yet the 
 famous Heine was a lyric, moulding the lan- 
 guage in such graceful expression, that perhaps 
 no other poet of any other period, before or 
 after him, has been able to do. Heine's verses, 
 recited by a cultivated lady, lends to the lan- 
 guage a music as graceful as one of Haydn's 
 symphonies. 
 
 Of the Scandinavian languages, the Swedish 
 unconditionally holds, in regard to euphony, the 
 first rank. It is a melodious language, and, like 
 Italian, is particularly suited as a text for music. 
 The Norwegian language has also its melodious 
 scale, but is harder, while Danish is soft and par- 
 ticularly suitable for lyric and erotic poetry. 
 And who will doubt but the Slavonic languages, 
 with their many soft consonants, have eupho- 
 nies, when spoken by cultivated people. We 
 may prefer one language to another, just be- 
 cause our taste and ear has been educated to 
 certain sounds, for just as what is seen is de- 
 pendent on the eye that sees, so sound, or what 
 is heard, is dependent on the ear that hears. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Some American Characteristics — The Busy 
 American — The Sedate American — Irish 
 Americans. 
 
 THE linguistic peculiarities, however, are not 
 the only ones that distinguish the American- 
 born from the emigrated population. The 
 consciousness of having been born and educated 
 under free institutions, where every individual 
 is unchecked by conventional formalities, and 
 where the chances for economical progress are 
 better than in any of the old societies, and where 
 hope never dies, creates a self-independence 
 which even evinces itself in walk and manners. 
 A certain uniformity runs through the youth of 
 America, which even reveals itself in their hand- 
 writing. In matters pertaining to taste, all dis- 
 cussion is out of place, but the round and 
 symmetrical writing, as taught in our public 
 schools, would stand a good chance of winning 
 the good taste to its side in a general competi- 
 
 (33) 
 Marriage License Window. 3. 
 
34 
 
 tion. It is not alone the young merchant or the 
 bank clerk who possesses the manual dexterity; 
 the rule can be applied just as well to the native- 
 born mechanic. The European skillful laborer^ 
 superior to his American colleague in many 
 very essential points, wields a rather heavy pen. 
 A reason for this undeniable fact, besides a de- 
 fective teaching, is the use of machinery in 
 Europe not being so general, the hand will 
 naturally be more hardened and less fit for so 
 light a tool as a pen. 
 
 Much has been written on the characteristics 
 of the Americans. Many Europeans who have 
 traveled but a fortnight in this country send 
 volumes of correspondence to their newspapers 
 in Europe. All people in the old country have 
 formed an idea of the outward appearance of 
 the thorough typical American from the car- 
 toons of "Uncle Sam," as depicted in our semi- 
 comical periodicals. We all know this picture 
 of the tall, slim, but wiry man, with the marked 
 features, the pointed nose, and characteristic 
 chin beard. The expression of his eye is good- 
 natured, and at the same time keen. "Uncle 
 Sam" is invariably portrayed as a man well ad- 
 vanced in years. If we could see him twenty- 
 five years younger, we would more easily 
 
35 
 
 discover in his features those characteristics that 
 have made him so famous — energy and perse- 
 verance. He never gives up; if he does not 
 succeed the first or second time, he tries and 
 tries again. 
 
 Nearly all writers on American topics agree 
 upon one common feature of the present genera- 
 tion, namely, restlessness. Particularly among 
 the young mercantile classes we find people who 
 always are in a hurry, always busy. A mar- 
 riage license clerk of a little experience will 
 never fail to recognize such a typical young 
 American when he is confronting him at the 
 window. Although the printed letters on the 
 top of the window are very distinct, he never 
 sees them, but asks if this is the place where he 
 can get a license. "What are the necessary 
 steps to be taken," he will ask, "and how long 
 does it take to make it out? I am in a hurry," 
 at the same time pulling out his watch to see 
 how much time he can spare. On learning that 
 the whole transaction can be done in less than 
 five minutes he will ask to be waited on "right 
 away." An affidavit form is handed him, and 
 he is told to sign his first and last name in full. 
 The affidavit reads: 
 
36 
 
 "(Samuel A. Jones), of Chicago, County of Cook, 
 State of Illinois, being duly sworn, deposes and says that 
 he is (23) years of age, and that (Sarah Smith), of 
 Chicago, County of Cook, and State of Illinois, is (20), 
 and that both are single and unmarried, and may law- 
 fully contract and be joined in marriage." 
 
 Mr. Jones takes a pen and signs his name, 
 but, although he has been asked to sign it in. 
 full, he only puts down the initials of the given 
 names. With a nervous jerk he tears off the 
 affidavit blank, making another attempt to prop- 
 erly sign his name. This time he abbreviates 
 his given name, but, discovering it, he tears off 
 the second blank, muttering an excuse, and ex- 
 plaining that he is a business man, and that he 
 has not signed his full name for the last ten 
 years. His third attempt is a successful one ; he 
 has managed to sign his name in its full length 
 — Samuel Abram Jones. While answering the 
 few questions in regard to his 1 residence, his 
 lady's name and her age, the young man has 
 first put his hands together, and keeps them in 
 "position," a habit inherited from his school- 
 days, and in the next moment he lets his fingers 
 go down in his vest pocket, from whence he 
 draws a bill, which he hands over to the clerk, 
 who informs him that the cashier at the next 
 corner takes the money. The young man, mak- 
 
37 
 
 ing a move in that direction, is told that he has 
 to wait until his license is made out. Involun- 
 tarily he stretches out his hand to get hold of 
 the document, but simultaneously he is asked to 
 take off his hat and lift up his right hand to 
 be sworn. Having obeyed the order, swearing 
 to the best of his knowledge that he told the 
 truth, he steps up to the cashier's window, 
 whence the sealed license is delivered, hands in 
 a five dollar bill, but forgets to take the change. 
 Upon being hastily called back he thanks the 
 cashier politely, and is just half way out of the 
 office when the attendant watchman reminds 
 him of a parcel he left at the marriage license 
 desk. Finally he leaves the office in a great 
 hurry, but not until he very politely has thanked 
 every one for the trouble he has made, remark- 
 ing that he never transacted that kind of busi- 
 ness before. It happened once that a young 
 man — let us call him Smith — signed the 
 affiadvit Smith & Co. It was the force of 
 habit that made him sign the firm's name. He 
 laughed heartily when the mistake was discov- 
 ered, and remarked that he had no partners in 
 that business. Sometimes such a young man 
 has not fixed the day for his wedding; he will 
 marry when he gets time. 
 
38 
 
 The thirty-year old Mr. Jones is quite a 
 different man. He is also a business man, and 
 he was thinking of nothing else but business 
 until he accumulated that much of worldly 
 goods necessary, according to his notions, to a 
 comfortable life with his coming wife, and per- 
 haps children. Quietly and phlegmatically he 
 walks up to the marriage license window, noth- 
 ing disturbing his ease. He need not ask " if 
 this is the place where a license can be ob- 
 tained? " because he knows it. "Well, sir," he 
 may commence his greeting to the clerk, " I 
 suppose I will need your service for a little 
 while." An affidavit is handed him, and quickly 
 he will glance over the printed slip before he 
 signs it, for, as a business man, he never puts 
 his name to any paper before knowing its con- 
 tents. While the clerk is making out the license 
 he will turn the conversation on topics pertain- 
 ing to the issue of licenses. " The position you 
 hold must be quite interesting; you see so many 
 different people. Still, I suppose in the long- 
 run a person will be tired of it; you do not 
 notice any variation. How many of these 
 'things' do you issue a year? Ten thousand, 
 you say? That makes fifteen thousand dollars 
 a year. That is a great deal of money; you 
 
39 
 
 are certainly not a retailer." Such a Mr. Jones 
 does not produce his money from his pocket 
 until the last moment, and he does not forget to 
 get his change back on a five dollar bill. He 
 looks calmly on all relations of life, and still he 
 may be a warm-hearted gentleman. He always 
 takes his time at the dinner table, and he does 
 not swallow his meals with the aid of large 
 quantities of ice water; he does not suffer from 
 dyspepsia. 
 
 It is quite general and very natural that 3 7 oung 
 people being on the threshold of matrimonial life 
 should be in good humor. And particularly is 
 this the case with young Americans of Irish 
 descent. The Irish- American candidate for mat- 
 rimonial snares frequently makes his appearance 
 at the window in company with two or more of 
 his friends. One of these will introduce the mar- 
 riageable young man as a victim, and while the 
 "victim " has not been given a chance to say a 
 word, another friend will remind him of the fool- 
 ishness of committing such a rash act. Before 
 the young man is allowed to sign his name, one 
 of his friends may give him the last warning, in 
 short but very pathetic expressions, or he may 
 call his attention to the fact that a stroke of a 
 pen has cost thousands of people their "per- 
 
40 
 
 sonal liberty." And while the "victim" is 
 signing his name the friends may tease him, 
 expressing the hope that he is not signing his 
 death-warrant without having taken such a step 
 under due consideration. Meanwhile the clerk 
 is encouraging the applicant, assuring him that 
 to marry is the most sensible thing a young man 
 can do in this country, providing he secures a 
 good helpmate. Still the friends will jokingly 
 protest. "I understand that you, gentlemen, are 
 not married," remarks the clerk. "Certainly 
 we are, and God forbid that we should do it over 
 again!" "So you are not happy?" "Happy! 
 that is what we are, and that is just the reason 
 why we do not wish to try it over again." 
 Sometimes the candidate himself, or his friends, 
 may invite the clerk out to go round the corner 
 and "take something." The invitation not being 
 heeded, he is presented with cigars, which al- 
 ways are accepted, whether the clerk is a 
 smoker or not. 
 
 It is a very common thing all over the world 
 that young men spend the last day of their 
 single state in company with their most intimate 
 friends. Parties are sometimes arranged at the 
 expense of the bachelor, and the symposiums 
 are calculated " for gentlemen only." The com- 
 
41 
 
 ing husband has to run the gauntlet, reminis- 
 cences of his bachelor life are refreshed, and the 
 last cup is dedicated to the groom, his bride, 
 and his possible numerous offspring. It is a 
 farewell party sometimes in the strictest sense 
 of the word, for when a man gets married he 
 usually will lose most of his former friends, al- 
 though not necessarily their friendship. It is 
 naturally so. He cannot, as formerly, share in 
 the escapades of youth, and, besides, many of 
 his former friends will do just as he did, — they 
 will marry when their turn comes, and drift into 
 conservatism, perhaps joining a club or a society 
 for mutual life insurance. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Patrick — His Devotion to His Church — His 
 Hope of Liberation. 
 
 THE difference between the Irish- Americans 
 and the emigrated Irish is so great and 
 apparent that nobody can fail to discover 
 it. Judging the whole nation, it must be admit- 
 ted that, naturally, it is unusually clever and 
 bright, and its' descendants of American birth 
 with American education constitute some of the 
 best ingredients of the American nation. The 
 masses of naturalized Irishmen belong to the 
 working classes. They are laborers in the strict- 
 est sense of the word. As a rule, the proverbial 
 Patrick will approach the license desk in a very 
 modest way. He is not very talkative, although 
 he never is at a loss for an answer that may 
 sometimes be very witty and to the point. In 
 most instances he can write his name plainly 
 and correctly, and if he cannot he feels a little 
 
 (43) 
 
43 
 
 bashful, and will explain how his school educa- 
 tion has been terribly neglected. Patrick can, 
 however, also resort to a little innocent trick to 
 conceal his lack of knowledge in the art of 
 writing. He may appear with his right hand 
 wrapped up in a bandage, which makes it im- 
 possible for him to take a pen in his hand, but 
 no sooner has he left the office than the bandage 
 may disappear in the hallway. He may also 
 plead nervousness, or he may bluntly explain 
 that he is no writer or no scholar. In such cases 
 the clerk will sign the name, the applicant mak- 
 ing his cross or mark. His own and his girl's 
 name the Irish laboror is nearly always so fa- 
 miliar with that he can spell them fluently. The 
 correct spelling of names by persons who can 
 not sign them has often appeared as a result of 
 a long preparatory exercise. Maybe that such 
 a man at least one month before he takes out 
 his license, daily and perhaps in union with his 
 sweet-heart, has been practicing in spelling the 
 names. 
 
 It will also happen that he can only sign the 
 initials of his given names, and his full family 
 name, declaring it impossible to write his first 
 name in full. It is customary to judge the edu- 
 cational standpoint of the lower or illiterate 
 
44 
 
 classes of any nation by the percentage of its 
 reading and writing individuals. If such a 
 standard is justifiable the Irish are not far be- 
 hind any other nationality, while they are ahead 
 of some of the southern European countries, of 
 the Slavonic nationalities and of the illiterate 
 French Canadians, whose notions of the mere 
 rudimentaries of education are very weakly 
 developed. 
 
 Very attentively our friend will listen to the 
 administering of the oath, in repeating the 
 words for himself his lips will move until he 
 finally may very emphatically repeat in a loud 
 voice: So help me God! Some amongst them, 
 looking very solemn, will sensitively explain 
 that they had only sworn to the best of their 
 knowledge. Generally the Irish workingman ? is 
 religious; he holds on to the teachings of his 
 childhood; the Church is the asylum to which 
 he resorts to find consolation for the adversities 
 of life. And he feels happy in his belief just 
 because he never doubted the truth of the 
 church dogmas. To his spiritual adviser he 
 confides himself unconditionally, being perfectly 
 convinced of not misplacing his confidence, for, 
 as a matter of course, the relation between the 
 priest and his parish children is of a very inti- 
 
45 
 
 mate nature. The instance is an exceptional 
 one where an Irish laborer is married by a civil 
 authority. He must have the blessings of the 
 Church to an act binding him for life to a 
 woman, for his Church does not recognize legal 
 divorces, holding that marriage is a sacrament 
 and allowing, even in the extreme case of breach 
 of the marriage vow, nothing beyond separa- 
 tion, but under no circumstances will it allow 
 divorced men or women to re-marry. It holds 
 the same view as in its earliest days; "As you 
 make your connubial bed, you shall lie forever- 
 more." In common with the religious masses 
 of other denominations, the religious faith of the 
 Irish is not a result of a conviction achieved by 
 thoughtful study; his faith is an inheritance, and 
 he guards it the more carefully as he knows 
 that attempts have been made to rob him of it. 
 England's attempt to over-throw Catholicism in 
 Ireland was not due to any honest-felt care for 
 the salvation of Irish souls, but to political rea- 
 sons. Wherever State and Church are united 
 unfree religious relations are the result. The 
 State will be paramount to the Church, and the 
 servants of the Church will be dependent on the 
 politics of the State. In its further develop- 
 ment this will lead to political bondage by 
 
46 
 
 wnich in the long run nothing good can be 
 accomplished for a people in whom the feeling 
 of independence is not utterly lost. The oppo- 
 nents of Catholicism usually aver that this 
 form of Christianity leads to fanaticism and be- 
 gets ignorance ; but they forget mentioning that, 
 if this be the case, it only applies to those coun- 
 tries where Catholicism is elevated to a state 
 religion. The Irish Catholics of America are 
 as a whole not fanatics; if faithful believers 
 they undeniably have the conviction that their 
 faith will absolutely lead to heaven, but they 
 do not exclude the possibility of the route being 
 open to somebody else. The intercourse with 
 dissenters or with people of widely different 
 views on religious topics, is liberalizing in its 
 effects on spiritual matters, and the steady ex- 
 pressions of the American press against intoler- 
 ant religious views are powerfully instrumental 
 in dissipating the remnants of hatred which 
 religious blindness has begotten, and which once 
 lead to cruelties justly considered as the darkest 
 spots in the history of mankind. 
 
 A certain melancholy expression of the eyes 
 and a somewhat sombre hue of resignation is 
 often noticeable among peasant farmers of Ire- 
 land. Perhaps this may be accounted for 
 
47 
 
 through the fact that this class has been ex- 
 posed to sufferings under the rule of landlord- 
 ism. It is a generally conceded fact, and fpr 
 that matter a very natural thing, that the fate 
 of a people does not pass over the individuals 
 without leaving some traces, some well defined 
 and discernable marks. The fate of Ireland has 
 been hard, and perhaps with the exception of 
 that of Poland, the hardest of all nations, and 
 particularly the peasant farmers have for gen- 
 erations been suffering under the yoke of the 
 English lords. 
 
 At the hands of a proportionally few persons, 
 the peasantry has been suffering wants and 
 needs; its work has been a fight for the most 
 abject existence. Carried on for many years, 
 such struggles will necessarily leave their traces 
 in the features and expression of the counte- 
 nances. The stern faces, however, while indi- 
 cating sorrow and hatred, never assume the 
 character of despair. Even the most suppressed 
 of the Irish people have never doubted but that 
 the day of liberation must come. The}^ are 
 as firmly convinced of that as they are that the 
 sun will rise to-morrow. 
 
 It is amusing sometimes to listen to the Irish- 
 man well advanced in years when he declares 
 
48 
 
 his intention to become a citizen of the United 
 States. It is as if he felt relieved by severing 
 his political connection with the English gov- 
 ernment, and all his hatred is concentrated in 
 the person of the queen. A rather young, very 
 intelligent and well-read man, who took out his 
 license and intention paper at the same time, 
 gave utterance to his feelings in about the fol- 
 lowing strain: 
 
 "It has been predicted that the day of self- 
 government for Ireland will never come to pass 
 until much blood has flowed. We men of the 
 Celtic race have no particular taste for bloody 
 revolutions, our thoughts revolt against the 
 scenes depicted in the French Revolution and 
 particularly during the days of terror, when 
 not only men, but women and children, were 
 murdered at the order of some few fanatical 
 demagogues. But revolutions may, in spite of 
 all that, be very healthy in regard to their final 
 results. Critics of our days are reconciled to 
 the great French Revolution that compelled 
 emperors and kings to make some concessions 
 to the people they ruled over. With the excep- 
 tion of the gigantic barbarian colos, called 
 Russia, absolutism gave way to constitutional 
 forms of government. A revolution is pending 
 
49 
 
 in Ireland and we all wish and hope for a blood- 
 less one, but if it cannot be helped we shall 
 have to sacrifice a little blood." 
 
 The young man was in company with a friend 
 of the same race, who warned him of the revo- 
 lution he was undergoing in taking out a license 
 to get married, predicting that his wife would 
 dictate the conditions of peace, he making all 
 the concessions. The views expressed by the 
 young man are held in common with thousands 
 of his countrymen whose ardent natures would 
 readily respond to a call to arms to free "Old 
 Erin," but the more conservative portion of his 
 race, knowing the hopelessness at the present 
 time of engaging in a struggle by force with 
 their powerful neighbor, place their trust in the 
 parliamentary fight under the leadership of the 
 gallant Parnell. 
 
 Marriage License Window. 4. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Stern Faces — Orthodox Poles — Free-thinking- 
 Bohemians — German Profundity — Do you 
 Speak German? — Philosophical Disposi- 
 tions — Socialism — Sociability. 
 
 WHILE the future of Ireland, in spite of the 
 experienced defeats, must be judged 
 bright, the fate of Poland is settled for- 
 ever. Unhappy Poland, how you have suffered! 
 And your tragical fate does not become smaller 
 because you may have had your share in pre- 
 cipitating your own sad lot. There was a time 
 when every liberty, loving young man was in- 
 fatuated with enthusiasm at the idea of a for- 
 tunate result of the Polish insurrections, hoping, 
 as natural with young people, that so much 
 courage and fight for liberty could not possibly 
 be without reward. Hope was kept up for a 
 long while, and in spite of very sad and crush- 
 ing defeats, the steady refrain was: "Noch ist 
 Polen nicht verloren." (Poland is not yet lost.) 
 
 (50) 
 
51 
 
 Yet the fight against absolute hopelessness will 
 in the length of time have a blunting effect, and 
 nowadays the young men outside of Poland, 
 who voluntarily would join an army for the 
 lost cause, could easily be counted. ■ Not even 
 in Poland is entertained any earnest hope of 
 rising from the political degradation, and the 
 many emigrants of high rank and culture who 
 formerly were agitating the cause of their un- 
 happy country have ceased their loud griev- 
 ances and their issuing of proclamations. 
 
 While we may notice the melancholy expres- 
 sion with the Irish, we will most invariably 
 observe a certain cold and stern expression in 
 Polish features, attributable to national suppres- 
 sion and degradation. Not even on that stage 
 of life which by most people is considered the 
 happiest, the immediate time before the wed- 
 ding, the feeblest sign of joy can be observed 
 in the countenance of the groom. It is as if 
 the smile was banished forever. 
 
 The peculiarities of a people at a given time 
 are considered the results of the fates and con- 
 ditions of many former generations. A people, 
 like the Polish, for centuries fighting for liberty, 
 knowing the fight to be against a desperate 
 hope, can not produce delightful faces. Amongst 
 
52 
 
 the enlightened and intelligent classes, the fight 
 has been productive of a certain irritability of 
 which many a Polish parliament has rendered 
 a striking picture, while the effect on the masses 
 has been of a dulling character. The Polish 
 population of Chicago belongs for the greater 
 part to the laboring classes. Naturally they 
 have a strong feeling for the place in which 
 they were born and spent their youth, but in a 
 certain sense their national feeling is less devel- 
 oped. If questioned where they were born, 
 they will most frequently answer: "Prussia," 
 for it is essentially German Poles we have to 
 deal with here. And in regard to language 
 most of them will get along nicely with Ger- 
 man, although that language has no similarity 
 whatsoever with Polish. Amongst themselves 
 they prefer talking their mother tongue, but 
 the fact that they understand and can make 
 themselves understood in the other language is 
 an incontrovertible proof of how much work 
 the German government has spent on natural- 
 izing the population. That it finally will suc- 
 ceed in destroying the Polish language seems 
 but little doubtful, although the language is the 
 last that dies in a nation. 
 
 While the national feeling of pride is weak- 
 
53 
 
 ened from very natural reasons, the orthodox 
 Catholicism has in return seized the population 
 the much stronger. It is a well known fact 
 that the loss of one of the senses developes one 
 of the other in a very high degree. He who 
 has been deprived of his sight has usually a 
 strongly developed hearing, and he who is deaf 
 has a sharp and keen sight. It seems as if the 
 weakened national pride amongst the Poles 
 has surrendered to a strict adherence to ortho- 
 dox Catholicism. It is a daily occurrence 
 that a Pole, accosting the clerk in German and 
 expressing his wish to become a naturalized 
 citizen, when questioned as to what nationality 
 he belongs will answer: "I am a Catholic." 
 There are few free-thinkers amongst the Poles 
 and if there be any they are remarkably well 
 concealed. It is a rare exception when one of 
 them is married by a civil authority. A mar- 
 riage without the sanction of the Church they 
 consider a loose union. Neither men or women 
 choose their companion for life outside their 
 own nationality. They practice a strict econ- 
 omy and in a suit of unfashionable style and 
 indefinite colors, we will often find a well-to-do 
 citizen, whose ambition and pride it is to show 
 his tax -book. 
 
54 
 
 The Bohemian who, like the Pole, belongs to 
 the Slavonic race, and who, among other com- 
 mon features, has that of the similarity of 
 language, otherwise forms a contrast to him. 
 Judging from those Bohemians who come in 
 contact with the marriage license clerk, there 
 must be a great many free-thinkers amongst 
 them. Although born Catholics those residing 
 here seem more and more emancipating them- 
 selves from the faith of their fathers. They 
 are greatly patronizing a judge of their own 
 nationality, a statement that can easily be cor 
 roborated by the public marriage records, 01 
 they are married by another of their country- 
 men acting in the double function of an editor 
 and minister of the church for free-thinkers. 
 They have systematized their free-thinking. 
 They have organized as free-thinkers without 
 any occult intention, and while the Church may 
 look upon this systematic infidelity with sor- 
 row, yet it has to deal with or to fight an open 
 enemy frankly admitting that it has cut loose 
 from traditional dogmas. It goes without say- 
 ing that the number of Bohemian weddings 
 solemnized outside the Church is proportionally 
 greater than are the civil weddings of any 
 other nationalities in Chicago. Why this is 
 
55 
 
 so, whether modern ideas of civilization have 
 taken hold of the masses, or antiquated ideas of 
 religious problems have lost their grasp on 
 them so that a tide of religious indifference has 
 set in, is out of place here for discussion. The 
 majority may, for all that, be religious people 
 according to their own notions, thinking for 
 themselves just as did their famous country- 
 man, John Huss, who died in the flames as a 
 
 heretic. 
 
 When a young man strides up to the license 
 window and, after having searched his coat 
 pocket, produces a double set of certificates of 
 births, certificates of vaccination, certificates of 
 confirmation, and sometimes a certificate of his 
 •discharge from the army, there is never a doubt 
 as to his nationality — he is a German. In his 
 native country he always had to substantiate 
 his identity on all occasions. He comes from 
 a military country, where discipline is a law 
 strictly adhered to, and where any laxity of 
 duty is punished accordingly. As the young 
 man perhaps for the first time since his arrival 
 in this country finds himself in a public office, 
 it is quite natural that he should prepare him- 
 self for any emergency. He is sometimes 
 astonished to learn that the clerk does not care 
 
56 
 
 to examine his certificates, and that he can get 
 married in Chicago without being vaccinated. 
 The Germans are a people of great pro- 
 fundity; they have grown famous for their 
 going into details. Exactness is one of their 
 characteristics, and while to non-Germans it 
 may seem pedantic that such a rigorous exact- 
 ness should be observed, yet the world at large 
 owes a good deal to this specific German quali- 
 fication. Their painstaking diligence and pro- 
 found ability has been instrumental in enriching 
 science in all its branches. The observance of 
 details is in close relation with the tendency 
 to systematize all that is possible to put into 
 system. Adding hereto that Germany is the 
 greatest military power on the European con- 
 tinent, training its young men under a strict 
 discipline, and that every German is conscious 
 of belonging to a great and influential power, 
 and it will easily be understood that, notwith- 
 standing his loyalty as an American citizen, he 
 has some difficulty in giving up his views and 
 ideas, continuing in all his bearings to be a 
 German until he dies. They are slow in re- 
 nouncing their allegiance to the emperor, in 
 hundreds of instances not doing so until many 
 years after their arrival here. 
 
57 
 
 Astonishing is the perseverance with which 
 they adhere to their mother-tongue. " Sprechen 
 Sie Deutsch?" (Do you speak German?) is a 
 question asked many times a day of the offici- 
 ating license clerk. Of course he speaks Ger- 
 man, and there is hardly any public office in 
 Chicago or elsewhere in the Union directly 
 transacting with the people without somebody 
 in the office understanding that language; as in 
 most of the European countries, it has here 
 paved its way to the schools. We can hear it 
 in hundreds of houses from garret to cellar, in 
 the cars and in our political meetings. German 
 placards informing property-holders where to 
 pay their taxes are posted in public offices. A 
 great number of American business men speak 
 German rather fluently, and while rich fathers 
 send their daughters and wives to Paris for the 
 sake of enjoyment, their sons are sent to Ger- 
 man universities or gymnasiums whence they 
 return with an increased linguistic knowledge. 
 Under such circumstances it is not to be won- 
 dered at that the national pride is so deeply 
 rooted in the Germans of Chicago or elsewhere. 
 And even if the workingman amongst them 
 have a feeling of hatred to Bismarck, in whom 
 they see the incarnation of tyrannical might, 
 
58 
 
 yet they admire him for the glory he has cast 
 over the German empire, ranked as one of the 
 first, if not the supreme power in the European 
 concert. 
 
 The German people are of an indisputably 
 philosophical disposition. A slight acquaintance 
 with their literature will soon establish the 
 conviction that speculative philosophy has more 
 cultivators amongst Germans than proportion- 
 ally amongst any other civilized nationality. 
 And although it does not stand to reason to 
 believe that the class of Germans we have to 
 do with here have any knowledge of their fam- 
 ous countrymen on the territory of abstract 
 philosophy touching religious problems, yet 
 the general tendency of going into details, of 
 examining for themselves, of investigating and 
 discussing various subjects with each other, and 
 finally the fact that a literature of a people is 
 unconsciously exercising its influence on the 
 masses who look for their mental food in the 
 daily or periodical press, all that combined is 
 not in any particular degree fit to preserve the 
 religious simplicity from childhood. In pro- 
 testant Germany religious infidelity is making 
 a considerable headway in the ranks of the 
 laboring classes. Teachers of the Gospel are 
 
59 
 
 ridiculed and subjected to hatred in the radical 
 press, and warfare is preached against any form 
 of a revealed or inspired religion. Socialism 
 has a firm grasp on the working classes who 
 are getting impatient, no longer finding conso- 
 lation in the humble teachings of Christianity, 
 but striving for better conditions in this world, 
 taking their chances in regard to the next. 
 
 Socialism is just as much a French as a Ger- 
 man child. It was a Frenchman who invented 
 the famous sentence that all property is theft, but 
 German university teachers have given the child 
 a philosophical education; they adopted it and 
 gave it a rich nourishment. Lassalle and Karl 
 Marx spent the greater part of their lives in 
 pushing it; Marx particularly in forming the 
 International and writing a book that, however, 
 few socialistic workingmen ever read and still 
 fewer ever understood. It is true that the Ger- 
 man chancellor has gagged the child, but the 
 seed once sown has spread and is deeply rooted 
 in the workingmen, and the air of America has 
 not changed the views of those socialists who 
 sought a shelter under our free institutions. 
 
 Not being over-zealously religious, the Ger- 
 man workingman has no direct objection to 
 civil weddings ; on the contrary, a great many 
 
60 
 
 have the ceremony performed by justices, and 
 still more would prefer such an unostentatious 
 wedding but for the women who usually oppose 
 it as flavoring too much of a business transac- 
 tion. As well among Germans as amongst 
 other nationalities the women with their inborn 
 sensitiveness naturally demand the benediction 
 of the church pronounced over the matrimony. 
 While the clerk is making out the license the 
 groom will often remark, that he is going to 
 be married by a minister, "not because I care but 
 she having been baptized and confirmed in con- 
 formity with the rules of the German State- 
 church, does not like to dispense with a minis- 
 ter on this occasion." He is not so ceremonial, 
 and, even if he is a believer, he will scorn the 
 idea of our modern revivalist who demands an 
 unconditional submission, a faith strong enough 
 to move mountains. 
 
 There is a word in the German language ex- 
 pressive of sociability and kind disposition com- 
 bined, a word to which no synonym is found in 
 English, just as the word "home" in the mean- 
 ing we apply to it is without a corresponding 
 term in French. The word in German is 
 "Gemuthlichkeit." The Germans are very 
 "gemuthlich," they like to come together ex- 
 
61 
 
 changing views on all subjects, at the same time 
 enjoying their "lager," for this national beverage 
 he is very fond of. Our specific German sa- 
 loons are, in contrast to our specific American 
 saloons, furnished with chairs and tables, for the 
 proprietors are aware that their customers have 
 not for their only objects the convenience and 
 comfort of those who simply desire a glass of beer. 
 People go there just as much to find friends with 
 whom to have a social gossip. For hours they 
 may linger there, always in company. A Ger- 
 man does not appreciate the idea of going into 
 a saloon just to get a drink. In his own country 
 it is not considered bad taste for a family to 
 place themselves around a table in a concert 
 saloon drinking beer while listening to musical 
 entertainments. Here it is not so general a 
 spectacle, although we may see it at the specific 
 weekly Sunday concerts where ladies in com- 
 pany with their husbands and entire family sit 
 enjoying Beethoven and Mozart, Strauss, Offen- 
 bach and Wagner over a glass of lager beer or 
 a glass of wine. 
 
 When a German takes . out a license he is 
 frequently in company with several of his friends, 
 and not seldom the bride and some of her lady 
 acquaintances can be seen amongst them. 
 
62 
 
 While he is transacting the business with the 
 clerk they will surround him, joking and speak- 
 ing to the bride, who sometimes will turn a deaf 
 ear to their remarks. She is watching him 
 very closely, she wants to know "how a mar- 
 riage license is taken out," and she will hush 
 the friends when they talk too loudly. Ques- 
 tioned how old the groom is he may commence : 
 "I was born on the 25th of January, 1853, and 
 will consequently be 33 years, four months and 
 eleven days old to-day." And not to make any 
 mistake in regard to the prospective bride's age 
 he will leave the answer to her, and she will 
 answer with the same exactness referring to her 
 certificate of birth which she holds in her hands. 
 If a clerk is not sure of how to spell her name 
 she soon comes to his rescue thereby giving 
 him an idea how spelling of names is carried on 
 in German schools. The name for instance be- 
 ing "Laufenbach" she will spell each syllable 
 for itself, and then slowly pronounce the whole 
 name. Very distinctly it sounds: "L-a-u spells 
 lau, f-e-n spells fen, b-a-c-h spells bach, ergo 
 Laufenbach." She will furthermore remind the 
 clerk of the t being a hard ^, not the soft con- 
 sonant d, which non-Germans sometimes may 
 have some difficulty in discerning. When the 
 
63 
 
 license is issued the lady will examine it, and 
 her friends will help her, and the whole party 
 will joke and laugh. They will pass some re- 
 marks and nod their good-bye to the clerk. 
 Before they reach their home they will un- 
 doubtedly take some refreshments on the event 
 of the day. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Melancholy Dane — Religious Tolerance 
 — Norwegian National Pride — The Typic- 
 al Norwegian — The Frenchman of the 
 North — Religious Views — Swedish Pride. 
 
 IT is a very common thing that Danes, when 
 alluded to in the American press, are put 
 down as a people of a melancholy tempera- 
 ment. That melancholy Danes may be found is 
 undeniably a fact, but they are the exceptions 
 and not the rule. If it had not been for Shakes- 
 peare, Danes would on the contrary be enjoying 
 a reputation as a very joyous and "gemuthlich'' 
 people without any choleric tendencies. But 
 Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, hinc illce lacrimce, 
 and Hamlet is undoubtedly a very melancholy 
 Dane, his disease being so far advanced that a 
 modern psychologist, not to speak of a jury, 
 would prefer calling him mentally disturbed. 
 While Danes are not melancholy they are on the 
 
 other hand very modest. Perhaps their modesty 
 
 (64) 
 
65 
 
 may be accounted for when it is remembered that 
 Denmark once was the happy possessor of sev- 
 eral European countries. People who once 
 commanded large fortunes will, when reduced 
 to live on smaller incomes, naturally retire and 
 take a more modest position in society. In some 
 respects the Danish modesty is out of place. 
 Denmark has a rich literature, a little treasury 
 embracing valuable gems of poetry, science and 
 art; its famous university bears the venerable 
 age of somewhat over three hundred years, and 
 the capital is ranked so high in culture that all 
 over Europe it is known under the name: "The 
 Athens of the North." 
 
 But in spite of an independent literature and 
 language, the Danes have many points of simi- 
 larity with the North-Germans. The intellect- 
 ual life of Germany has not been without in- 
 fluence on the Danes, not that they have imitated 
 the Germans, but a powerful neighbor will 
 always exercise some influence on his less pow- 
 erful neighborhood. It is difficult to be abso- 
 lutely independent and not receive impulses 
 from a country that produced a Luther, whose 
 reformatory theology has been elevated to a 
 State-religion in Denmark. German literature 
 is freely circulated there, a German author of 
 
 Marriage License Window. 5. 
 
66 
 
 any importance will always find numerous 
 Danish readers. German is taught in the 
 schools, and until lately the teaching of German 
 was compulsory at the university of Copenhagen. 
 German kings have ruled in Denmark ; German 
 was the language spoken at the court. Even 
 the present king had some difficulty in speaking 
 the language of the country when he ascended 
 the throne. The conservative minority in 
 politics, supported by the government, is trying 
 to prove its alleged rights through interpreta- 
 tions of German constitutional laws. The 
 present generation in Denmark has democratic 
 inclinations, and it makes a hard right to pre- 
 serve the spirit of the free constitution of the 
 land. The fight, however, will never assume 
 a sanguinary character, for Danish modesty is 
 closely related to the kindred qualification 
 named good-nature. A bloody revolution in 
 Denmark is a chimera — it is not conceivable. 
 It belongs to the impossible things. 
 
 It is not very often that Danes appear before 
 the license clerk in company with others. He 
 needs no interpreter, for it does not take him 
 long ere he can make himself understood in 
 English. Although a Protestant by birth he is 
 very tolerant in all religious matters. The 
 
67 
 
 royal family has set an example of religious tol- 
 erance. One of the Danish princesses is married 
 to the Greek Catholic Emperor of Russia, 
 whose children, as a matter of course, have the 
 religion of their country. One of the princes is 
 the king of Greece who is married to the Rus- 
 sian princess Olga, another of the princes is 
 married to a Roman Catholic French princess, 
 of the house of Orleans. It is not often that a 
 Dane in Chicago is married by a civil authority ; 
 even if he be a free-thinker he will go to the 
 minister on such an occasion. He is too good- 
 natured not to yield to the wishes of his coming 
 wife, and, besides, it is against his nature to do 
 anything contrary to established etiquette. The 
 Danish free-thinker is not a propagandist, he is 
 more of a passive than active opponent of the 
 church. There are undeniably many free- 
 thinkers in Denmark, but certainly very few 
 atheists, a very important distinction, because 
 free-thinking may lead to a belief in a provi- 
 dence, while atheism represents religious nihil- 
 ism. 
 
 While the Danes have a great love for their 
 country they are at the same time cosmopoli- 
 tans, and their national pride is not so intense 
 as that of the Norwegians. The sons of Norway 
 
68 
 
 are more radical. Not to any great extent ex- 
 posed to European politics the Norwegian peo- 
 ple have had time to nurse their own political 
 interests. In every good sense of the word a 
 democratic people with a constitution after 
 French patterns and with a leaning to English 
 liberalism, they have successfully established 
 home-rule in all matters pertaining to the gov- 
 ernment of their own affairs. Their national 
 pride will sometimes assume the character of an 
 unlimited admiration of all that is Norwegian, 
 but this national weakness is easily over-looked 
 because of their many good and conspicuous 
 traits of character. 
 
 It took the currents of civilization longer time 
 to reach the more isolated Norway than Den- 
 mark. The geographical site and the natural 
 qualities of Norway, that made it rather expen- 
 sive to build railroads, were great impediments 
 to a general enlightenment. The last twenty- 
 five years, however, have wrought a wonderful 
 change in the former conditions; an attentive 
 observer will notice immense progress in all the 
 relations entitling a people to be ranked amongst 
 the civilized nations of high order. The Nor- 
 wegian farmer of the present generation reads 
 his daily papers; he has the decisive vote in 
 
69 
 
 parliament. Peasant high-schools are springing 
 up in every part of the land, and the former vain 
 and false national pride is yielding to broader 
 ideas of what should constitute the pride of a 
 land. The poets and authors of the present 
 Norway are on a level with the poets and au- 
 thors of the literary golden age of Denmark, 
 which country, however, still holds the lead as 
 the most critical of the two, numbering amongst 
 others the learned and highly gifted Dr. Georg 
 Brandes, well known and not under-rated in lit- 
 erary circles of America. 
 
 Just as Norwegians are more radical in their 
 politics than are the Danes, so they are also 
 more radical in their views on religious matters. 
 We find amongst them representatives of sickly 
 pietism and rabid and outspoken free-thinkers. 
 Most of the Norwegians here in Chicago belong 
 to a Church, and seldom or never a justice of the 
 peace is allowed to unite a couple in wedlock. 
 
 The typical Norwegian is a stern and earnest 
 man of few words. He is tall, broad-shouldered 
 and of a firm character. A sculptor wishing 
 .to produce the war-god Thor from the Norse 
 Mythology, and looking for a live model 
 may find such a one amongst the typical Nor- 
 wegian. He is not so susceptible of a joke as 
 
TO 
 
 the Dane, whose views of life are a good deal 
 brighter. He loves his own language, but in 
 common with all Scandinavians he has adopted 
 the golden rule : to do as the Romans do when 
 he lives amongst them. From the day he lands 
 he is trying hard to learn the language of his 
 new country, and to adopt its manners and 
 habits. He usually marries a Norwegian girl, 
 yet his national pride does not restrain him from 
 taking a Danish or Swedish wife. Norwegians 
 and Danes particularly agree very well. They 
 may sometimes rail at each other's character- 
 istic oddities, but they have the main conditions 
 for honest friendship — mutual estimation. 
 
 As well known, the third element in the Scan- 
 dinavian family consists of Swedes who in many 
 points considerably vary from Danes and Nor- 
 wegians. The difference of language is of no 
 small dimensions, the similarity being only on 
 the surface. In the common daily language the 
 three nationalities may understand each other, 
 but here the understanding ceases. Swedish 
 is a language of its own; Danes and Norwegians 
 in order to master it must study and practice it 
 as any other foreign language. In Denmark 
 and Norway it has been introduced into the 
 schools as a separate discipline, and Swedish 
 
71 
 
 literature is constantly read in translations. 
 Although the acquirement of English does not 
 present greater difficulties to Swedes than to 
 Danes or Norwegians, yet the musical scale of 
 the Swedish language may be noticed through 
 their pronunciation of English. As a matter of 
 course this peculiarity will disappear during a 
 longer stay in America, but it takes a long 
 while, and can always be traced in the case of 
 emigrants of the lower classes. In Europe the 
 Swedes are not seldom alluded to as "The 
 Frenchmen of the North." Their manners are 
 very graceful, and, besides, they are just as po- 
 lite as are the French. While American house- 
 wives may not prefer a Swedish hired girl to a 
 Danish or Norwegian, it is a fact that Ameri- 
 can gentlemen seem to have a predilection for 
 Swedish girls, so much, indeed, that when they 
 meet a handsome Norwegian or Danish girl, 
 they indiscriminately put her down as Swedish. 
 The Swedish people possess a great sense of 
 beauty and are of advanced ideas. The eman- 
 cipation of women, in the good and sensible 
 meaning, has now a pretty good hold on the 
 population. One of the Swedish universities 
 has set a good example in calling a lady as 
 teacher in higher mathematics, mayhap not as 
 
72 
 
 a demonstration, but because she is considered 
 pre-eminent in her science, that nowhere ought 
 to inquire into the sexes of its cultivators. Swe- 
 den is a country with a grand national history, 
 playing no insignificant role in the history of 
 the world. It is by all odds the most historical 
 country of the three,, and the halo surrounding 
 the lives of its heroical kings cast a romantic 
 light over the entire population. 
 
 Swedes are rather susceptible of religious im- 
 pressions, at least the illiterate classes. Luther- 
 ans as they are "by virtue of the laws connect- 
 ing State and Church, we find more religious 
 sects amongst them than amongst any of the 
 two other nationalities. In fact, Sweden has 
 itself produced a founder of a sect, Swedenborg, 
 whose theosophic religious ideas have made 
 their round all over the world, numbering not a 
 few adherents in all parts of the United States. 
 Amongst the laboring classes in Chicago we 
 find a great many who prefer a civil marriage 
 to that of the church. On the other hand we 
 find Swedes whose religious zeal is so great that 
 it will not even allow them to make an affidavit, 
 and who therefore obtain a license by affirma- 
 tion. Some will not even affirm, but in com- 
 pany with their spiritual adviser go to one of 
 
73 
 
 the neighboring states, where no license is re- 
 quired. As a rule, the men choose their wives 
 within their own nationality, but Swedish girls 
 seem to have a more cosmopolitan heart in love 
 affairs. They are not afraid of entering into 
 marriage with Americans, Irish or Germans. 
 They verify the old saying that love has no re- 
 gard for nationality, race, or religious views. 
 
 Swedes, while not exactly clannish, nourish a 
 great national pride. They do not like to be 
 called Scandinavians, and some of them are not 
 far from considering it an insult to be taken for 
 Norwegians. Amongst the enlightened classes the 
 national pride does not take such an abnormal 
 form; if jealousy exists, it is not apparent on the 
 surface, at least. The masses, however, want 
 to remind the world of the undeniable fact that 
 they are Swedes and nothing else. 
 
 The three Scandinavian countries have con- 
 tributed their share of famous notabilities in 
 different branches of art and science. But 
 while Americans sometimes may be in doubt, 
 whether Thorvaldsen or Hans Christian Ander- 
 sen are Danes, or whether Ibsen or Bjornson are 
 Norwegians, they never doubt the nationality 
 of Erickson, the inventor of the monitor, or 
 Swedenborg, or Christine Nilsson. Americans 
 
74 
 
 may confound the names of Danish with Swe- 
 dish kings, but no American is in doubt but 
 that Gustaf Adolf, or Carl XII. were Swedes. 
 An explanation of these latter facts may be 
 sought in the history of the land in relation to 
 the great powers. Sweden's part in the religi- 
 ous wars has given it a position, the understand- 
 ing of which necessitates a closer investigation 
 of the details of the nation's history. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Models for Artists — Italians — A Beautiful 
 Couple — A Bohemian Bride and Groom — 
 A Hackman — From Hand to Mouth — Co- 
 operation — Economical Deductions. 
 
 THERE is no doubt that an artist or student 
 of human nature may find models or sub- 
 jects when on a busy day he will come to 
 the marriage license window and there take a 
 look at the manners and bearings of the appli- 
 cants. If he is successful he will see the doors 
 thrown open for a crowd of Italians. There 
 may be fifteen in number, seldom less than six. 
 The groom and the prospective bride are in 
 advance of the crowd. They place themselves 
 in the middle of the floor surrounded on each 
 side by his and her family, of which the young- 
 est sometimes are seated on their mother's and 
 grandmother's arms. The men have all uncov- 
 ered their heads before they entered the office. 
 The women's headgear consists of a triangular 
 handkerchief of all the colors of the rainbow. 
 
 (75) 
 
76 
 
 None of the whole family understands English, 
 a fact, however, not preventing them from talk- 
 ing ; on the contrary they are carrying on a very 
 lively conversation in their own language, at the 
 same time gesticulating with their hands and 
 moving their features and eyes in a demonstra- 
 tive way, peculiar to people of Roman origin. 
 They are accompanied by an interpreter, so- 
 called, who is urging Guiseppe and Colomba to 
 step up to the window. Guiseppe cannot sign 
 his name. How should he, having never fre- 
 quented a school, and Colomba is not better 
 situated, having never taken lessons in the use- 
 ful art of writing with a pen. He is an under- 
 sized youth of twenty-three, heavily built and of 
 a rather good appearance. She is of still smaller 
 stature, but proportionally well built, of dark 
 complexion with a yellow tinge. Her features 
 are symmetrical, her eyes are dark and they 
 might be called handsome, if they were not 
 lacking the expression that may give life and 
 vivacity to less regular features. As she stands 
 there in her not very presumptious garment of 
 many colors, with her head uncovered, bashful 
 as a violet, without moving from the spot, she 
 looks like a handsome doll that by dint of a 
 mechanical contrivance can open andshutits eyes. 
 
77 
 
 She is just sixteen years of age, but her 
 mother is present and she gives willingly her 
 consent to her daughter's marriage. She ex- 
 plains that she was still younger when she was 
 married in Italy. She is now about thirty-four 
 years old, but she looks much older than she is. 
 Her face is rather emaciated and wrinkled; her 
 complexion is sallow, and her green-colored 
 headgear by no means flatters the color of her 
 face. The bride's father is also present, but 
 looks rather unconcerned. He belongs to a 
 family that has done military service under 
 Garibaldi, whom he reveres as the liberator of 
 Italy, without giving a thought to Cavour. 
 
 The crowd keeps at a respectful distance from 
 the window until the groom and mother-in-law 
 make their marks on the affidavit blank. Then 
 they all move forward to see what is going on. 
 They lean over each others shoulders, and pre- 
 sent a very picturesque group. When Guiseppe 
 holds up his right hand to be sworn, silence pre- 
 vails amongst them, attentively they listen to 
 the oath, the verbal meaning of which they do 
 not understand, but the importance of which 
 they all are aware of. Sometimes they will all 
 hold up their right hands, placing their left on 
 that part of the chest under which they suppose 
 
78 
 
 their hearts to be located. They are very po- 
 lite and highly astonished or agreeably surprised 
 when accosted in their own language. The 
 groom may leave his card at the window. It 
 is a business card stating that he is beating the 
 harp at reasonable terms to those who want to 
 dance in private circles. He is the musical di- 
 rector, a couple of his countrymen assisting him 
 on violin and tambourine, which three instru- 
 ments constitute the orchestra. The whole 
 party may direct their steps to the nearest jus- 
 tice of the peace who, for the moneyed consid- 
 eration stipulated by law, will unite Guiseppe 
 and Colomba in the bonds of matrimony. 
 
 Not many Italian weddings are contracted in 
 Chicago — not one a week. We frequently come 
 across many good-looking and thrifty Italians, 
 but they do not seem to have any connubial 
 propensities. Mayhap that the scarcity of mar- 
 riages can be explained through the fact that the 
 young men prefer a wife of their own nation- 
 ality, and that Italian girls, who emigrate from 
 their native country, are proportionately very 
 scarce in Chicago. Italy, like the rest of the 
 south European countries, does not render a 
 large emigrating contingent to the United 
 States. People there are not used to work 
 
79 
 
 hard, nor is it necessary. Nature has taken 
 upon herself a great deal of the work that hu- 
 man hands are used to do in other less favored 
 countries. Italians prefer staying home, letting 
 foreigners come to them, partly to get the bene- 
 fit of a climate so beneficial to a broken consti- 
 tution, partly to enrich their knowledge by en- 
 joying the many treasures of art and antiquities 
 which, among other cities, Rome is the happy 
 owner of. The eternal city, where Cato preached 
 the strictest morality, and where Nero drove to 
 the theater through an alley of torches composed 
 of burning Christians, has not lost its attraction 
 in our century. 
 
 An exceptionally beautiful couple appeared 
 before the license window a couple of years ago. 
 She was a Roman girl, he was a Neapolitan; 
 both had been but a short time in America. 
 She was well grown, slender, with a finely 
 shaped head. The aquiline nose, the form of 
 which is generally known under the name of 
 "Roman," the large dark and exceedingly 
 expressive eyes, the elevation of the noble 
 forehead limited and wreathed in a pro- 
 fusion of chestnut hair, the handsome mouth 
 with its finely cut lips guarding a row of well 
 preserved pearly white teeth, the transparent 
 
80 
 
 complexion of her cheeks, her round shoulders 
 and arms ending in a pair of aristocratic hands, 
 and finally the harmonious proportions of her 
 whole figure, was a corroboration of the often 
 expressed opinion, that Roman girls may be rare 
 beauties. He was taller by some inches than 
 she, with a commanding appearance. His mass- 
 ive head, with a brow indicating great deter- 
 mination, was resting upon a pair of broad 
 shoulders. His manners were nonchalant, at 
 the same time elegant; his walk elastic, and all 
 his bearings conveying the impression of his 
 being a man of the higher classes. Both could 
 speak English, but she carried on the conversa- 
 tion, he apparently being of a more reticent dis- 
 position. She commenced an explanation of the 
 circumstances that brought them to America. 
 They would not make Chicago their home, they 
 were here on their way to California, whence 
 they would return to Italy as soon as the pater- 
 nal wrath had subsided. He did not like her 
 revelation of the secrets of the family, a flash- 
 ing of his eyes was an admonition which pre- 
 vented her from telling the romance of their love. 
 He did not look amiable at that moment, but 
 his silent and yet so eloquent command was 
 immediately obeyed. When he unbuttoned his 
 
81 
 
 coat to pay the fee a little dagger with a golden, 
 engraved handle was visible in a belt around his 
 waist. He gave an observer the impression of 
 being jealous, and of being not too scrupulous 
 as to his method of retaliation in case any per- 
 son should fail to keep at a respectful distance 
 from her. 
 
 During a busy day a painter or a student may 
 get an opportunity to see a Bohemian wedding 
 couple. He will directly observe that the pre- 
 parations have been made with great care. He, 
 a young but well developed man, has donned a 
 brand new, black coat, the upper button-hole of 
 which is furnished with a rather large bouquet 
 of white flowers interspersed with green leaves. 
 The flowers have never bloomed, neither in the 
 early or the late spring, for they are artificial. 
 And yet they have very little to do with art, 
 whatever a less esthetic eye will discover at the 
 first glance. His hair is carefully dressed, the 
 well known pomatumed or oiled curl covering 
 the middle part of his broad forehead. His toi- 
 let would, however, not be perfect but for the 
 new white cotton gloves, which encasement he 
 leaves undisturbed while he is signing his name 
 to the affidavit. She is dressed in a gown of 
 white, light material, the bridal veil reaching to 
 
 Marriage License Window. 6. 
 
82 
 
 the ground. A floral ornament is fastened to 
 her hair, and will sometimes take the shape of a 
 wreath. Her hands are covered with white 
 gloves, but the color of the bare wrists shows 
 that she is not unprepared for a coming wash- 
 day. She is accompanied by three or four 
 bridesmen, all spruced and with white artificial 
 flowers of large dimensions in their buttonholes, 
 or fastened to the lapels of their coats. Like 
 the groom, their heads show visible signs of hav- 
 ing been under tonsorial treatment, of which the 
 fragrant smell of oil and pomatum bear unmis- 
 takable evidence. 
 
 In the party may be seen a person with a very 
 jovial face, but whose garment indicates that he 
 is not an invited guest. He wears a slouch hat 
 that has seen good and bad days, rain and sun- 
 shine. In his right hand he holds a large whip. 
 He is the hackman, who brought the groom 
 and his bride, and who will take them from the 
 office to the justice of the peace. He is a man 
 of very good manners, this jovial hackman, 
 with a pair of eyes that can see around corners. 
 He opens the doors for the party and exhibits 
 the same reverence when it leaves the office. 
 He is politeness personified, with a face wreathed 
 in smiles, and he looks so healthy and so happy, 
 
83 
 
 which he undoubtedly is, whether he takes a 
 party to a wedding or a funeral. He may turn 
 round in the doorway nodding a significant bow 
 to the clerk, and a twinkle of his eye may con- 
 vince one that on an occasion like this the legal 
 fare need not be too strictly adhered to. The 
 hackman is a good judge of human nature. Ex- 
 perience has taught him that at weddings and 
 funerals most people are very liberal. What 
 does a groom care for a dollar on his wedding- 
 day? His mind is too absorbed with the pres- 
 ent and future happiness to mind such a trifle — 
 provided he has the dollar to spare. 
 
 Not all grooms, we are sorry to say, have a 
 dollar to spare, and not few have less than a 
 dollar. Here is a middle-aged man, who never 
 has made acquaintance with any luxury. He 
 is a type of that class of workingmen who have 
 to work hard for their food ; never earning more 
 than enough to live from hand to mouth. He 
 has learned no trade, but is earning a scanty 
 living by helping masons during the building 
 season, taking accidental jobs the rest of the 
 year. His license is made out and he stands 
 now in front of the cashier's window, where he 
 is getting the unexpected information that the 
 fee for a license is one dollar and a half. He 
 
84 
 
 carries his right hand up to the back of his head, 
 and after some meditation he remarks that one 
 dollar is all he has in his possession until next 
 pay-day. He did not know the law, or he might 
 have raised the necessary amount. He asks if 
 the county will not trust him fifty cents till next 
 Monday. The county not doing that kind of 
 business, the clerks of the office " splice togeth- 
 er " and the man gets his license. The charity 
 makes him eloquent, and he explains his matri- 
 monial alliance from economical standpoints. 
 His average weekly earning, all the year round, 
 amounts to five and a half dollars. His "girl," 
 who is on the other side of forty years, makes a 
 living by washing. She has two absolutely re- 
 liable families, and three others trust her to do 
 their washing in her house. Through this she 
 has an income of five dollars a week. He has 
 made the calculation, that it is easier for two 
 persons, of which one belongs to the weaker sex 
 advanced in years, to live on ten dollars and a 
 half a week than it is for each to live on said 
 respective incomes. She has listened to his 
 economical deductions, and after due delibera- 
 tion she has come to the conclusion that no 
 danger is connected with the enterprise. They 
 have, therefore, agreed to live together as hus- 
 
85 
 
 band and wife. This is not a union of romantic 
 love, but there is no small degree of diplomacy 
 in it. It is a kind of co-operation on a small 
 scale, and of a durable character. In such a 
 matrimony a divorce is never thought of, even 
 if diverging opinions may lead to family scenes. 
 They live happily according to their notions of 
 happiness, and when she dies, after many years, 
 her heirs may find a little sum saved with great 
 care and with the sacrifice of many an innocent 
 inclination to cover the expenses of her funeral. 
 Not for anything in the world would she after 
 her demise occupy a grave in " Potter's Field." 
 She belongs to that class of poor but respectable 
 individuals who have lived and worked all their 
 lives to get a decent funeral. 
 
CHAPTER X, 
 
 Disagreeably Surprised — A Girl of Age — A 
 Reasonable Doubt — An Angry Mother — 
 Parents' Punishments — Subtraction. 
 
 HE who most enjoyed the workingman's 
 economical reflections is a young man, 
 full of life and hope for the future, and 
 with a weak intimation of a mustache. He thinks 
 it queer that people do not know the statutes re- 
 garding the fee for a marriage license. It is now 
 his turn to be waited on. Everything runs smooth- 
 ly until he, on the question being asked, how old 
 the lady is, answered "sweet seventeen." "Are 
 you sure," he is questioned, "that she is that 
 old? " Yes, certainly he is sure, and he names 
 the day of the year she was born, which deduct- 
 ed from the present day verifies his statement. 
 She is exactly seventeen years and three fall 
 months, neither more nor less. That no mis- 
 take shall take place, he is asked if he is willing 
 to swear to her age. Of course he is willing, 
 and jokingly he quotes Dickens by saying: 
 
 (36) 
 
87 
 
 "Barkis is willing." . He is then informed that 
 the marriage laws require a girl to be eighteen 
 years old before a wedding permit can be issued 
 to her unless one of her parents give their sworn 
 consent, or if she has no parents alive, then her 
 legally appointed guardian. This paragraph 
 of the law the young man has no knowledge of, 
 he never heard of it, and it seems to him to be a 
 very queer provision. He is no longer so cheer- 
 ful as when he entered the office or listened to his 
 predecessor's economical argument, nor is he any 
 longer so sure of her age. He might be mistak- 
 en, in fact, one's memory may sometimes fail. 
 Perhaps she is eighteen years, she is tall, he ex- 
 plains, physically well developed, she looks really 
 as if she were twenty. Her parents are dead long 
 ago, if they were alive they would certainly not 
 stand in the way of their daughter's marriage. 
 She never had a guardian appointed, and it 
 would give a great deal of trouble to get one in 
 a hurry. The wedding has been fixed for to- 
 morrow night, everything is prepared, and it 
 would be a great disappointment if a postpone- 
 ment should be necessary. 
 
 However great the sympathy a young man 
 under such circumstances may be entitled to, 
 however strongly his fate may appeal to a 
 
88 
 
 deputy's heart, there is no remedy to help him 
 out except that prescribed by the statutes of 
 Illinois. Learning that no argument can induce 
 a deputy to issue a license to a minor, he leaves 
 the office. But not later than half an hour after 
 he re-appears before the window in company 
 with a young girl, his sweet-heart. He intro- 
 duces her as the individual who, better than 
 anybody else, can give reliable information in 
 regard to her birth-day. His remark calling 
 forth a mild objection he is willing to admit 
 that to most of us mortals it may be rather dif- 
 ficult to remember the year we were born. 
 The young girl is blushing when she explains 
 that she is eighteen years past, and in one point 
 his statement is fully corroborated; she looks 
 as if she were over twenty. It is evident that 
 the two have had a quarrel before they entered 
 the office; she looks very indignant, and is up- 
 braiding him for his lack of true knowledge. 
 In a somewhat hasty tone she appeals to the 
 clerk's good judgment. Her lover has made a 
 very sad mistake. She knows she is eighteen, 
 she has with her own eyes seen it in the Bible. 
 
 -." In the Bible?" 
 
 "Yes, sir, in the Bible, that is, in the Old 
 Testament." 
 
89 
 
 "In the Old Testament ?" 
 
 "Yes, sir, that is to say; Oh, you certainly 
 understand me, Mr. Clerk, nry father had an 
 Old Testament, in which he entered the day and 
 the year of the birth of all his children. Of 
 this nomenclature it appears without any doubt, 
 to the satisfaction of even the most skeptic mind, 
 that I am now past eighteen years, so help me 
 God!" 
 
 When the young girl was through, one of the 
 bystanders came to her assistance with the re- 
 mark that the Bible was a good authority, what 
 was in that book we had to believe. With that 
 remark all further objection fell to the ground, 
 she was not even asked to produce the Bible. 
 Triumphantly she walked out of the office with 
 the license in her hand, apparently happy at the 
 achieved result. He followed her slowly, with- 
 out uttering a word, perhaps in silent admira- 
 tion of his girl's argumentative faculties. 
 
 A reasonable doubt may certainly be raised 
 as to the real age of the girl; but what is abso- 
 lutely doubtless and what daily may be expe- 
 rienced is that many persons, otherwise decent 
 and not in the habit of lying, do not show any 
 particular regard for truth and veracity in tak- 
 ing out a marriage license. Although fully 
 
90 
 
 aware of the facts young men may swear that 
 they are twenty-one and the girl is eighteen, 
 while both or one of them is a minor. Their 
 conscience does not seem to trouble them; to 
 justify the end they do not mind a perjury as a 
 means. The discovery is made in a very simple 
 way ; when parents or guardians read their 
 children's names in the daily published list of 
 marriage licenses, or otherwise learn that they 
 are about to get married, they will put on their 
 hats and overcoats, and hurry down to the 
 county clerk's office to be convinced of the 
 truth with their own eyes and ears. It is usually 
 mothers who make their appearance on such 
 occasions. As a rule mothers do not like their 
 children to marry at too young an age. Mothers 
 will sometimes talk very loud, very quick, and 
 without the least constraint. A clerk with a 
 taste for family secrets need not fear that his in- 
 clination will not be gratified. Here is a mother 
 with her eyes full of tears, but they are not the 
 tears of sorrow but of wrath. After having 
 argued that her daughter had no business to 
 marry, she proves that her daughter has stained 
 her, the mother's good name and reputation. 
 The daughter has given her age as eighteen, 
 while she is hardly seventeen. She is - the old- 
 
91 
 
 est and first born child of the family. If she 
 really was eighteen, as the affidavit and the 
 papers have it, she must have been born one 
 year before her parents were wedded. What 
 would the neighbors and friends of the family 
 think and say. They were all aware that the 
 parents had been married only eighteen years ; 
 the framed marriage certificate in the parlor 
 they had all studied and admired. Whom 
 would they believe, the parents or the daugh- 
 ter? 
 
 In the first excitement parents will promise 
 to punish their wicked children. They will 
 have the son-in-law or the daughter-in-law ar- 
 rested. They want to know the procedure and 
 they are very thankful for the information that 
 they may take out a warrant charging the cul- 
 prits with perjury and perhaps succeed in get- 
 ting them in the penitentiary. He who did not 
 know better might think that now would follow 
 a criminal case, with the license clerk as the 
 main witness. It never happens. When the 
 wrathful parents go home and think cooly over 
 the matter, they surrender to the inevitable, the 
 more so as they soon learn that their children's 
 wedding was an accomplished fact ten minutes 
 after the license was issued. Parents ma3^ 
 
92 
 
 sometime file an affidavit stating that their child 
 is not of age. But having gained the full confi- 
 dence of their daughter, they may withdraw the 
 affidavit, asking the clerk to ante-date the license 
 for very delicate reasons. 
 
 It may, perhaps, be understood without any 
 further comment, that the number of women 
 adding one to their age is not so large as the 
 number of those subtracting four, five, nay 
 even sometimes ten years from their first birth- 
 day. To live as long as possible is a common 
 wish with all mankind, but it is a peculiarity 
 with women, particularly the single ones in 
 their third decade, that they will not be older, 
 that is, they will not admit it. Woe to the man 
 who in the presence of a woman taxes her age 
 too high in the numeral series. He is apt to 
 make a never forgiving enemy. If his mind is 
 bent upon securing or continuing her friendship 
 he will act wisely by valuing her ten years 
 younger than he thinks she is. A well known 
 lawyer in Chicago, being for the defense in a li- 
 bel suit not many months ago, in addressing the 
 jury averred that it was a very common custom 
 among families here to subtract several years 
 from the ages of their marriageable daughters, 
 in order not to frighten the lovers from their 
 
93 
 
 houses. Whether this utterance was founded 
 upon a close knowledge of facts, or simply cal- 
 culated as an excuse for the defendant's false 
 statement of her age, matters little. There is 
 no doubt but that in hundreds of instances a 
 woman's own statement of her age, when she is 
 about to get married, need a thorough revision. 
 In course of time the imaginary or fictitious age 
 will naturally be corrected ; if this were not the 
 case the death certificates could not render a 
 reliable result for statistics. A comparison of 
 the ages on the marriage certificates with those 
 of the death certificates may lead to a proof of 
 the physical impossibility, that there have lived 
 women in Chicago who were ten years of age 
 at their entering of life. 
 
 To give the ages at the contracting of a mar- 
 riage is a proportionally new arrangement. The 
 law only requires that both parties shall be of 
 age, but the enlarged statistics justly demanded, 
 in the name of real facts, more careful dates to 
 build on, that the results should not be im- 
 aginary. Fifteen years ago the applicants were 
 not asked to give their exact ages, and that 
 must have been a golden time for women rather 
 advanced in years. At that time all men and 
 women, wishing to share the sunshine and rain 
 
94 
 
 of married life, were, according to their 
 affidavits, twenty-one and eighteen years old, no 
 matter whether he was an old widower and she 
 a widow with numerous offspring. 
 The affidavit from that period read : 
 
 I, , of the City of (Chicago), County of 
 
 (Cook), State of (Illinois), solemnly swear that I am 
 
 of the age of twenty-one, and that Miss , of the 
 
 City of (Chicago), County of (Cook), State of (Illi- 
 nois), is of the age of eighteen, and that both are single 
 and unmarried, and may lawfully contract and be joined 
 in marriage. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 An Old Couple — Some Motives — Daring Expe- 
 riments — Old Age and Blooming Youth — 
 Disproportion. 
 
 IF any doubts were entertained as to the ex- 
 act age of the before mentioned young girl, 
 there is a decisive proof that the old man 
 who now stands before the window applying for 
 a license has a long time ago passed the limits 
 of his maturity. Old people are not seldom 
 loquacious. Judging from his talk he is in pos- 
 session of his mental faculties, he is very ra- 
 tional, if there were any doubts in regard to 
 this point he could obtain no license. The stat- 
 utes are very plain on that point. And yet a 
 clerk without knowledge of psychology or of the 
 germs of insanity may be deceived. Without 
 any intention of insulting former, present, or 
 coming license clerks, we may take it for grant- 
 ed that they are not expert psychologists. Not 
 many months ago a very old man applied for a li- 
 cense. He spoke rationally and was so well versed 
 
 (95) 
 
96 
 
 with the affairs of our newspapers that he knew 
 that the publication of his license could not be 
 avoided. His children were present at his wed- 
 ding, and undoubtedly extended their hearty 
 congratulations to him and his wife. The 
 question of his sanity was not raised then, but 
 when he died some months after his wedding, 
 and his will was opened, his family, with the ex- 
 ception of his wife, protested against its proba- 
 tion, supporting their protest with ample proofs 
 that their father was insane when he married 
 the last time. 
 
 But to return to the old man at the window. 
 He is about seventy years old, the stage of life 
 where most people attaining such an age think 
 of anything but wedlock. He is a well pre- 
 served man, tall and erect, with a good natured 
 expression in his eyes, and with a very dignified 
 bearing. As it looked like rain in the morning 
 when he left the house, he carries an umbrella 
 instead of a cane. Has he been married before ? 
 Yes, certanily, he explains; with his first wife he 
 lived nearly thirty years, and with his second 
 about sixteen. She died of old age about two 
 years ago. He tried to live with his married 
 son, but he got soon tired of that. " Parents 
 should never reside with their married children, 
 
97 
 
 no, sir, it is a very poor scheme." In some re- 
 spects he liked it well enough, but the blessed 
 grand-children were not always as they should 
 be. When he wished to sleep they would com- 
 mence singing or they would practice on the 
 piano. Besides, he could no longer eat at cer- 
 tain hours, and we must mind dining hours in a 
 house where we are boarders. Should he once 
 more be left a widower he would marry again. 
 To remain single is a poor policy for a man who 
 has tasted the sweetness of married life. "Yes, 
 sir, her name is Sarah," he answers when que- 
 ried as to the name of his coming wife, but he 
 has forgotten her surname. 
 
 No great delay is caused, for Sarah is outside, 
 and the old man trips to the door and calls her 
 inside. She is a widow at about sixty, wrapped 
 up in a big shawl, her head covered with a silk 
 hood. In her hand she carries a tax-receipt 
 book, for she has seized the opportunity while 
 in the court house to pay her taxes in the treas- 
 urer's office. She states her full name and gives 
 furthermore the number of her house. She is a 
 childless widow, she explains, having known her 
 prospective husband, in all honor and decency, 
 during the time he was married to his second 
 wife. She has been a widow for ten years, and 
 
 Marriage License Window. 7. 
 
98 
 
 never thought of re-marrying, but then she got 
 a good offer and accepted it. It has taken 
 some time to make out the license, for the by- 
 standers have mingled in the conversation, and a 
 rather old joker amongst them reminds her of 
 the biblical Sarah to whom three angels paid a 
 visit and promised her a son despite her hundred 
 years. She laughs at the joke reparteeing with 
 a wink of her eye that the days of such miracles 
 have passed, and, besides, her husband is no 
 Abraham. 
 
 Taking a hearty leave the couple turn to the 
 door, but he suddenly stops and returns to get 
 his umbrella. But where is the umbrella? He 
 had put it right in front of him while he pro- 
 duced his eye-glasses from his coat pocket. He 
 is searching every neighboring corner, but in 
 vain. The umbrella is irrevocably lost. It 
 seems as if this object is common property in 
 America, and it can change hands as often as a 
 nickel. On a rainy day it is less inclined to get 
 out of the hands of its legitimate proprietor, but 
 it behooves him to mind it when the weather is 
 clearing. Unfortunately we are then apt to 
 lose our grip on it, and particularly when we 
 are longing for marriage, even if this protector 
 against the wet element is a family umbrella. 
 
99 
 
 Not a few weddings are contracted in course 
 of the year between people of old age, and the 
 motives for these barren unions are pretty near 
 the same in all instances. Men who in advanced 
 years lose their wives do not like the idea of re- 
 siding with their married children. They may 
 try it for a little while, but will soon give it up, 
 provided they are so situated that their financial 
 circumstances will allow it. In giving up 
 their old household they simultaneously have to 
 give up their old habits of living. Not seldom 
 the children are living in some other cities, and 
 in not a few instances the old people are child- 
 less. 
 
 The old widower usually re-marries to get a 
 good nursing. He might perhaps attain the 
 same result by hiring a nurse, but he is aware 
 of this being a less desirable arrangement. In 
 the first place he is not sure that a nurse will 
 remain with him until he dies ; besides, a stranger 
 paid a weekly salary is not so economical as 
 the lady of the house. Sometimes a certain ro- 
 mantic light is cast over the union between old 
 people; they may have known each other from 
 childhood, they may have been school-mates and 
 loved each other somewhat later, but was pre- 
 vented from being made one by a sad fate 
 LoFC. 
 
100 
 
 crossing their ways. But these are the excep- 
 tions, while the rule is that he wants a female 
 individual to take care of him and his house; 
 she in return wants to better her condition and 
 live the rest of her days without any fear of 
 stern necessity overtaking her in her declining 
 years. 
 
 It is, however, not always that old widowers 
 take old women as their wives. It will some- 
 times happen that they take quite young girls 
 as compensation for their deceased better halves. 
 Such daring experiments are nearly exclusively 
 made by well-to-do citizens. Unions of such a 
 character are justly considered ridiculous in re- 
 gard to him, and as to her they are looked upon 
 as deplorable or detestable. An old man be- 
 lieving that a young female heart harbors any 
 feeling coming near to love for him, is a fool 
 well deserving of the punishment that most fre- 
 quently will follow unnatural inclinations. As 
 to her, she must either be utterly inexperienced 
 in love matters, or she is selling her youth for 
 money. Weddings have been contracted in 
 Chicago, the disproportions of the ages having 
 been so large that incredulous persons might 
 doubt the possibility of their existence if the 
 records did not deliver the proof in black and 
 
101 
 
 white. Men between sixty and seventy have 
 married girls of nineteen, and as no laws inter- 
 fere with such unnatural unions, it may be the 
 framers of our marriage laws presumed that the 
 young girl would make a more sensible choice 
 the next time she married. 
 
 It was a bitterly cold night when old age and 
 blooming youth, personified in a man of sixty-six 
 and a girl of eighteen, applied for a license. He 
 was tall and slender, she was small and rather 
 heavily built. Through artificial means he tried 
 to conceal the marks of time. His face had just 
 got a clean shave, but the powder could not 
 altogether hide his many wrinkles. His martial 
 mustache, trimmed after the latest fashion, had 
 undergone a coloring process, the root ends of 
 his beard being snow white! When he took 
 out the license the mustache was raven black. 
 Very carefully he lifted his hat when the oath 
 was administered, apparently fearing that his 
 wig, matching the color of his mustache, would 
 be deranged or follow an upward direction, 
 thereby betraying the baldness of his head. 
 From his vest pocket he pulled a lorgnette, and 
 nervously seizing a pen he signed his name. The 
 old cynic kept up a monolog while the affidavit 
 and license was made out. "You see," he ex- 
 
102 
 
 plained, " I am of age. In fact, my whole family 
 is of age. We belong to a family of longevity. 
 I am pretty well fixed, and to marry a poor girl 
 is a charitable act, for I do not expect that this 
 young girl ever will love me. I do not believe 
 any woman, young or old, could love a man of 
 sixty-six." All he wanted was to be united to 
 a young female being in whom he could have 
 the utmost confidence, and who could soothe the 
 evening of his life. " Is not that the contract?" 
 he finished, turning to Anna. She did not sa}' 
 a word. Pulling her veil down before her face she 
 remained silent as a sphinx. The contract did not 
 last long, for six months after the young widow 
 was married to a man of about her own age. 
 
 Society has not only imbued civilized man- 
 kind with certain notions of propriety, but the 
 same practices are differently viewed or judged 
 as they are found in either of the two sexes. So, 
 for instance, we deem it not absolutely disgust- 
 ing to see a drunken man, if he is not too full, 
 while the sight of a woman under the influence 
 of liquor, we consider a most abominable one. 
 An old man falling in love with a young woman 
 and marrying her in the hope that she will love 
 him for his own sake, is looked upon as ridiculous. 
 But when an old woman marries a young man 
 
103 
 
 in the belief that he will be a good and faithful 
 husband, the climax of ridiculousness, bordering 
 on insanity, is reached. In France, where they 
 sometimes joke rather freely, a lady of sixty 
 was asked when she thought that the erotic 
 feeling in a woman's heart ceased; the lady 
 bashfully asked to be excused, simultaneously 
 directing the inquirer to other ladies older than 
 herself. And, truly, it is within the possibilities 
 that a woman in an advanced stage of life may 
 preserve an unimpaired feeling of love, but, 
 nevertheless, we will always consider it unnatural 
 for her to cast her eyes upon an entirely young 
 man who surely can not nourish any feeling de- 
 serving of the name of love toward her. 
 
 Not many marriages are solemnized in 
 Cook county between old women and young 
 men, perhaps ten in a year, which, however, is 
 ten too many. Both parties will, as a rule, face 
 the license clerk. She will not relax her grasp 
 on the young man. She wants to be sure 
 of him, but the wedding is seldom consum- 
 mated until some hours after the issuing of the 
 license, he in the meantime paying a visit to 
 the recorder's office, there to assure himself of 
 the genuineness of her deed on house and 
 lot. 
 
104 
 
 A most disproportionate marriage in regard 
 to ages was entered into about three years ago 
 by a man who gave his age as twenty-five, and 
 a woman who asked to be put down as fifty- 
 eight, but who undoubtedly had passed sixty- 
 five. The sight of such a couple will necessa- 
 rily burn itself into the memory of a clerk. It 
 is with such a sight as with that of an execu- 
 tion, a veritable European beheading with ax or 
 guillotine. We shudder and our blood runs cold, 
 not only at the actual moment, but whenever 
 we think of it, though it may be many years 
 after. 
 
 The woman in this case had put on her best 
 dress; her appearance and whole make-up had 
 given her a coquettish touch. With both her 
 arms resting in his right one, they slowly 
 marched up to the window. She was not even 
 a good looking woman, her small face with its 
 pinched nose being in sharp contrast to the cir- 
 cumference of her body. He was dressed in a 
 black suit, a large diamond glittered in his shirt 
 front, most likely a present from her, but no 
 collar adorned his fat and red neck. " I want 
 a license for this lady and myself," he said, cut- 
 ting loose from her arms, thereby stepping on 
 her bridal veil, that reached from the top of her 
 
105 
 
 head to the ground. There was a crowd at the 
 window who, at the sight of this couple, looked 
 as if they suddenly had become speechless, and 
 with an expression in their eyes as if they 
 doubted the possibility of such a matrimonial 
 union. The spell-bound condition was suddenly 
 removed by a young fellow in the crowd who, 
 when the groom was asked to give the name of 
 the bride, cried at the top of his voice: "Chest- 
 nut!" They all partook of hearty and loud 
 laughter at that exclamation, with the exception 
 of the groom, who did not seem to be versed in 
 our modern vocabulary, (the chestnut bell had 
 not been invented at that time.) With the li- 
 cense in his hand, he said: " I want a judge." 
 "I should say you need one," was the answer 
 from one in the crowd. An hour later the li- 
 cense was returned. The agony was over, the 
 marriage was an accomplished fact. She was 
 his wife, and he had promised to love her, obey 
 her and hold unto her and forsake all others "as 
 long as they both shall live." And they still 
 live. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Forcing Circumstances — Horny Hands — Dif- 
 ferent Directions — Only Three Fingers — 
 A Military Salute — An Amusing Incident 
 — The Silk Hat — Runaway Couples — From 
 a Neighboring State. 
 
 WHEN a widower of the laboring 
 classes at the prime of his life is asked 
 how long his wife has been dead, the 
 answer will in numerous cases be : " She died a 
 couple of months ago," and in not a few cases: 
 "Some weeks ago." To many it may seem a 
 conundrum how a man can marry so soon after 
 having buried his wife. Such an untimely haste 
 most people attribute to a lack of human feel- 
 ing. The fact in most of such cases, however, 
 is that circumstances are forcing the widower 
 to re-enter a marriage in which he is so far 
 from forgetting his first wife that, on the con- 
 trary, often is he sadly reminded of her. The 
 idea of giving his children a mother who can 
 mind them, while he is at work, naturally enters 
 
 (106) 
 
107 
 
 his mind. He is a poor man, living from hand 
 to mouth, consequently he can not afford to hire 
 a house-keeper. During his wife's illness and 
 subsequent death his neighbors did not omit to 
 show their sympathy and practical help, but 
 none of them are disposed to keep the children for 
 any length of time.' For his neighbors also be- 
 long to the working classes, and that class of 
 people has most often a numerous flock of chil- 
 dren and has plenty to do with earning the 
 necessaries of life for them. The coming step- 
 mother is not ignorant of the fact that her 
 coming husband is marrying her for practical 
 reasons. He has told her, in his plain way of 
 giving information, that he does not expect her 
 to be so good a wife as his first one. If she 
 only will be good to the children she will gratify 
 all his demands. Some weeks before the wed- 
 ding she has inspected the household goods, she 
 has taken a kind of stock and silently valued the 
 inventory as critically as any assessor may do it. 
 She has finally considered the pro and con of 
 the offer made. Being no longer a young maiden, 
 and knowing, besides, that he is a hard- 
 working man, who by industry and strict econ- 
 omy, has procured for himself the little house 
 he is dwelling in, her practical sense recommends 
 
108 
 
 her to accept the extended hand. And the ex- 
 tended hand bears visible traces of belonging to 
 a working-man. It is not only a large hand, 
 but its palm is hard, and the original color of 
 the flesh is relieved by a yellow-brown tint, 
 such as only hard work can produce. . No soap 
 can remove that color, it is as indelible as the 
 tattoo of a sailor's hand. 
 
 Most of the hands raised before the license 
 clerk have pretty near the same color, for the 
 majority of those who marry in Chicago are 
 workmen. Off and on the soft hand may make 
 its appearance. One of the fingers may be adorn- 
 ed with a diamond ring, or a kid glove may betray 
 its softness, but the aristocratic hands are in 
 absolute minority. 
 
 We are a democratic people, and to use an 
 expression from the political parlance, we have 
 here to deal with "the horny-handed masses." 
 Consequently the raised hands will not always 
 strike the most graceful positions. Sometimes 
 the whole arm will go up to its full length, tak- 
 ing a strong direction to the right, thereby 
 forming an obtuse angle with the right side of 
 the chest. Or it may take an out-going direc- 
 tion toward the clerk, or a straight vertical di- 
 rection without forming any angle at all. The 
 
109 
 
 hand may also be firmly closed, a fact easily 
 accounted for, the applicant having his money 
 — that is, the dollar and a half which is to pay 
 for the license — in it. If suddenly seized by a 
 feeling of propriety he may drop its contents 
 right in front of him, simultaneously drooping 
 his head so as to keep an eye on the money. 
 The fingers not seldom being rather stiff, he 
 may have some trouble with keeping them 
 gathered. 
 
 With laborers from Protestant Europe it is a 
 rather common habit to raise only the three 
 fingers, a symbol of the trinity. In the middle 
 ages many legends were circulated setting forth 
 how badly those fared who committed perjury 
 while, with their three fingers raised, they called 
 the trinity as witness to their telling the truth 
 and nothing else. The fingers of such sinners 
 were said to turn black for the rest of their 
 natural lives, they had to wander amongst their 
 fellow beings with an outward sign of the curse, 
 marked for life in a like manner as Cain after 
 he had killed his brother, only that his mark 
 was located on a still more conspicuous part of 
 his body. 
 
 Although it must be taken for granted that 
 people nowadays do not believe that fingers will 
 
110 
 
 turn black because of swearing to a falsehood, 
 knowing that the reason of black fingers must 
 be sought in some very natural causes, yet the 
 traditional habit is kept up. It may sometimes 
 be a little difficult to separate the thumb and 
 the little finger from the rest, for as premised 
 above, workingmen's ringers are naturally not 
 elastic. In cases where an applicant deems it 
 necessary to raise only the three, while the two 
 others have a strong inclination to follow the 
 upward movement, he may take his left hand 
 to assist him. It was a rather comical spectacle, 
 where a groom's sweetheart came to his rescue, 
 holding on his two ringers while he was sworn. 
 To move the hand gracefully is, however, not 
 so easy a thing, no matter whether the hand is 
 horny or soft. There are people who never 
 learn to hold their hands in a position corres- 
 ponding to that of the body. Innumerable are 
 those who do not know what to do with their 
 hands. Men having done military service in 
 one of the European armies will frequently, 
 when asked to raise their hands to be sworn, 
 lead their gathered fingers to their right tem- 
 ples, giving the oath a military and not unbe- 
 coming salute. This is particularly the case 
 with men who have served in the Swedish army. 
 
Ill 
 
 They salute fn taking the oath in the same man- 
 ner as they used to salute the flag of their 
 country. 
 
 The verification of a statement by an oath 
 may so confuse an inexperienced applicant that 
 he at that moment does not know the difference 
 between his right and left hand. When his at- 
 tention is called to the mistake he will lift his 
 right hand, but sometimes forget to lower his 
 left that has been raised already, and a clerk 
 will then enjoy the spectacle of a man with both 
 hands erect, solemnly declaring that his state- 
 ment is correct. 
 
 Not long ago a rather amusing incident hap- 
 pened. A young man of anything but a pre- 
 possessing appearance applied for a license. 
 When asked to raise his hand, both went up, 
 and he struck a position of suspicious characters 
 when caught by the police and searched at the 
 station. It was later found out that he really 
 was a notorious person who, in raising both 
 hands or arms, followed the force of habit. He 
 is now doing time in the penitentiary. 
 
 As the soft hand, the silk hat seldom makes 
 its appearance at the window. A democratic 
 society has no use for silk hats, not even on 
 solemn occasions, as, for instance, a funeral. 
 
112 
 
 And yet this head-gear is now more generally 
 used in Chicago than ten years ago. The spor- 
 adic appearance of the " stove-pipe " always 
 creates a certain interest as a change. Most 
 frequently people coming to Chicago from other 
 cities to marry wear such a hat in preference to 
 a slouch hat or a stiff Derby hat. Perhaps the 
 cause of this phenomenon may be explained by 
 those people's natural wish of showing their re- 
 spect to the famous city, or perhaps they are 
 trying to make a good impression on the na- 
 tives. 
 
 Gentlemen from outside cities are often ac- 
 companied by their ladies, and come early in 
 the morning before the window. It is easily 
 discovered that they do not belong to Chicago, 
 being dressed in traveling costumes. They may 
 express a wish of being waited on as soon as 
 possible as they want to take the next train. 
 They come directly from the railway station 
 and are in a hurry to get married. The great 
 hurry is always a suspicious sign, and a license 
 clerk of some experience will, in most instances, 
 not be long in discovering that he has to do 
 with a runaway couple. They have come to 
 Chicago, the Eldorado of runaway couples, al- 
 ways willing to render a hospitable shelter to 
 
113 
 
 all young and energetic people loving each 
 other. The young girl — for she is invariably 
 young, no old eloping maid being on record — 
 may sometimes betray a little nervousness, but 
 not coming across a detective, and no telegram 
 from " the old folks " directing the clerk to 
 stop the further development of their erotic re- 
 lation being on file in the office, she will soon 
 regain her composure, and the two will smil- 
 ingly disappear to be made one by the nearest 
 justice of the peace. 
 
 Some days after we may read in the papers 
 a very romantic story of the love of the eloped 
 people that had nearly been wrecked by the 
 objections of the dear parents. The good for- 
 tune had, however, followed the brave. The 
 paternal wrath had subsided, giving way to 
 milder feelings, and what looked so sad at the 
 outset had turned to be a most joyful event. 
 Children and parents are reconciled and united 
 once more. 
 
 As a matter of course not all young people 
 who come to Chicago to get married have 
 eloped from their homes. In manifold cases 
 they make our city their rendezvous place. He 
 may be a Californian gentleman, and she a 
 Maine lady, meeting each other half way with- 
 
 Marriag-e License Window. 8. 
 
114 
 
 out any objections from parents or other rela- 
 tions. There is no doubt that Chicago is a 
 great centre for marriages, thanks to our great 
 railroad system. 
 
 Here is a couple from one of our neighboring 
 states. He is about forty, and she has just 
 passed thirty-six. They do not want their 
 neighbors to know anything about the matri- 
 monial union until the wedding is over. This 
 particular couple was, perhaps, the most curious 
 that ever took out a license. None of them 
 understood a word of English. This in itself 
 is not so remarkable, but what made their case 
 so irresistibly comical was that neither of them 
 understood each other. He was a jolly Ger- 
 man farmer, robust and cheerful and with a 
 good, honest face. She was less smiling, about 
 five feet and five inches tall, and with a certain 
 matronly dignity. The conversation was kept 
 up in German with him, but when she was 
 asked some questions in the same language, she 
 shook her head thereby denoting that she was 
 not at home in the German vocabulary. Laugh- 
 ing heartily he explained that they did not un- 
 derstand each other. He had met her on the 
 state-fair ground, where he took in a show. A 
 friend of his who understood Norwegian had 
 
115 
 
 called his attention to her. The friend had 
 acted as interpreter, and after having paid her 
 some visits in her home he had proposed and 
 she had accepted Of course the interpreter 
 had translated or explained both the proposal 
 and acceptance. Nearly five years ago he had 
 lost his wife, and his present partner for weal or 
 woe was a widow for about the same length of 
 time. The old fellow appeared to be of a very 
 logical mind. 
 
 " It may seem, Mr. Clerk,'' he said, "that a 
 union between man and wife, not understanding 
 each other's language, is a very ridiculous act. 
 Mayhap it is so; but then you must remember 
 the reverse of the case. M37 first wife was a 
 good soul, God bless her; she had but one 
 fault, she talked too much, and I understood 
 every word she said. When I asked her to 
 stop her talking, she would commence in ear- 
 nest, and I would get a little angry. Now, this 
 woman has no understanding of my language, 
 and I do not know hers. There will be no pro- 
 vocation from either side for scolding each 
 other in a language we both understand. Of 
 course by and by I will learn her my language, 
 for I am aware that perfect silence may be a 
 little tedious in the length of time, and, besides, 
 
116 
 
 it is not always handy. But you must admit 
 that the talking in a family is what too often 
 creates disturbances. She will commence, and 
 he will retaliate, and as she will not allow him 
 the last word, their conversation may end in 
 various troubles." 
 
 He looked at her, and she laughed and spoke 
 in her own tongue. She would never have ac- 
 cepted his marriage proposal if she had not 
 learned from a most reliable source that he was 
 a more than usually genial man. She knew 
 him to be a well-to-do farmer with no children. 
 She would help him in the field, for she hap- 
 pened to know a little about farming herself. 
 She thought that they would get happily along, 
 their reciprocal defects of linguistic knowledge 
 notwithstanding. She would soon pick up that 
 much of German necessary to understand each 
 other. She was not in the slightest degree 
 afraid of the future. They left the office apar- 
 ently happy, and with the good intention to 
 soothe each other's days, happen what might. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Not in a Hurry — Many Excuses — A Gratified 
 Demand — Suppressing — Delicate Cases — 
 The License List — Exceptions — A Surpris- 
 ing Question — A Queer Groom — Closely 
 Watched — Demands on the Memory — In- 
 terrogation — Many Names — A Colored 
 Philosopher — A Practical Man — Good 
 Until Used — Unhappy Girls. 
 
 NOT all are in such a hurry as an eloped pair 
 may be ; on the contrary, there are persons 
 who patiently will wait until a crowd has 
 disappeared with the object of being alone at the 
 window. For nearly an hour they will stand in a 
 corner, and, in approaching the clerk, will turn 
 round to ascertain that nobody is near. Here 
 is an example of that category. He is a man 
 in his thirties, of middle height, well dressed, 
 with keen eyes but somewhat nervous. He signs 
 his name and gives his age. She is his junior 
 by some years. 
 
 " Yes," he says with a little trembling in 
 
 (i 17) 
 
118 
 
 his voice, "she has been married before; she is 
 a widow, her name is Miss R ." 
 
 "But I understood you to say that she is a 
 widow? " 
 
 " Yes, she is in a certain way, but by a spe- 
 cial decree she got the permit to resume her 
 maiden name." 
 
 The conception of the real fact is now clear 
 to the mind of the clerk ; her " deceased " hus- 
 band is only dead to her, it is a figurative de- 
 mise, and his own living self may be seen pacing 
 the streets of Chicago, or some other place in 
 the universe, perhaps contemplating another 
 matrimonial union. 
 
 "Yes, she is a grass widow, Mr. Clerk," and 
 bending over the desk he asks in a whisper if 
 there are any means by which the license may 
 be suppressed from publication. Having learned 
 that it is not within the power of a clerk to pre- 
 vent the publication, the records being under all 
 circumstances public property, he hesitates a 
 little while. In resuming the conversation he 
 wants to know if it is so that no license is re- 
 quired in the states of Wisconsin or Michigan. 
 The affirmative answer seems greatly to en- 
 courage him. Making many excuses for the 
 trouble he has made, and courteously thanking 
 
119 
 
 the clerk for the information he has got he puts 
 his hand to his vest pocket and inquires how 
 much is due. Upon learning that all reasonable 
 questions asked in a public office are answered 
 without any remuneration he bows politely, and 
 walks toward the door. Suddenly he stops, 
 something entering his mind, and he returns to 
 the window where some new customer is ad- 
 dressing the clerk. In waving his hand he de- 
 notes that he is not in a hurry, but has plenty 
 of time. Being once more alone with the clerk 
 he says: 
 
 " Mr. Clerk, I hope that you will not betray 
 the little secret between you and I to the re- 
 porters, not for my sake, for I do not care so 
 much, but my lady is rather sensitive in such 
 matters." 
 
 Having received the assurance that his fear 
 is without ground, he extends his most pro- 
 found gratitude, and finally leaves the office 
 where he has spent a full hour. 
 
 It is not uncommon that men marrying di- 
 vorced women seem to feel a little bashful for 
 reasons only known to themselves. If possible 
 they will pass them off as widows, and in nu- 
 merous instances they try to avoid the publica- 
 tion of the names. In regard to this latter 
 
120 
 
 point there is no room for doubt but that a gen- 
 eral voting among applicants would show the 
 majority to be in favor of not having their 
 names published in the papers. Manifold are 
 the reasons why the publication is sought to be 
 avoided. 
 
 Here is a young man with a host of friends 
 and acquaintances. They would all like to 
 have a little fun with their friend on the eve of 
 his giving up his bachelor life, but that kind of 
 fun is not always inexpensive; the friends are 
 to be treated, and the young man cannot afford it. 
 If only the publication can be postponed until 
 after the marriage is over, he is satisfied. He 
 wants a private wedding. 
 
 Here is another young man; he is working 
 in the same shop with the girl he is going to 
 wed. Nobody knows that the two are engaged, 
 and if the boss should find out that they are 
 married, one of them at least would be sure of 
 discharge; for the boss is a man of principles, 
 one of which is that husband and wife must not 
 work in the same shop. 
 
 Here is a man with a profound knowledge 
 of the characteristics of the rising generation of 
 his neighborhood. Learning that he is on the 
 threshold of married life they will immediately 
 
121 
 
 meet in a caucus, deliberating how they best can 
 procure the indispensable oyster cans and other 
 similar paraphernalia wherewith to regale their 
 friend with an old-fashioned charivari, promul- 
 gating far and wide the accomplishment of his 
 marriage. 
 
 Applicant A. wishes to celebrate the day 
 without being honored with the presence of his 
 mother-in-law. Applicant B. has some years 
 ago introduced his girl as his wife in many re- 
 spectable families; he does not wish to shake 
 the belief of the neighborhood. If the true re- 
 lations were revealed a great scandal would be 
 the consequence. Applicant C. has already 
 half-grown children who never must suspect 
 their illegitimate birth. Their parents com- 
 menced their living together with no matri- 
 mony in view, but their offspring has fastened 
 the relation, and being in good financial cir- 
 cumstances, and, besides, rather old, the will 
 has to be made. Applicant D. is aristocratic, 
 and does not wish his name amongst a lot of 
 "foreigners' " names. Applicant E. is about to 
 marry his divorced wife, and can not see the 
 necessity of having his name published. It was 
 in the papers ten years ago, he explains. Be- 
 sides there are instances where the applicant 
 
122 
 
 asks the suppression because of a sudden death 
 in the family. The father or mother-in-law died 
 just some weeks ago, but the wedding they do 
 not like to postpone, for it is the general opinion 
 that the postponement of a wedding forebodes 
 an unlucky future for the contracting parties. 
 
 While some of the reasons are sometimes 
 rather flimsy, there are others presenting such 
 touching pretexts that a request to avoid pub- 
 licity is fully justified. Here, for instance, is a 
 young girl who, on a cold winter evening, just 
 as the office was going to be closed, paused a 
 moment before expressing her wish to obtain a 
 license, for she was evidently greatly excited. 
 She signed her name with a shaking hand, and 
 had no sooner finished her writing than she 
 burst out in a loud sobbing. Having recovered 
 a little she explained that the man she was go- 
 ing to marry within the next hour was at the 
 point of death. A disease has settled on his 
 lungs, and there was no doubt but that the end 
 was near. The very same day she had asked 
 the attending physician if the patient could be 
 saved. He had at first given her an evasive 
 answer, but finally told her the truth. Two, or 
 if it came high, three short days, and the ebbing 
 life would cease forever. The dying man was 
 
123 
 
 fully conscious of his condition, and had ex- 
 pressed his wish to be married to the young girl 
 that she might fall heir to the little property he 
 left. Her wish to have their names suppressed 
 from publication was granted. Some days after 
 the license was returned by a minister, and a 
 death certificate, the sad corroboration of her 
 story, followed within a couple of weeks. 
 
 Finally there are the very delicate cases 
 where sensuality has overpowered love. In 
 behalf of the young girl her mother will make 
 her appearance, and she will plead the case of 
 her daughter as only a mother can plead. There 
 is no way of avoiding such a mother, and it 
 matters little that a clerk declines to get an in- 
 sight in the deep secrets of the family. He has 
 to listen to the mother's open and candid con- 
 fessions. Under a torrent of tears she will ap- 
 peal to his sympathetic feelings, if he is endowed 
 with such. She will ask him if he is a married 
 man, and, if this proves to be the case, she will 
 button-hole him, entreat him and beseech him 
 to save the family from humiliation. She will 
 warn him to watch his daughters, lest a similar 
 calamity shall befall them, and she will wind up 
 with a prayer-like request to keep the license 
 from publication. Very naively she may ask if 
 
124 
 
 it could not be so arranged that the license be 
 ante-dated half a year or so. She cannot com- 
 prehend that the cash book and license record 
 must correspond. A letter from the spiritual 
 adviser of the family is sometimes the last 
 weapon resorted to. The clerk is respectfully 
 asked to prevent the publication of the names, 
 provided such a step is not interfering with his 
 duties as a public officer. 
 
 There is no law providing that names of per- 
 sons taking out marriage licenses shall be given 
 to the public press, but the access to public re- 
 cords is open to all, and, as a matter of course, 
 not closed to the representatives of the press. 
 Some of our Chicago papers have suspended the 
 publishing of the marriage license list, but most 
 of them have retained it, perhaps to the gratifi- 
 cation of their female readers, who would highly 
 miss the list if it did not appear. 
 
 After all it must be admitted that the list is 
 not absolutely without advantages. The for- 
 eign-born element scrutinizes it closely and will 
 often come across a name (vainly sought for in 
 the directory) that it is of special interest to 
 meet again. Undoubtedly there are instances 
 where the exclusion of a name would by no 
 means diminish the esthetic enjoyment of the 
 
125 
 
 list at the morning coffee, while the publication 
 of such a name may unnecessarily increase the 
 painfullness of a situation that rather ought to re- 
 main a family secret. The surety of the publica- 
 tionhas in not afew instances led to grave offences. 
 People have transposed their names or they 
 have given false names and changed these on the 
 license before they presented it to the clergyman. 
 
 As we all know, there are no rules in exist- 
 ence without exceptions. Some applicants will 
 ask the clerk to see that their and their brides' 
 names are inserted in all the papers, and who 
 innocently will ask how much they have to pay 
 extra for such an advertisement. A most sur- 
 prising question was once asked by a middle- 
 aged man. 
 
 " Does the governor of this state read the 
 Chicago papers? " he queried. 
 
 Impressed by the belief that the governor of 
 Illinois can not be without Chicago papers, the 
 answer was given accordingly. The applicant 
 then explained that he had promised to let 
 said high authority know when he got married, 
 a step which he, the applicant, considered as an 
 evidence of being on the right path. Without 
 any further explanation he handed the clerk a 
 document, the headline of which read : 
 
126 
 
 " State of Illinois. Executive Department. Shelby 
 M. Cullom, Governor of Illinois." Then followed: 
 " Know ye, that in Pursuance of Section 5, of an Act of 
 the General Assembly, entitled " An act to allow Con- 
 victs in the Penitentiary a credit in diminution of their 
 sentences, and for their being restored to citizenship 
 upon certain conditions," approved March 19th, 1872, 
 and agreeable to the Statement of the Warden of the 
 Penitentiary as provided in the Act aforesaid, 
 
 I, Shelby M. Cullom, Governor of the State of Illi- 
 nois, do hereby restore {^nomina odiosa sunt) to 
 
 all his Rights of Citizenship which may have been for- 
 feited by his conviction of the crime of larceny " 
 
 The man got his license, but he also wanted 
 his full citizen's papers. Pointing to the words 
 " Rights of Citizenship " he said he was entitled 
 to them. Asked to produce his Declaration of 
 Intention paper he explained that he had none, 
 and having passed a little examination it was 
 found out that the fellow was under the impression 
 that by virtue of his pardon he was entitled to 
 become a full fledged citizen of the United 
 States. 
 
 It took some time to make him understand 
 that a term in the penitentiary does not lead to 
 citizenship of the Union, while a pardon of a 
 citizen from said institution invested him with 
 all his former rights, entitling him to vote and 
 to be voted for. Being satisfied that he was 
 
127 
 
 mistaken he took the initiative step to become 
 a citizen, and once more he handed his pardon 
 over the counter remarking that it had lost its 
 charm to him. He left it on the desk; he would 
 not touch a document that reminded him of the 
 dark days of his existence. To convince the 
 clerk of his uprightness he told him that his 
 coming wife had a full knowledge of his former 
 life. He was a practical defender of the good 
 principle, that between husband and wife no 
 secrets should exist. 
 
 As premised above, the marriage license list 
 is closely watched by the gentler sex. Ladies 
 will come to the window and ask the clerk to 
 be kind enough to tell them whether Mr. so and 
 so took out a license some days ago, or they 
 want some information in regard to Mr. Smith, 
 whose name appeared in yesterday's issues. 
 When told to step inside and look for them- 
 selves they will smilingly explain that they do 
 not understand how to search a record, but 
 they have plenty of time, and express their 
 willingness to wait until the clerk is at leisure. 
 Too often it is mere curiosity that brings ladies 
 to the office to find out whether it is true what 
 rumor told the other day in regard to Miss N. 
 Rumor had it that Miss N. had been secretly 
 
128 
 
 married The ladies can not approximate the 
 time the wedding took place, but if she is mar- 
 ried at all it must have been within the last year. 
 
 Not long ago three ladies stepped into the of- 
 fice as a delegation for a circle of their sex. 
 They had been in a party some evenings before, 
 and their conversation had turned upon Mr. 
 George. None of the party had seen him, the 
 Lord knows how long! It would be quite in- 
 teresting to find out whether he is married or not. 
 Oh dear, it is a very easy thing; to-morrow Mag- 
 gie, Mary and myself will go to the clerk's office. 
 They will have to look it up for us, you know, 
 they are paid for it. The delegation gave a very 
 minute description of George's age and resi- 
 dence, but no such George could be found. Some 
 days after the delegation re-appeared, this time 
 equipped with still better details. George was 
 married in Indiana to Miss Jones. When told 
 that marriages in Indiana are not recorded in 
 Chicago, the ladies were highly surprised. They 
 thought it necessary for a resident of Chicago 
 to take out a license here, even though the mar- 
 riage took place in some other state. 
 
 Sometimes a direct demand is put to the 
 memory of the clerk. The license list contained 
 the name of Joe the other day. There is 
 
129 
 
 of course no doubt that he is the identical Mr. 
 
 Joe whom the ladies know so well, and 
 
 they may now account for his melancholy ap- 
 pearance. They wonder who Miss Anna may 
 be — let us ask the clerk. Subsequently two 
 ladies, who take upon themselves to ferret out 
 the particulars, put in their appearance in the 
 office on a day when they are shopping together. 
 The lady acting as spokesman, after some in- 
 troductory remarks or excuses, asks if Miss 
 
 Anna was in company with Joe when the 
 
 license was taken out. The clerk remembers it 
 distinctly. 
 
 " Perhaps you remember how she looked? " 
 
 " Yes, she was a lady of middle height, with 
 voluptuous lips and black, curly hair." 
 
 "Was she of dark complexion? " 
 ■ Rather so, but not darker or perhaps so dark 
 as some of her race." 
 
 "What was that?" 
 
 " As a colored lady Miss Anna was not of 
 the darkest shade." 
 
 " A colored lady ! Mr. clerk, you must cer- 
 tainly be mistaken. Joe would never 
 
 marry a colored girl." 
 
 "Why not, he was certainly fully as dark as 
 she." 
 
 Marriage License Window. 9. 
 
130 
 
 "Joe black! Well, Mr. clerk, then he 
 
 is not the Joe of our acquaintance." 
 
 With blushing cheeks the ladies stammer 
 many excuses, and hasten out of the office. 
 
 A great deal of interrogation is made on both 
 sides of the license window. There are people 
 who think that all that ends on " license " is is- 
 sued from the license clerk's stand. One will 
 demand a dog license, another a peddler's li- 
 cense, or a license to drive a hack or a milk 
 wagon, or to sell liquors at wholesale, or tobac- 
 co at retail. The department of naturalization 
 being in charge of the marriage license clerk 
 some people will ask for a " city license," by 
 which is understood the Declaration of Intention 
 paper. Hardly any other public document is 
 called by more names than this. It is named 
 "civilization paper," "city paper," the "first 
 citizen's paper," the "first voting paper," the 
 "first paper," "declaration paper," "republic 
 paper," the " first American paper," and still 
 more names. 
 
 It happens frequently that the same person 
 declares his intention to become a citizen of the 
 United States and a husband at the same time. 
 The more direct questions pertaining to the 
 conditions necessary in order to procure a license 
 
131 
 
 are often followed by the question: " When are 
 we allowed to make use of the permit to wed," 
 or as to how long its validity runs? It is not 
 so generally known, as we might presume it was, 
 that the applicants may immediately make use 
 of the permit or that they may wait till the day 
 of their death, even if that day should not come 
 until fifty years after the issuing of the license. 
 People often confound these facts with the printed 
 instructions on the back of each license provid- 
 ing that " the minister, judge or justice of the 
 peace, shall, within thirty days after such mar- 
 riage has been solemnized, make a certificate 
 thereof, and return the same to the clerk of the 
 county in which the marriage took place, or to 
 his successor in 06106." 
 
 Not few are the instances where the contract- 
 ing parties have had the license in their posses- 
 sion for five, six, nay, even ten years, until they 
 finally made up their mind to unite in wedlock. 
 Still more frequent are the instances where a 
 license is never made use of. Misunderstand- 
 ing the printed instructions he will bring it back 
 within thirty days after it is issued, and on his 
 own accord he explains the reasons of the re- 
 turn. The girl has reconsidered the mutual 
 agreement, or to speak in the highly modern 
 
132 
 
 parlance, " she has gone back on him," or " she 
 has backed out." Usually the clerk is asked to 
 strike the names off the record. Girls may 
 sometimes carry their joke a little too far, as 
 for instance was the case in relation to a colored 
 gentleman, who, however, proved to be a phi- 
 losopher that would have done credit to his 
 ancient brothers of the stoic school. 
 
 He told how faithfully he had loved that girl, 
 and how cruelly she had handled his once so 
 tender heart. Everything was arranged, the 
 rooms were rented, the day was named, the 
 furniture bought for cash, the wedding cake on 
 the table, the guests invited, and the clergyman 
 notified, when she suddenly backed out, declar- 
 ing that she was going to marry somebody else. 
 She did not tell him so in a letter elegantly 
 worded, nor did she allow him to enter the house. 
 Having locked the street door, she opened a 
 window and told him in plain language that the 
 engagement was broken. "But, Mr. clerk," 
 he added, " in spite of this sad defeat, I consider 
 myself to-day a happy man. For suppose we 
 had been married, what good could result of 
 such a matrimony? It is far better as it is, and 
 I thank God that He prevented me from being 
 her husband." He did not complain of the 
 
133 
 
 treatment to which he had been subjected. — 
 Extending his hearty sympathy to the colored 
 philosopher, a young man, who happened to be 
 at the window, asked if it was so that the girl 
 had appropriated everything, including the wed- 
 ding cake. " Indeed, that girl took everything 
 — she took the cake." 
 
 The cause of breach of promise, as a matter 
 of course, is not always to be laid to the femi- 
 nine side. A good illustration of a person hunt- 
 ing for a practical wife was a not very old man 
 who within six weeks took out three licenses. 
 The two first girls he had put to a test they 
 could not stand. The first one did not under- 
 stand how to darn his stockings, and the second 
 could not cook his meals to his satisfaction. 
 When asked why he had not examined their 
 qualifications before he took out the licenses, he 
 simply explained that he had taken their word 
 for it, until a friend of his had advised him to 
 see for himself, but they did not stand the ex- 
 amination. The third one, whom he married, 
 was, according to his notions, an ideal girl, 
 possessing a combination of two said perfections. 
 Sometimes the license is returned by very un- 
 happy girls. The man in the case is a libertine 
 of the most abominable sort. Most likely he 
 
134 
 
 won her affection under an assumed name. The 
 unhappy victim was impressed with the idea 
 that the issuing of the license is all that is neces- 
 sary to constitute a legitimate marriage. Of 
 course he has left her, and she is perfectly con- 
 vinced that he is far away from Chicago. She 
 does not know what his business is, in fact, she 
 never asked him. They have only lived to- 
 gether a month or so, and it was not until one 
 of her friends called her attention to the blank 
 certificate attached to the license that her sus- 
 picion was aroused. Girls born in America 
 seldom or never are deceived in such a manner. 
 They know what a license means, and they 
 know it long before they have reached the age 
 of twenty -five years. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Intricate and Plain Questions — Silent Appli- 
 cants — Loquacious Candidates — A Jail 
 Marriage — Compulsion. 
 
 THE questions are sometimes very intricate, 
 so that it takes a clerk a little while ere he 
 can answer them, and they are not unlike 
 the riddles put to the middleman in a minstrel 
 troup. For instance, a young marriageable 
 man, attentively listened to by a crowd of ap- 
 plicants, asked: "Mr. clerk, my mother was 
 married to my father, and soon after my birth 
 they were divorced. Later on my father mar- 
 ried a sister of my mother. My aunt then be- 
 came my mother, and my mother, after some 
 time, was married to a brother of my father, 
 consequently she became my aunt. The fruit 
 of the latter marriage was a daughter whom I 
 wish to marry. I know that cousins may inter- 
 marry, but before I take out a license I wish to 
 inquire." The young man showed the utmost 
 consternation when he learned that the laws of 
 
 (135) 
 
136 
 
 any civilized country consider such matrimonial 
 unions as illegal and invalid. 
 
 Less intricate was the following question put 
 by another young man apparently in good faith. 
 He stood in a dense crowd of working-men, each 
 waiting to obtain a license, and raising his hand 
 he said: "Mr. clerk, excuse my interfering 
 with you in your business, and you, gentlemen, 
 excuse my taking your time for a moment. I only 
 wish to be informed whether it is allowed in this 
 country for a man to marry his widow's sister." 
 
 " Yes, it is allowed here and in all civilized 
 countries of whose habits and customs we have 
 any knowledge, if such a thing were possible." 
 
 " I beg your pardon, not in. England, where 
 this particular question has been debated in 
 parliament." 
 
 No sooner had the young man put his ques- 
 tion than the crowd burst out in a loud laugh, 
 and one of them took upon himself to correct 
 the ambiguous question. 
 
 "You are off," he explained, "cannot you 
 understand that a man wishing to marry his 
 widow's sister must be dead? Of course you 
 meant to ask whether a widower in this country 
 can marry the sister of his first wife. Of course 
 he can, and that is just what I am going to do." 
 
137 
 
 The young man, blushing like a young girl 
 who, in passing a remark betraying the feelings 
 of her heart, suddenly discovers her blunder, 
 rushed to the door. Another in the crowd was 
 willing to bet that the young man had crossed 
 the Ocean for the very purpose of getting an 
 answer to his question. 
 
 " I wish to know whether or not I am a mar- 
 ried woman," queried a rather young female in 
 a voice evidently indicating that she was asking 
 the question in full earnest. She was tall, at 
 least five feet eight, very muscular, broad- 
 shouldered, and with a profusion of flax-colored 
 hair. There was fire in her eyes, and tears in 
 her voice, when she, having paved her way to 
 the clerk's enclosure, was seated, though not* 
 comfortably, in the largest chair of the office, 
 and repeated her question : "Am I a married 
 woman? " Telling her that the meaning of the 
 question not being sufficiently intelligible to 
 justify a definite answer, she produced her mar- 
 riage license, issued in the office some time be- 
 fore. The names were correct, the ages like- 
 wise, but the attached certificate was signed by 
 a man in his capacity as a notary public, and 
 furnished with his official seal. When told 
 that a notary has no authority to perform a 
 
138 
 
 marriage ceremony, her suspicion was further- 
 more aroused. She considered herself shame- 
 fully deceived. " Of course," she said, " it was 
 nothing more nor less than a sham wedding." 
 She had not informed her husband of her inten- 
 tion to seek information in the clerk's office, but 
 she had seen his lawyer who, mirabile dictu, 
 had told her that she was a legitimately mar- 
 ried woman. When she left the office, she went 
 to the lawyer who soon made his appearance 
 before the license window. After some talking 
 he peremptorily demanded the marriage of said 
 couple put on record. He held that the right 
 of marrying people was not limited to clergy- 
 men, judges, justices of the peace, or secretaries 
 of religious, chartered societies. Any person, 
 though he may be a tailor, shoemaker, carpen- 
 ter and so on, had the right to perform the cere- 
 mony, he claimed. He was not willing to ad- 
 mit that the right of performing a wedding 
 ceremony was regulated by certain statutes of 
 the laws of Illinois. Without succeeding in 
 convincing the clerk, he left the office, but only 
 to return some few minutes after with " Black- 
 stone " and a pile of other authorities under his 
 arm. This time he would not speak to the 
 marriage license clerk, but went to the county 
 
139 
 
 clerk himself, of whom he, however, failed to 
 make a convert. In the meantime the man in 
 the case appeared on the scene. His wife, no 
 longer making a secret of her visit to the clerk's 
 office, had urged him to see the matter straight- 
 ened. Somewhat excited he asked to be in- 
 formed whether he was a married man. 
 
 " Of course you are," said the lawyer. 
 
 " And will my marriage be on record? " 
 
 " Not until the proper authorities have ruled 
 that notaries can legally perform the ceremony," 
 was the answer 
 
 The very same day the notary in question 
 politely asked the clerk's ear for a private con- 
 versation. He commenced his explanation by 
 the statement that he was a veteran who would 
 rather fight the enemy in an open battle than 
 go through another ordeal like that he had ex- 
 perienced with the couple he had married. He 
 did not exactly know the limits of a notary's 
 function in this state, but he was under the im- 
 pression that in some states notaries had the 
 privilege of ratifying marriages. No great 
 harm, however, was done, for besides being a 
 notary he was also a minister of the gospel. 
 Here the man produced a document for further 
 inspection. It was a certificate of ordination, 
 
140 
 
 issued by a chartered, religio-philosophical so- 
 ciety in San Francisco, setting forth that Mr. 
 B. had passed the examination as a spiritualistic 
 minister, entitling him to preach the gospel of 
 Christ, and to perform all the functions con- 
 nected with his office. Having issued a certifi- 
 cate in his capacity as a minister, the marriage 
 was finally put on record to the satisfaction of 
 all parties, with the exception, perhaps, of the 
 lawyer who expressed a wish to make a test of 
 the case in the courts. 
 
 While many are asking questions, there are, 
 on the other hand, such applicants who not only 
 avoid all questions, but prefer to keep as silent 
 as possible, and only answer reluctantly or let 
 somebody else give the answer. This state- 
 ment does not relate to those whom a sad fate 
 has deprived of the gift of talking fluently, and 
 who consequently stutter, but to those whom 
 the laws force into the blessed state of matri- 
 mony. He presents a very sad spectacle, the 
 young man who, against his own free will, by 
 the majesty of the law, is told to marry the girl 
 he does not love, but who, nevertheless, is on 
 her way to become a mother. In company with 
 a police officer, or a constable, or a clerk in a 
 justice court, he appears before the license 
 
141 
 
 window about ten minutes after the magistrate 
 has rendered his verdict. The victim of his 
 ungoverned passions is not absolutely obliged 
 to submit to the verdict, but his protest will de- 
 prive him of his liberty, and he will have to oc- 
 cupy a cell in the county jail. Some days' 
 meditation in such an abode where the horizon 
 is so disagreeably limited, the air so heavy, and 
 the surroundings so little luxurious or comfort- 
 able, seldom or never fails to call forth a com- 
 plete surrender. He knows he is leaping from 
 Scylla to Charybdis, but he dares the leap for 
 the sake of fresh air and the dear, individual 
 liberty. The wedding is performed in the jus- 
 tice court or within the walls of the prison*, a 
 constable or clerk acting as best man. Asked 
 the name of his prospective wife, the candidate 
 against his will pretends not to know it, or, 
 perhaps, he is ignorant of it, and he is not bet- 
 ter posted in regard to her age. His compan- 
 ion, however, has the answers ready on hand, 
 he knows them by heart, or will read them 
 from a slip of paper. Taken in all, the groom 
 has very little trouble in obtaining a license. 
 Even the fee is usually paid by his official com- 
 panion, who got it from the girl or her nearest 
 
 ♦According to a recently adopted law, marriages can no longer 
 be contracted in jail. 
 
142 
 
 relations. For most frequently the groom owns 
 nothing, he is absolutely penniless. The little 
 sum he had before he came in trouble has been 
 devoured by his lawyer. If that gentleman has 
 not succeeded in getting it all, the balance is 
 spent to make less rigorous his fate in the jail. 
 He may consume a vast quantity of tobacco in 
 any form or shape, or he may buy a more pala- 
 table food than that allowed by the bill of fare 
 of the prison. The prospects for the nearest 
 future are not in any particular degree bright. 
 The case against him having come to public 
 knowledge through the instrumentality of the 
 press, he feels ashamed of going back to his 
 former shop where his comrades may use him 
 as a target for their sarcasms and jokes. Be- 
 sides, his old boss may not feel inclined to take 
 him back as a married man. 
 
 Not concealing their earnest intentions can- 
 didates in a more loquacious mood will some- 
 times lay open their future plans. As soon as 
 they are married they will bid good-bye to 
 their wives. If she goes to the right, he will go 
 to the left, or if she should prefer the left side, 
 he will choose the right one. He will by no 
 means live with her. He will show the world 
 that compulsion does not compel. In some 
 
143 
 
 instances the candidate may utter a dreadful 
 doubt as to his exclusive mortgage in the pa- 
 ternity. 
 
 That matrimonial unions of such a character 
 are not fortunate, either to the contracting par- 
 ties or to society, little doubt may be enter- 
 tained. Naturally compulsory marriages may 
 be judged from different points of view, but our 
 justices adhere strictly to the letter of the laws. 
 And yet there are cases where mercy would not 
 be out of place. The institution of compulsory 
 marriage is resting upon the laws of morality. 
 In this country we argue that the entire respon- 
 sibility is with the man whom nature is said to 
 have vested with a greater share of will-power, 
 while the woman, with her weaker power of 
 resistance, will more easily fall a prey to the 
 seducer. In most of the old societies they look 
 upon this matter in a different light, both par- 
 ties there being considered equally responsible, 
 hence compulsion is not in vogue; but he, if he 
 is a single man and his circumstances will allow 
 it, is paying an alimony to support the child un- 
 til it is confirmed or has reached the age of 
 maturity. The ages of the parties we have not 
 taken into consideration, and it is an open ques- 
 tion whether a man of twenty-three can entice 
 
144 
 
 a woman of thirty-two. A philosopher might, per- 
 haps, give an answer in the negative, but one of our 
 justices, who for all that may be a philosopher, 
 has answered that question in the affirmative, and 
 consequently the marriage took place. 
 
 It is not always the case that the poor sinner 
 enters the office accompanied alone with the offi- 
 cial functionary. Not seldom the wife-to-be and 
 his future mother-in-law appear to convince them- 
 selves that the sentence is properly carried out. 
 The sister of the bride may also be present and 
 give her brother-in-law a lesson on the text, "no 
 rights without duties." Finally a clerk may 
 be offered an opportunity of seeing the being 
 whose premature entering in this sinful world 
 has been the direct occasion for this matrimony. 
 The grand-mother or aunt is rocking the infant 
 in her arms, and he or she, as the case may be, 
 has no hesitancy in testing the strength of its 
 lungs. The child is not susceptible of argu- 
 ments in any form or shape, showing no appar- 
 ent joy at being present at the wedding of its 
 parents. 
 
 A jail marriage that attracted a good deal of 
 public attention was not long ago solemnized 
 between a self-confessed embezzler and a woman 
 of his acquaintance. The wedding took place 
 
145 
 
 immediately before his departure to Joliet, to 
 which institution he was sentenced for a term of 
 five years. She took out the license without 
 betraying any feeling of sorrow or shame, only 
 remarking that he was prevented from coming 
 himself. — A French judge, presiding in one of 
 the criminal courts of his country, is said to have 
 opened every trial before him with the remark: 
 where is the woman? thereby intimating 
 that a woman is at the bottom of all crim- 
 inal cases. The evidence in this particular 
 case did not point to his ruin by women, but 
 after the trial it became evident that he had 
 not been indifferent to the affection of the 
 weaker sex. On his wedding-day he wrote a 
 touching epistle to the girl to whom he was en- 
 gaged, extending his grateful thanks for what 
 she had been to him, breaking the engagement 
 with the assurance of a continued celibate after 
 the end of his term in the prison. An hour or 
 so after, the ingrate was married to the girl who, 
 as mentioned above, took out the license. 
 
 It is a fact that the number of compulsory 
 marriages is decreasing every year, that is, 
 fewer cases of such a character are tried in the 
 justice courts, as, perhaps, the constant readers 
 of the reports from the lower courts will have 
 
 Marriage License Window. 10. 
 
146 
 
 noticed. From this mere fact, however, to 
 jump to the conclusion that we have entered an 
 era particularly adapted to restrain immoral 
 propensities, would be illogical. The fact is 
 simply, that while the parties concerned formerly 
 pleaded their cases before a court magistrate, 
 they now reveal their secrets to their spiritual 
 advisers. The clergyman takes upon himself 
 the function of a magistrate, his verdict is final, 
 but he does not give it to the public press. On 
 the contrary, he tries to keep the case as secret 
 as possible. And the clergyman is right. At 
 bridal festivals where the motives for the union 
 are of a rather questionable character, the ex- 
 clusion of representatives of the press is no in- 
 sult to the public. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Applicants from Russian Poland — Hebrew Sig- 
 natures — Jacob and Rachel — Celestial 
 
 Marriages. 
 
 CHICAGO would unjustly be denominated a 
 cosmopolitan city, if representatives from 
 the czar's powerful empire were not found 
 amongst its large conglomeration of nationali- 
 ties. The number of what may be termed ge- 
 nuine Russians, however, is not very large, while 
 the number of Russian or Russian-Polish He- 
 brews, whom an imperial ukase has forced to 
 take the course over the Atlantic, is propor- 
 tionately rather large. Brought up in a semi- 
 barbarian country, persecuted for the sake of 
 their faith, without any chance to educate them- 
 selves, and without coming in contact with an 
 outward civilization, the Russian Hebrew forms 
 a peculiar contrast to his brothers in civilized 
 Europe or here in America. In the civilized 
 world we find Hebrews in all avocations of life. 
 They have able and honored representatives in 
 
148 
 
 literature, poetry, music, science, the dramatic 
 art, journalism, and in the commercial classes. 
 But these Hebrews have nothing in common 
 with the Russian Hebrews such as we find them 
 here, forming a race of their own. 
 
 He who from a long imprisonment in com- 
 plete darkness suddenly steps out in the clear 
 daylight will be dazzled, and it takes some time 
 ere he gets accustomed to the rays of the sun. 
 Naturally the Russian Hebrew, oppressed and 
 treated as a dog in his native country, can not 
 directly comprehend the institutions of America. 
 It takes some time to realize the transition 
 from the state of slavery to liberty. At the be- 
 ginning he lives here in a kind of humble, tim- 
 orous retirement. He is content with a small 
 income, but by and by he is imbued with a feel- 
 ing of independence, and being of a saving dis- 
 position, he soon commences a little ambulant 
 business, literally carrying his whole stock of 
 goods with him. Or he will open a little store 
 with cast-off clothing or second-hand goods of 
 any description. Antiquated himself he seems 
 to have a predilection for all that is old or half 
 worn out. 
 
 It is a general belief that Hebrews, above all 
 other races, have an inborn business spirit, and 
 
149 
 
 yet it is a historical fact that they originally 
 were an agricultural people. Not until denied 
 the right of possessing real estate, and excluded 
 from all honorable livelihood they took a mer- 
 cantile course, often representing the less refined 
 branches of business. Successively, as they at- 
 tained the rights of the citizens they lived 
 amongst, they gave up the less reputable deal- 
 ings. In the large European cities the pawn- 
 broker business, for instance, has no attraction 
 for Hebrews, now following avocations more 
 congenial to their natural ability and tastes. 
 
 The Russian Hebrew in Chicago is a very 
 quiet and peaceful man. In the strictest sense 
 of the word he is orthodox. To him there is 
 but one Judaism, the one prescribed in the books 
 of Moses. He is not susceptible of reforms, on the 
 other hand he does not try to make proselytes, 
 nor would any such effort avail him, for the 
 educated Hebrew, wherever he is found in the 
 universe, has to give up the antiquated forms 
 based upon laws given to the people as a nation 
 more than three thousand years ago. He has 
 preserved the physiognomy and the peculiarities 
 of his race, a fact easily explained when it is 
 borne in mind that he never chooses his wife 
 outside of his own race. Aware of belonging 
 
150 
 
 to a people that for the sake of an unjust and 
 barbarian judicial act has been suffering perse- 
 cution for centuries, he makes the impression of 
 a hunted deer. He is restless in his manners, 
 humble in his bearings, as, however, is natural 
 with a man having constantly been living in 
 fear that the Russian knout should fall heavily 
 upon his shoulder and back. 
 
 The Russian or Russian-Polish Hebrew is 
 usually between twenty-five and thirty years old 
 when he applies for a marriage license. The 
 slavish deference a despotic regime absolutely 
 demands of the lower classes has made its deep 
 marks in all his bearings. Long before he has 
 reached the doo^ of the office he may uncover 
 his head. Sometimes he knocks at the door 
 patiently waiting until somebody makes him 
 understand that any one is allowed to step in 
 without any further ceremony. And being on 
 the other side of the threshold he may stand 
 back at a respectful distance from the counter, 
 looking at his girl, and conversing with her un- 
 til they finally take courage and make known 
 their wishes. Can he write his name? That 
 question can not be answered in an ordinary 
 way, for he both can and can not. He can not 
 sign it in English or Gothic letters, but he 
 
151 
 
 certainly can in Hebrew. He is ignorant of all 
 that has happened in the history of the world, 
 nor is he familiar with the historical events of 
 our days. But he knows the deadest of all dead 
 languages, he is at home in Hebrew. 
 
 Amongst that class of Hebrews we may 
 come across men loaded with an immense 
 knowledge of all pertaining to the ancient He- 
 braic literature. He may know the five books 
 of Moses by heart, and may have made a thor- 
 ough study of the rabbinical interpretations of 
 or comments on the Pentateuch. Their learn- 
 ing, while not tending to widen their views, has 
 sharpened their intellectual powers, and in their 
 interpretations of holy writ they may reveal an 
 astonishing hair-splitting and sophistical elo- 
 quence. They are proud of being of Jewish 
 descent. Should anbody scornfully call such a 
 man a Jew, he, who never heard the name of 
 Shakespeare, may give him an answer that 
 would remind one of Shy lock's famous retort: 
 
 "I am a Jew! Hath not a Jew eyes, hath not a Jew 
 hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, 
 fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, 
 subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, 
 warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as 
 a Christian is?' 
 
 Very neatly he can sign his name in Hebrew, 
 
152 
 
 or, to come nearer the truth, he can print it 
 perfectly well. Both groom and bride have 
 names from the Old Testament, but their 
 family names are not seldom of a more modern 
 origin, sometimes savoring of the fragrance of 
 flowers, or reminding one of precious stones or 
 metals, names not always corresponding to the 
 personality of their happy owners. 
 
 Saturday is not seldom the day when Jacob 
 and Rachel take out their license. Having just 
 left the synagogue they are both dressed in their 
 best raiments. Neither of them is above mid- 
 dle height. She might be called handsome if 
 her oval face with the expressive eyes and 
 transparent complexion was indicative of more 
 than natural smartness. But handsome faces 
 can only relatively be so denominated if not 
 expressive of some refinement. 
 
 Sometimes our friend Jacob will refuse to 
 sign his name, for the orthodox Hebrew does 
 not touch pen or ink on the holy Sabbath. 
 With a shrug of his shoulders and a movement 
 of his hand, far more explanatory than any ver- 
 bal argument, he will ask to be excused. But 
 Jacob is not consistent, for his orthodoxy should 
 not allow him to apply for a license on a Satur- 
 day, thus overstepping the laws forbidding him 
 
153 
 
 to transact any kind of business on the Sabbath. 
 He may also, as a special favor, ask to put on his 
 hat while the oath is administered, because he, 
 following the traditional customs, never un- 
 covers his head at the execution of a solemn act. 
 As a matter of course he is married by a 
 rabbi, and the prescribed ceremonies are car- 
 ried out in all their details. .To symbolize the 
 strength of the union a glass is crushed in thous- 
 ands of pieces. Just as impossible as this glass 
 can be put together again, just as difficult shall 
 it be to put assunder the matrimonial ties unit- 
 ing husband and wife. Perhaps nobody ever 
 heard of a divorce among that class of people. 
 They usually live very happily together, a kind 
 of patriarchal life, and they have a numerous 
 offspring. The children are brought up in 
 strict obedience to and veneration for their pa- 
 rents, and to the credit of Hebrew children in 
 general it must be admitted that they always 
 take good care of their old and feeble, and 
 sometimes very poor parents. Children born in 
 America of Russian-Polish, orthodox parents 
 will naturally not turn out to be so devout to 
 the faith of their ancestors. The association 
 with children of other religious denominations 
 is, perhaps, one of the best promoters of religious 
 
154 
 
 liberalism which is so nearly related to religious 
 tolerance. It is true that a Hebrew may some- 
 times have a chance to hear the less noble epi- 
 thet "Sheeny," but they usually do not take 
 this to heart. For, in the first place, it is not 
 always that he who applies this epithet means 
 anything bad with it, and, besides, the Hebrew 
 has a clear demonstration of the undeniable fact, 
 that many a "Sheeny" in America has succeeded 
 pretty well. In manifold instances he has 
 reached the highest honor that can be conferred 
 on a man in a republic: the full and uncondi- 
 tional confidence of his fellow citizens. The 
 somewhat terse but logical train of thought, one 
 of the characteristics of the Hebrew race, tells 
 him that the conduct of a man's life and less his 
 individual, religious ideas, gives him the place 
 in society he is deserving of. 
 
 The Hebrew signature is not the only curious 
 one signed to an affidavit before the license 
 clerk. Chicago's reputation as the most poly- 
 glot city in the Union would not be complete, if 
 we could not boast of harboring some members 
 of the large celestial family of four hundred 
 millions of souls, headed by his majesty the 
 emperor of China. And the enormous pile of 
 affidavits on file in the vaults of the clerk's office 
 
155 
 
 would, from the view of the student of chirog- 
 raphy, be considered valueless, if it did not 
 contain some veritable Chinese signatures. But 
 it does. The year 1886 alone can show three 
 marriage affidavits, signed by Chinamen in their 
 own letters. To one of these gentlemen the clerk 
 feels himself indirectly greatly indebted, for he 
 saved him a great deal of bother by coming in 
 company with one of his countrymen, a very intel- 
 ligent and versatile man with a full understand- 
 ing of the English language. He did not only 
 act as interpreter, but was willing to go through 
 a kind of pumping process when asked to give 
 some information in regard to marriages in 
 China. 
 
 "No, no sir, there is no corresponding word 
 in the Chinese language to your 'marriage li- 
 cense.' We do not pay any tax for the privi- 
 lege of raising a family. If such a system were 
 in vogue, it would bring the government a 
 handsome sum, for bachelors or spinsters are 
 very scarce in our country. We consider it a 
 shame not to unite in wedlock." 
 
 "Do they marry young in your country? 
 
 "Yes, according to your notions we marry 
 rather young. The man is seldom over twenty, 
 and the girl not over sixteen, but then we 
 
156 
 
 have manifold instances where the man is 
 not more than sixteen, and the girl only 
 fourteen." 
 
 "There must be no time for 'mashing' in your 
 country," interposed a bystander. 
 
 "You hit it exactly, young man," responded 
 the good-natured Chinaman. "Young men in 
 my country have not such bad habits. We do 
 not go with the girl before the engagement. In 
 fact, we do not "know her until we are en- 
 gaged." 
 
 "You do not know her?" 
 
 "No sir, the young man does not take a wife 
 of his own choice. When a family has got 
 marriageable daughters or sons they speak with 
 parents equally situated, and after mature 
 consideration they arrange the union between 
 their children." 
 
 "And they live happily in China?" 
 
 "Why not ? Parents know much better what 
 is to the good of their children than the chil- 
 dren themselves. They make the contracts, 
 and, as a rule, the children live up to them. Of 
 course, there are some marriages that are not 
 happy." 
 
 "And the union is then dissolved?" 
 
 "Not necessarily. You Americans do not 
 
157 
 
 dissolve all unhappy marriages. But we have 
 divorce laws." 
 
 "I suppose your divorce laws are very rigid?" 
 
 "In fact, I do not know much about that. The 
 cardinal reason for a dissolution of a marriage 
 is, I presume, the same all over the world. I 
 know, besides, of two excuses for a divorce in 
 China not applicable in this country. When a 
 matrimony is childless, the husband may law- 
 fully set his wife aside, and when one of the 
 wedded parties insults the parents of the other 
 party, a legitimate divorce may be obtained." 
 
 "Do you mean to say," said the above men- 
 tioned bystander, "that when a man in China 
 insults his mother-in-law, she can by the instru- 
 mentality of your divorce laws declare the union 
 between man and wife null and void?" 
 
 "I do." 
 
 "My dear friend, you must be a very cun- 
 ning people. I can clearly see through your 
 scheme. To preserve the peace in the family 
 you never speak to your mother-in-law, lest you 
 say something that might hurt her feelings. 
 What a glorious idea ! But — " 
 
 The Chinese interpreter was no longer in a 
 mood to argue the divorce laws of his country. 
 He left the office with his friend, who, by the 
 
158 
 
 way, married a white girl, who is so dear to 
 him that he for her sake sacrificed his long, 
 black pig-tail, the greatest sacrifice a Chinaman 
 can make. 
 
 The interpreter avoided to mention that 
 polygamy is not forbidden fruit in China. The 
 marriage laws of. the empire allow a man to 
 have more than one wife, and the rule is, that 
 the rich have as many better halves as they can 
 afford to have, while the poor, who everywhere 
 are prevented from indulging in luxury, have to 
 be content with one. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 In Excellent Humor — An Invitation to "Stand 
 Up" — Black and White — Mixed Marriages. 
 
 WHILE Russian Hebrews (and Chinamen 
 as a matter of course) are rather reti- 
 cent and shy during their stay in the 
 clerk's office, there is another class of our fellow 
 citizens in whom the happiness of life may mani- 
 fest itself through a torrent of eloquence, and 
 who only need a slight occasion for bursting out 
 in continuous and boisterous mirth and laughter. 
 The majority of the colored population in Chi- 
 cago are nearly always in a most excellent humor, 
 when they take out their marriage licenses. 
 They will most frequently come in groups of 
 two or three who, in contrast to workingmen 
 of any other race, are very nobbily dressed, 
 perhaps an evidence of their self-respect. The 
 slightest provocation may result in a united 
 hilarity, and they may laugh as perhaps only 
 negroes can laugh. Comical as they sometimes 
 may be in their manners, they are not without 
 
 059) 
 
160 
 
 an open eye for the ridiculous in others. How 
 they roared with laughter, three middle-aged, 
 colored gentlemen, when their eyes caught a 
 man, who on a cold winter day stepped into 
 the office, hurriedly approaching one of the pil- 
 lars supporting the ceiling, and, imagining him- 
 self in front of a heating apparatus, stretched 
 out his hand to warm himself. Their laughter 
 nearly turned into paroxysms when the man, 
 before seating himself in a chair in front of the 
 post, carefully pulled it away, lest he should be 
 too near the imaginary heater. Naturally they 
 were not induced to stop at the sight of the 
 man who, without suspecting himself to be the 
 object of their convulsive laughter, commenced 
 to laugh just as heartily, though not in such a 
 boisterous way. 
 
 Good humor with this race is a natural se- 
 quence of their sanguine temperament. "To 
 hope as a negro," is no proverb, but, perhaps, 
 it ought to be. They like to bet, and "you 
 bet" are not empty words in the mouth of a 
 negro; he is willing to "put up," for he hopes 
 to win. Sometimes he hopes like a child, trying 
 his luck in lotteries of very questionable 
 solidity. 
 
 The colored population in Chicago marry 
 
161 
 
 most frequently while young, and the rule is 
 that the wedding is performed by a minister of 
 their own race. A justice, however, may also 
 once in a while make a couple of dollars on a 
 colored wedding. In such cases both groom 
 and bride will make their appearance before the 
 license window. The cordiality of the race was 
 in one instance fully evinced by an invitation to 
 the clerk to act as best man. The invitation to 
 "stand up" before the couple was accepted, and 
 the three went to the nearest justice of the 
 peace. While he was examining the license 
 and preparing himself to fill out the certificate, 
 the clerk was witness to a scene highly tending to 
 put his curiosity to a grave test. The bride, 
 while keeping up the conversation, commenced 
 divesting herself of her outward garments, piece 
 by piece. First her shoes went off, then fol- 
 lowed her shawl and hat, which the groom 
 placed on the back of a chair. How in the 
 great world will this end, the clerk was wonder- 
 ing, when she commenced unbuttoning her 
 dress; but she did not allow him any time for 
 further meditation, for the next moment her 
 skirt and waist flew to the nearest corner, and 
 she stood smilingly in a bridal dress of white 
 gauze. From a parcel she unfolded a long veil 
 
 Marriage License Window, u. 
 
162 
 
 and a wreath which she fastened to her hair, 
 having first encased her feet in a pair of white 
 shoes with metallic buckles. 
 
 This little episode recalled a scene in one of 
 the modern French dramas. Two young girls, 
 returning from a ball, enter their bed-room. 
 Intimately chatting they commence their even- 
 ing toilet. The curiosity of the audience hav- 
 ing been strained to the limits of propriety, one 
 of the girls suddenly exclaims: "But, dear me, 
 our neighbors can look through our windows, 
 we have forgotten to pull down the blinds." 
 With this exclamation on her lips she steps to 
 the front fly, pulls the string, and the curtain 
 drops, shutting out the further gaze of the au- 
 dience whose sense of propriety was not after 
 all very seriously trespassed upon. 
 
 The ceremony was short, but very much to 
 the point ; the formula rather terse. The judge, 
 however, rose with dignity from his chair, and 
 having placed the couple so that the groom 
 stood on the right side of the expectant bride, 
 he commenced: "Will you take this woman 
 as your lawfully married wife, love her, honor 
 and obey her, and, forsaking all others, hold unto 
 her, as long as you both shall live?" Of course 
 he would. A similar question was put to her, 
 
163 
 
 and she answered in the affirmative. Then 
 joining hands at his request he declared them 
 husband and wife, referring to the statutes of 
 Illinois and his capacity as a civic magistrate. 
 
 The instances where a white girl takes a man 
 of the colored race for a husband are not few, 
 while there is not one case on record, for the 
 last four years, at least, of a white man marry- 
 ing a colored girl. Americans have a deeply 
 rooted disgust for connubial unions between 
 negroes and white people. Publicly such unions 
 are not discussed, for the reason that interfer- 
 ence in such relations, besides being utterly 
 useless, is considered an encroachment upon 
 personal liberty, no third party having a right 
 to dictate whom persons shall take for their 
 wives or husbands. The reason why such 
 unions are looked upon with disgust is simply 
 that they are considered unnatural. It is not 
 easily understood how a white girl may cherish 
 any tender feeling for an individual of the negro 
 race. However, taste is not a fit subject for dis- 
 cussion. But to the white race generally 
 the negro is considered a monstrosity when he 
 contemplates marriage outside of his own race. 
 His passions are not seldom violent; he is 
 strongly sensual, and may sometimes, through 
 
164 
 
 his impulsive nature, be led to acts bearing 
 evidence of his lack of will-power. There are 
 other reasons speaking against such marriages, 
 reasons, however, that can only be discussed 
 with a real advantage amongst psychologists or 
 scientifically educated physicians. 
 
 The aversion to marriages of blended colors, 
 is, however, not limited to black and white 
 alone. The greatest, perhaps, of physiologists 
 could not altogether lay aside the prejudice, for 
 while Othello, so far as his individual character 
 concerns, is sympathetically portrayed, yet Des- 
 demona is so far his superior in intellect and 
 genuine feeling, that we from the first moment 
 comprehend the disharmony and expect the 
 tragical end. 
 
 There is another kind of mixed marriages 
 not objectionable to public opinion, but looked 
 upon by the Church as misalliances. It is the 
 kind of unions made between members of differ- 
 ent denominations, and which undoubtedly are 
 on the increase, not only in America, but all 
 over the world. Catholics and Protestants fre- 
 quently marry in Chicago, and though the re- 
 ligious principle of both parties is resting upon 
 the same foundation, the Church is naturally 
 apt to look upon such unions as misalliances that 
 
165 
 
 may lead to the ruin of both parties. And, 
 certainly, such a result may be the outcome, if 
 the necessary tolerance is not found on both 
 sides. A reciprocal heresy can not lead to 
 happy connubial relations. 
 
 But the breach may be still wider, for He- 
 brews and Christian girls are sometimes united 
 in wedlock in Chicago; less frequently a He- 
 brew girl is married to a Christian man. In 
 such cases both parties have reached the ages 
 between twenty-five and thirty, consequently 
 the erotic relations are not built upon whimsi- 
 cal love-raptures. It hardly stands to reason to 
 believe that the question of religion has not 
 been argued ere they made up their minds to 
 live together as husband and wife. And it may 
 almost be taken for granted that both parties 
 are, what may be denominated, religiously in- 
 different. Modern Hebrews, that is, those 
 known under the name of agnostics, are pre- 
 dominating among the intelligent youth of the 
 race, and particularly amongst those of culture 
 and higher education. They are not atheists, 
 but look upon ethics as the best guide for a 
 man's life, hoping that life after death, if there 
 be any (for they are not sure in regard to this 
 point) will make some allowance for good and 
 
1«6 
 
 moral conduct. Agnosticism, as we all know, 
 is neither positive nor negative, but if its culti- 
 vators may succeed in disseminating moral 
 teaching and, withal, imbue the rising genera- 
 tion among their followers with a due feeling of 
 moral responsibility, citizens as such have no 
 reasons to put any impediment in their way. 
 
 Professors of varied religious dogmas, while 
 most frequently united in wedlock by a civic 
 authority, will sometimes undergo a double 
 wedding, and to that effect take out two li- 
 censes. It is an open question whether such a 
 course is directly within the law. Can a priest, 
 minister, or judge marry two persons knowing 
 that they are married already? One of our 
 judges on the bench, however, has married a 
 couple after the ceremony was performed by a 
 minister, and he did not even require a separate 
 license, but issued his certificate on the back of 
 it, at the same time demanding both his and 
 the minister's name put on record as legally 
 authorized functionaries. 
 
 Where one of the contracting parties belongs 
 to the Catholic Church the priest will demand a 
 dispensation from the bishop before he will 
 consecrate the marriage, and so will ministers 
 of some other denominations, while a rabbi, of 
 
167 
 
 the old school at least, under no circumstances 
 will perform the ceremony if both parties are 
 not Hebrews. A young Hebrew, who took out 
 a license to marry a Christian girl who, for 
 some reason or other, would not allow a judge 
 to unite them, vainly applied to several ministers 
 until he finally found one who declared himself 
 willing to perform the ceremony. Returning 
 the license the minister gave some information 
 significant of the religious standpoint of the 
 groom. 
 
 Having given up the religion of his childhood 
 he, with the energy of his race, had commenced 
 the study of the fundamental ideas of the most 
 extended religions. The conclusion he finally 
 had reached was that all religions were the 
 same, at least four of them having sprung from 
 the old Jewish religion, all of them having the 
 sublime aim of bringing man nearer to God. But 
 when the minister had asked him why he did 
 not join the religion of love promising salvation 
 to all and every one of its true adherents, the 
 young man betrayed his oriental origin by an- 
 swering with the following legend: 
 
 "When the Chinese opened their ports to 
 Europeans, Christian missionaries in great 
 numbers found their way to the land. They all 
 
168 
 
 applied to the emperor for a permission to pro- 
 mulgate their teachings among his subjects 
 (a step not absolutely necessary, for in 
 China any religion, not interfering with the 
 patriarchal laws of the empire, is tolerated), be- 
 sides entertaining an upright wish to make a 
 convert of his celestial majesty. For the mis- 
 sionaries were fulry satisfied that if they could 
 only succeed in converting the emperor, it would 
 not be long ere his subjects would adopt Chris- 
 tianity, the average Chinaman being a very 
 obedient man. The loyalty to his majesty, the mis- 
 sionaries knew, being so great that when he 
 sneezed all those surrounding him would do the 
 same, and the court of the emperor embraces 
 thousands of the leading citizens of his empire. 
 The emperor himself, being a Confucianist, was 
 anxious to know the character of the religious 
 teachings the missionaries would preach. He 
 therefore invited them to his court on a certain 
 fixed day and hour. When the last of them 
 had finished, the emperor arose from his seat 
 paying his high compliments to the intelligence 
 and great ability of the speakers. At the 
 same time he declared it impossible to elevate 
 their teachings to the religion of his empire, 
 finding that they did not agree amongst them- 
 
169 
 
 selves, each insisting upon his views being the 
 only right ones that would lead to the result so 
 much wished for by all mortals, including his 
 subjects. He might be willing to adopt the 
 religion of the Europeans if the missionaries 
 could agree amongst themselves. But the 
 missionaries never more made an attempt to 
 convert the emperor, and his successors on the 
 throne are still heathens." 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Superstition — A Wedding Postponed — "Call 
 Again" — Saturday — Monday — The Farm- 
 ers' Day — Certificates. 
 
 IT is quite significant that even the most ra- 
 tional men, though devoid of national and 
 religious prejudices, can not altogether 
 emancipate themselves from some sort of super- 
 stition. Not even free-thinkers like to take out 
 their marriage license on a Friday. It is a rare 
 instance when an American applies for a license 
 on that day, and if those foreign-born, who do 
 appear before the window, had the slightest 
 suspicion of the ominous significance attributed 
 to it, they might follow suit and not make the 
 initial step to their marriage until twenty-four 
 hours later. Whether born in America or in some 
 other part of the globe most people are more 
 or less superstitious. Even at the close of the 
 nineteenth century we may come across people 
 disposed to read their fate in omens and signs. 
 To be thirteen at a table means that one of the 
 party will die within a year. The howling of a 
 
 (tycrt 
 
171 
 
 dog at night-time is an omen indicative of the 
 approaching death of a person in the neighbor- 
 hood. The fall of a family picture from the 
 wall is a sure sign that someone in the family 
 is on his way to join the large, silent army. 
 There are women who on certain days will not 
 pick up a pin from the floor because such might 
 lead to a row in the family before sunset. A 
 pair of knives lying cross-wise augurs the death 
 of one of the nearest relatives. A young man was 
 honest enough to admit before the clerk that he 
 had been in the office at an early hour in 
 the morning, but having met a hunch-back man 
 in the doorway of the office he had delayed 
 taking out his license that day, for, he added, 
 "it is an ominous sign to meet such an unfor- 
 tunate being early in the morning, and no man 
 ought to challenge the fates." Sometimes an 
 unexpected and insignificant event may sud- 
 denly enter the mind of an applicant, perturbing 
 his thoughts in a most curious way. In illus- 
 tration may here be given a few examples: 
 
 A young couple had nearly finished their 
 transactions before the license window, when 
 suddenly a music-band struck a funeral march 
 in honor of a Mason. All in the office rushed 
 to the windows to see the procession, with the 
 
172 
 
 exception of the groom and his bride, who sud- 
 denly assumed a very melancholy appearance. 
 Inspired by a momentary thought he deferently 
 asked the clerk to stop the issuing of the license, 
 as he took it as a bad omen that a funeral march 
 should be played just at the moment he made 
 the first step towards his supposed, domestic 
 happiness, emphatically declaring that even if 
 Offenbach had been the composer of the funeral 
 music, he would not change his mind. Strange 
 to say, the bride coincided with his views, not 
 to take the license out on that day, although 
 she mildly suggested to wait only that long 
 until the music had passed by and no longer 
 could be heard in the office. 
 
 An elderly man in a very talkative mood, 
 having humorously depicted the life he had 
 lived with the two of his deceased wives, 
 stretched out his hand to bid good-bye to the 
 clerk. Without any definite intention he was 
 finally greeted with the words: "Call again," 
 when he suddenly, with a violent jerk, took his 
 hand, remarking that he did not enjoy that 
 kind of a joke. Asked for an explanation he 
 responded that he took the words as a bad 
 omen significant of the demise of his third wife. 
 With his hand raised he solemnly declared that 
 
173 
 
 he would never "call again" in the office to take 
 out a license. 
 
 "Do you, Mr. clerk, believe that it will rain to- 
 day?" was asked by a groom on a cloudy day. 
 
 "It looks like it." 
 
 "I think so myself, and I will have to post- 
 pone my wedding." 
 
 "Postpone it, why?" 
 
 "Because rain on a wedding day is forebod- 
 ing of unhappiness for the contracting parties." 
 
 Friday being a quiet day, Saturday in return 
 is so much livelier, not only because of the 
 larger number of licenses issued, but also because 
 this being the day when most frequently both 
 parties put in their appearance to get married im- 
 mediately after having procured the necessary 
 document. The grooms are workingmen, and 
 the brides are servant girls, who may display 
 not a small quantity of silk, velvet, and golden 
 ornaments in their ears, around their necks, and 
 on their fingers, a clear evidence of the well 
 known fact that Chicago is the paradise on earth 
 for hired girls. The girl's presence in the of- 
 fice is sometimes of great importance, highly 
 valued by the clerk, for there is many a groom 
 who does not know how to spell the family 
 name of his girl, and there are some who do not 
 
174 
 
 know it at all. Used to call their girls by 
 their given names, Mary, Lizzie, Katie, and so 
 on, they never suspected to be asked the family 
 name, holding that under no circumstances is it 
 of any account after the marriage has been 
 solemnized. The proper statement and correct 
 spelling of names will not seldom cut a greater 
 figure in married life than some are inclined to 
 believe, and particularly is this the case in re- 
 gard to the emigrated population. It is of no 
 rare occurrence that an emigrant falls heir to 
 some property from a near or far relative in one 
 of the old countries, and that a certificate of 
 marriage from the county clerk's office is de- 
 manded by the European authorities. An in- 
 correct statement or spelling of the names may 
 prove a great impediment to the paying of the 
 inheritance; invariably it causes great delay. 
 In such cases the parties concerned will come 
 to the office, and having explained the nature of 
 their visit, they may ask the clerk to correct 
 the names in the public records, apparently sur- 
 prised to learn that such corrections can not be 
 made, under no circumstances many years 
 after the names were entered, when both the 
 minister and the witnesses are dead or moved 
 to unknown places. 
 
175 
 
 Monday is considered a fortunate day — per- 
 haps one of the reasons why the clerk is kept 
 busy on that day. One applicant expressed his 
 confidence in the great luck of that day by stat- 
 ing that he would send for a ticket in the 
 Louisiana lottery bearing the same number as 
 his license. Some days after he returned to the 
 office asking the clerk if the number on the 
 license could not be changed, no corresponding 
 number could be had in the lottery. The li- 
 cense number had just passed 100,000, the limit, 
 he explained, of the numbers in the wheel of 
 fortune. — A former license clerk, who undoubt- 
 edly possessed a strongly creative imagination, 
 is said to have made the discovery that after 
 large picnics on Sundays during the summer, 
 and well attended balls on Sundays during the 
 winter, would invariably follow a brisk business 
 before the license window the following Mon- 
 days. The real facts, however, do not bear 
 him out. Perhaps he only wished to convey the 
 idea that young persons in America too often 
 conclude to marry without having known each 
 other a reasonable length of time. Young 
 American men and girls are more independent 
 of their parents in love matters than are their 
 European brothers and sisters. The American 
 
176 
 
 girl, as a rule, is wildly romantic in her conjugal 
 views, and the natural consequence is that she 
 often will make a dreadful mistake, paying 
 dearly for her impulsive love and for the follow- 
 ing rash and heedless marriage. 
 
 Tuesday and Wednesday are not considered 
 busy days, the number of licenses issued seldom 
 averaging more than thirty or thirty-five. 
 Thursday is the farmers' or country peoples' 
 day. It takes no particularly keen eye to dis- 
 tinguish a farmer from an inhabitant of a city. 
 The massive, solid stamp characterizing his en- 
 tire personality, his strong and healthy body, 
 and his plain manners, free from all affectation, 
 and finally the cut of his dress will forthwith 
 point him out. A clerk with good wishes for a 
 coming, healthy generation will always take 
 pleasure in furnishing a young farmer with a 
 license. He may not possess the refined culture 
 of which many of his contemporaries in the 
 large cities feel so proud, but then in return he 
 may justly point to his strong constitution and 
 independent position as the two factors best fitted 
 to make life a blessing. 
 
 The farmer's girl frequently accompanies him 
 on his expedition to Chicago to get a license, as 
 several purchases have to be made before the 
 
177 
 
 wedding. Both may be heavily loaded with par- 
 cels at their entrance in the office, he sometimes 
 carrying a jug, the contents of which, judging by 
 the odor, is stronger than water. If they come in 
 his own conveyance she may stay there, holding 
 the reins while he is transacting the business in 
 the clerk's office. In a capacious wagon the 
 parents-in-law may sometimes be seen, or a 
 neighbor may be in the groom's company, will- 
 ing to vouch for him, if it should be necessary. 
 Almost without exception farmers are married 
 by clergymen. 
 
 It happened once that one of these gentlemen 
 from the rural district stepped up to the license 
 window inquiring if the county clerk was in. 
 The license clerk seeing such a farmer, with his 
 girl modestly waiting at the door, both loaded 
 with a variety of parcels, could not for a mo- 
 ment doubt the nature of his errand. Insisting 
 upon seeing the county clerk in person he and 
 his girl got seated, and after a little while they 
 were so absorbed in conversation that they did 
 not notice the crowd in front of them, each and 
 every one taking out a license to wed. After a 
 full hour's waiting he finally got up from his 
 seat to convince himself that the county clerk 
 had not yet arrived, and learning that the 
 
 Marriage License Window. 12. 
 
178 
 
 probability was that the clerk would not appear 
 that afternoon, the farmer, without showing any 
 emotion, declared the situation a very preca- 
 rious one, for he had a long way to ride, and 
 the wedding was set for the next day. He 
 wished to obtain a marriage license, and was very 
 agreeably surprised to learn that for the trans- 
 action of that business the presence of the clerk 
 himself was not needed. The good farmer had 
 studied the statutes of the laws of Illinois pro- 
 viding that "the county clerk shall issue mar- 
 riage license," and so on, taking the "county 
 clerk" in too literal a sense without heeding the 
 fact that a deputy is representing the clerk in 
 the different departments of the office. — Nearly 
 a week after the same farmer appeared in the 
 office to inquire whether he had not left a small 
 bottle of wine on the counter the day he took 
 out his license. To the best of his knowledge, 
 the clerk told him, no. The farmer explained 
 that he had put the bottle among other parcels 
 on the counter, but when he came home he dis- 
 covered that he had a bottle half full of muci- 
 lage instead of wine. The county got its muci- 
 lage back. 
 
 Among his parcels may sometimes be seen a 
 roll of paper which he handles with particular 
 
179 
 
 care. It is a marriage certificate bought' in a 
 stationary store, and, after having been properly 
 filled out by the clergyman, is destined to orna- 
 ment the wall of the best room in the house, the 
 frame alone being more expensive than ten 
 certificates of its like. It is a very allegorical 
 piece of paper, being adorned with both doves 
 and angels. Besides it is a bit of old-timed, ro- 
 mantic illustration. Of course the moon is up, 
 and full at that, shining over the calm sea on 
 which a boat with a young man and woman are 
 starting from the paternal home towards the 
 church on the other side. The oval holes are 
 intended for the pictures of the groom and his 
 bride, and a third one right underneath will be 
 filled out with the picture of the minister, per- 
 haps later replaced with that of the first-born 
 baby. Besides, the certificate may be adorned 
 with two grasping hands, symbolizing the 
 strength of the matrimonial union. The inscrip- 
 tions on these certificates are pretty nearly the 
 same in all instances. "This certifies that 
 
 Mr. and Miss were on this day united 
 
 in holy matrimony according to the ordinance 
 of God and the laws of the state of Illinois, at 
 (Chicago) on the (15th) day of (October) in 
 the year of our Lord, 188 — ." Quotations from 
 
180 
 
 the scripture may often impress the possessor 
 of such a certificate of the solemnity of the 
 matrimonial act, as for instance: "What there- 
 fore God hath joined together, let no man put 
 assunder (Mat. 19, 6)," or "It is not good that 
 the man should be alone," and "I will make 
 him an help meet for him (Gen. 2, 18)." 
 
 It is a praiseworthy care evinced by farmers 
 and other people to procure some kind of a 
 marriage certificate. A clergyman may some- 
 times be so absent-minded that he will mislay the 
 license or entirely forget that he performed the 
 ceremony, and the natural consequence is that no 
 public record can be made of the union. Or 
 the clergyman may hide away a license so well 
 that it may not be found until his heirs acci- 
 dentally discover it among his papers. In one 
 instance a return was made of nearly a hundred 
 licenses, covering a space of several years, found 
 among papers belonging to the estate of a de- 
 ceased clergyman of high standing. The neg- 
 lect to make these returns has often caused 
 widows of soldiers a great deal of trouble, the 
 pension office at Washington being very strict in 
 its demands for a clear proof of the parties 1 
 indisputable rights to arrear money or back 
 
 pay- 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Busy Days — A Comical Error — A Dramatic 
 Scene — Cupid's Hunting Season. 
 
 There are days in the year when a license 
 clerk will do well in preparing himself for a 
 more than ordinarily large throng of applicants. 
 These are the immediate days before the glo- 
 rious Fourth, Thanksgiving day, Christmas and 
 New Years. Thanksgiving is particularly an 
 American day; and certainly it is appropriate 
 to celebrate one's wedding while thanking 
 Providence for many other good things. Should, 
 however, the matrimony not be a happy one, it 
 may be a little painful each Thanksgiving day 
 to be reminded of the wedding-day. Large 
 groups will usually gather outside the window 
 on the busy days, and sometimes the great 
 hurry will call forth rather comical situations 
 or errors. 
 
 Two men, by their own fault, got their li- 
 censes changed in front of the cashier's desk. 
 Both being in a great hurry they rushed out of 
 
 (iSi) 
 
182 
 
 the office without opening the folded document, 
 which they placed in their inside coat pockets. 
 The very same evening the weddings should 
 take place, and the mistake on both sides was 
 so timely discovered that it might have been 
 corrected if the two grooms had not been under 
 the impression that the county clerk's office is 
 closed at four instead of at five o'clock. The di- 
 rectory was searched, and fortunately the right 
 addresses were found. Each hired a hack and 
 drove to the dwelling of the other, where each 
 found a bride in very low spirits. Each of the 
 men was inclined to wait for the other, but the 
 problem of finding each other was finally solved 
 by one of the ladies who sent the stranger 
 away, strictly forbidding him to re-appear, he 
 naturally driving back to his bride, where the 
 licenses were exchanged. 
 
 Another error was productive of a very dra- 
 matic scene. Accompanied by an interpreter 
 two Polish men asked for "some of these pa- 
 pers," at the same time pointing at the rose- 
 .colored license blanks. The men were waited 
 on and left the office. Some hours after a loud 
 noise was heard in the hall- way, and when the 
 doors were thrown open the same two men with 
 their wives and a large number of half-grown 
 
183 
 
 and small children strode up to the license win- 
 dow. Without using any interpreter the two 
 women raised a storm of wrath, threatening to 
 arrest the license clerk for swindling poor peo- 
 ple out of their money. The children kept si- 
 lent until their mothers' hysteric attacks ended 
 with a loud and violent sobbing, then they also 
 commenced to cry and abuse the clerk. When 
 the noise had somewhat subsided, and an expla- 
 nation was within the possibility of the clerk, it 
 was discovered that the men had appeared in the 
 office to make the initial steps to become citizens 
 of the United States. The money was conse- 
 quently refunded, but the men were not allowed 
 to declare their intentions that day. In fact, 
 they were rather roughly marched out of the 
 office by their wives without getting a chance 
 to renounce their allegiance to any potentate. 
 
 Far more genial was the man who, by a mis- 
 take, swore as his intention to sever all connec- 
 tions with the English queen, while he intended 
 to take out a paper that should unite him with 
 his Bridget. When he learned that he had to 
 wait two years before he could make use of his 
 "declaration," he declared it impossible to wait 
 that long, as all preparations for the wedding 
 were made. 
 
184 
 
 In regard to the seasons there is no doubt 
 that fall is the one when most weddings are con- 
 tracted. Some author is said to have made the 
 discover}' that most engagements are initiated 
 in spring, entered into during summer, and 
 concluded during winter. For reasons not dif- 
 ficult to comprehend, said author is not basing 
 his discovery on any statistical dates, and he 
 may not have heard of our skating-rink or pic- 
 nic engagements, where the parties meet perhaps 
 for the first time in their lives. No; Cupid, 
 this little winged, active, capricious, speculating 
 and always pondering gentleman, does not know 
 of any law limiting the hunting season to cer- 
 tain months of the year. He hunts all the year 
 and takes pleasure in piercing with his arrows 
 the hearts of the young, of the middle-aged, and 
 occasionally the old, and the greater destruction 
 he produces the greater his joy. Merc}? is a 
 virtue unknown to him, it is not found in his 
 dictionary, but to his credit it must be said that 
 he seldom hurts his victim so hard that death 
 will ensue as the immediate consequence of love. 
 Though of an ungovernable and fickle-minded 
 temperament he seems to be guided by certain 
 rules. Or should it be Nature that dictates dark 
 gentlemen to fall in love with blonde ladies, or 
 
185 
 
 brunette girls to prefer light complexioned gen- 
 tlemen. In no other relations of life contrasts 
 will meet more frequently than in those per- 
 taining to the affairs of the heart. Tall men 
 will wed small women, and tall girls will try 
 their matrimonial luck with small men. The 
 fat and the lean, the snub-nosed and the hawk- 
 nosed, the intelligent and the stupid, the brave 
 and the poltroon, the good-natured and the ill- 
 tempered, and sometimes the poor and the rich 
 will meet and unite in wedlock. The contrast 
 may not seldom be carried to an excess, as for 
 instance when a dwarf marries a tall and slender 
 girl, or a hunch-back's love is returned by a 
 female being twice as large as him, or a blind 
 man marries a girl with sparkling eyes. 
 
 The sport of the said little winged gentleman 
 may once in a while be interfered with by the 
 Chicago police. Perhaps the reader remembers 
 the little dime-museum dwarf who, on a bright 
 summer day, with sunshine in his heart and with a 
 voice trembling with joy, applied for a license. 
 The clerk not seeing the lover wondered where 
 the voice came from, until a bystander called 
 his attention to this diminutive edition of a hu- 
 man being by lifting him up from the floor. 
 Accepting the invitation to step inside the rail- 
 
186 
 
 ing, he was seated on a high chair whence he 
 satisfactorily answered the questions put to him. 
 With an air of self-importance, not seldom 
 characterizing people of small stature, he left the 
 office expecting to find his bride, a rather tall 
 and well developed girl, in a hack outside, but 
 was greatly disappointed. A detective had 
 driven the bride to her house, and another de- 
 tective took the groom by his coat-collar and 
 marched him to the police station. The parents 
 had called a halt to the union, she being only 
 seventeen. Then followed a trial with the li- 
 cense clerk as one of the principal witnesses, but 
 with the result that the dwarf was released, the 
 girl having told him that she had reached the 
 age of maturity. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Given Names — From the Old and New Testa- 
 ment — Historical and Dramatic Names — 
 Complicated Names — Names Translated— 
 "Rats." 
 
 IT is a very common custom in America that 
 people call each other by their given names. 
 In Europe such a familiar address is only made 
 use of among near relations or intimate friends. 
 Not even in the shops of the old country is the 
 familiar given name applied, but the family 
 name, though it may contain many syllables, is 
 used. It is not to American etiquette said in- 
 timacy is owing its origin; it springs from a 
 very natural cause, the foreign population in 
 manifold instances having very long names, 
 which the native population have some diffi- 
 culty in pronouncing or keeping in their mem- 
 ory. He who pays some attention to the daily 
 published marriage license list will hardly have 
 failed to discover that the given names have in 
 
 nearly all cases the English form, while the 
 
 (187) 
 
188 
 
 family name is spelled in its full length without 
 having undergone any change. Johannes is 
 transformed to John, Andreas to Andrew, Fran- 
 tisek to Frank, Carl to Charles, Mariane to 
 Mary Ann, Emilie to Emily, Marie to Mary. 
 Sometimes the abbreviation of a name is given 
 for the full name, the applicant insisting upon 
 having it put down. A great number of female 
 names are, as well known, nothing but abbre- 
 viated or pet names that, however, have 
 acquired citizens right in the language. Young 
 girls usually prefer to be called by their abbre- 
 viated names. Henrietta becomes Hattie; Mag- 
 gie is preferred to Margaret; Lizzie to Eliza- 
 beth; Katie to Catharine, and so on. 
 
 An only cursory review of the list will prove 
 that the variety of given names is very small. 
 After the death of Christ, the New Testament 
 has contributed the most names to mankind. 
 Innumerable are the Johns, James's, Peters, An- 
 drews. And amongst females the Marys are 
 predominating in all countries where civiliza- 
 tion, according to Christian notions, has reached. 
 The Apostles are not the only ones whose 
 names are immortalized, but martyrs, saints 
 and pious Christians are eternized through per- 
 sons bearing their names. There are not many 
 
189 
 
 names in existence that may not be found in the 
 eleven marriage records preserved in the vault 
 of the county clerk's office. How many a young 
 lady, however, by the handsome name of Agnes, 
 ever thought that she indirectly owes that name 
 to a holy virgin in Rome, and how many an 
 Anna is aware that she and her thousands of 
 sisters might have been christened otherwise if 
 the widow Anna in Jerusalem had not existed. 
 The names of the Old Testament are more 
 and more going out of fashion. Even among 
 Hebrews, outside of the orthodox, it seems no 
 longer to be adapted to the spirit of the age to 
 name the children after the patriarchs Abra- 
 ham, Isaac and Jacob, and the name of the great 
 law-maker Moses will in time altogether dis- 
 appear from the list of names. Among Ameri- 
 cans, and particularly among those of Puritan 
 descent, we will frequently meet the patriarchal 
 names, of which one, as known to every school 
 child, is inseparable from the proudest names to 
 be found in the history of America. "President 
 Lincoln" sounds stranger to the ear than the 
 mere name "Abraham Lincoln." One name of 
 the Old Testament, however, has been adopted 
 to so great an extent that it will hardly die out 
 in the next centuries, and is held in common by 
 
190 
 
 emperors, kings and subjects alike. The name 
 is Joseph. Poles particularly seem to cherish a 
 great predilection for this name. Judging from 
 those in Chicago, every fifth Pole is christened 
 by this name, which in the Old Testament is 
 surrounded with a glory of virtue and innocence. 
 Modern Christian names, if not taken from his- 
 tory, may in many instances be traced to novels 
 or fictions. Parents are often in a great dilemma 
 when choosing a name for their child. Some- 
 times their choice is very unfortunate, implying 
 qualifications with which nature never furnished 
 their offspring, thereby corroborating the old 
 saying, that there is nothing in a name. 
 
 While the given name, as a rule, can not 
 serve as a reliable indicator of the nationality, 
 on the other hand, names may be met with of 
 so peculiar a nature that the owner's nationality 
 can easily be determined. Nobody will, for 
 instance, doubt the nationality of a man by the 
 name of Patrick, though the marriage record 
 shows a Dane by that name. Gustaf Adolf is 
 not always, but most frequently, a Swede. If 
 we come across a Thor or Thorbjorn, hardly 
 any mistake will be made by counting him 
 amongst the Norwegians; and Soren is a spe- 
 cific Danish name, as Frithiof is Swedish. A man 
 
191 
 
 by the name of Gotthilf or Dietrich is, as a 
 matter of course, a German. Emilie is a very 
 common name among German girls, just as 
 common as Mary amongst Irish. Hilda and 
 Hulda are common names amongst Swedish 
 girls, while a Barbara outside the circles of Pol- 
 ish girls is a rarity. French Canadians will not 
 seldom choose names from the history of 
 France — Bonaparte, Jean Jaques Rousseau, 
 Richelieux, nay, even Voltaire, we frequently 
 come across. And as to the colored race, it 
 may seem superfluous to enumerate the Wash- 
 ington, the Lincolns, the Ulysses, and the 
 Shermans, the patriotic names being only appli- 
 cable to males, America having not yet pro- 
 duced a Jeanne d 1 Arc. If not historical, the 
 colored people may look for their names with 
 Shakespeare. The records will, among other 
 dramatic names, show an Othello and Desde- 
 mona who got married a couple of years ago. 
 Too often, as premised above, parents will give 
 their children names without heeding their natu- 
 ral qualifications. Many a very dark brunette 
 in Chicago is called Lillie or Rose. 
 
 The number of Christian or given names 
 mostfrequently usedbeing comparatively limited, 
 the variation of family names, on the other 
 
192 
 
 hand, is so much greater, so great, indeed, that 
 one can hardly think of anything between heav- 
 en and earth which may not some day or an- 
 other appear as a family name. Undoubtedly it 
 would take several volumes to gather one of each 
 of the various family names in the public records. 
 The less complicated, of course, are those end- 
 ing with the syllable "son," which, however, is 
 lending a certain monotony to the names. This 
 is particularly the case with a mojority of the 
 Scandinavian names, hailing from the time when 
 children affixed said ending to the given names of 
 their fathers. Peter may have had a boy chris- 
 tened John, and John's full name was conse- 
 quently John Peterson. John may get married, 
 and have a son whom he may call Peter, and, 
 being a son of John, his full name will be Peter 
 Johnson. The same rule being applied to girls, 
 we still meet such names as Petersdotter 
 (daughter), Johnsdotter, and so on. The name 
 of the farm, of which the family was the pro- 
 prietor or tenant, was not seldom added to the 
 name, the records contain any amount of them. 
 Names indicating a trade are not so frequent 
 amongst Scandinavians, though Mr. Smith, of 
 course, is by no means scarce, but may be 
 counted by scores. Swedes may not seldom 
 
193 
 
 have some very choice names taken from the 
 nobility of their country, as Gyllenstjerna ( golden 
 star), Gyllenorn (golden-eagle). Or they may, 
 as is the case in numerous instances, have names 
 from the vegetable world, odoriferous of flowers 
 and leaves, as for instance, Liljenkrants (wreath 
 of lillies), Palmqvist (branch of palms), Lind- 
 qvist (branch of linden-tree), etc. 
 
 The English, after the German family names, 
 are the most complicated of all. Besides the 
 easily translated names as Schneider (tailor), 
 Schuster (shoemaker), Zimmermann (carpen- 
 ter), Smith, Baker, and the common names of 
 colors, as Weiss (white), Braun (brown), 
 Schwartz (black), we find an entire series of 
 the indiscriminately chosen names as Suessmilch 
 (sweet-milk), Schweinlein (little hog), Weiss- 
 kopf (white head), Kalbeskopf (calf's head), etc. 
 In many instances corresponding names may be 
 found in English, but Germans have that class 
 of surnames in a far greater extent. 
 
 In regard to the many family names denoting 
 a trade, the origin is easy enough to trace, but 
 many of the compound names have undoubtedly 
 from the beginning been nick-names or pet 
 names, the original meaning having been lost 
 sight of, they have become family names. A 
 
 Marriage License Window. 13. 
 
194 
 
 name such as Mannteufel, composed of "man" 
 and "devil," a highly aristocratic name at that, 
 can not easily be explained in any other way. 
 
 Some names are selected at random, as for 
 instance Polish Jewish names. The author 
 Dr. Leopold Ritter, famous in literature under 
 the pseudonym Sachor Masoch, has written a 
 series of Jewish stories, justly ranked as gems 
 in literature. In one of these he gives authentic 
 information of how these Jews came to their 
 surnames. When Frants Joseph the Second is- 
 sued his ordinance providing that Jews in the 
 future should bear family names, sorrow and 
 consternation were the first results of the em- 
 peror's command. After some lamentations 
 and shedding of tears they, however, soon be- 
 came reconciled to their fate. The women and 
 girls amongst them commenced thinking of 
 names they should adopt, handsome and proud 
 names of course, according to their notions, for 
 vanity may slumber under even the most modest 
 gown or caftan. But what is the use of reck- 
 oning without a host. Neither in this nor in 
 any other district the Jews voluntarily selected 
 their names. The officers concerned made a 
 business of giving surnames to the Jews, who 
 quietly surrendered to what they considered the 
 
195 
 
 inevitable. He who offered a brilliant pay, got 
 a brilliant name, he who paid well got a good 
 name, the moderate payer got a modest name, 
 and he who could pay nothing at all, got a vul- 
 gar name, the officers not seldom giving vent to 
 their humor. At that time rich Jews succeeded 
 in getting names as Veilchfield (violet-field), 
 Goldreich (gold-rich), Diamant, Hermelin, and 
 Rubinfeuer (ruby-fire). The well-to-do had to 
 be satisfied with names as Charmant, Nussel- 
 baum (^nut-tree), Dukat, Perlemutter (mother- 
 of-pearl). The consideration being small, the 
 names were most frequently taken from geo- 
 graphy. Some were registered as Regen 
 (rain), Tabak (tobacco), and the absolute poor 
 were condemned to Essig (vinegar), Pheffer 
 (pepper), and other like names. 
 
 It is a very rare instance when a man seeks 
 to change his family name. Here or there a 
 letter may be thrown overboard, or one vowel 
 may take the place of another for the sake of 
 euphon} 7 or an easier pi-onunciation. The name 
 itself usually remains as it was before its owner 
 landed in America, and is not changed by his 
 children born in this country. An applicant for 
 a license giving his name which, in respect to 
 its length and pronunciation, belonged to that 
 
196 
 
 species popularly termed "jaw-breakers," an- 
 other applicant made the remark: "You ought 
 to change your name to Smith or Jones." To 
 which the owner very laconically responded: 
 "My father rests in his grave a highly respect- 
 able man." In this answer is, perhaps, the 
 most satisfactory explanation why the great 
 masses of people do not change their names, no 
 matter how odd these may be. Any ambitious 
 son maintains his family name and he takes 
 pride in keeping it up as long as possible. In 
 the name all the family traditions are preserved, 
 and to do honor to the name is quite a natural 
 ambition with most men. With an eye to the 
 future a foreigner, whose children were born 
 here, wished to be informed if his son was eli- 
 gible to the office of president of the United 
 States. Perhaps many may be nourishing the 
 thought that their names in a far future may 
 adorn the highest office of this country. It is 
 not altogether impossible that, say a hundred 
 years from now, there may be a president of 
 the United States by the name Lewandowski 
 or Hansen, or Weiskoff, or Quicksilber, or, 
 perhaps, Napoleon. 
 
 As mentioned above the rule is that foreign- 
 ers keep their names, but we will sometimes 
 
197 
 
 find examples of translated names. The writer 
 recollects a middle-aged man who signed his 
 name to an affidavit blank, and handed it over 
 the counter. There it stood clear and in bold 
 letters, John Gladstone. The appearance of the 
 man spoke eloquently against the probability 
 that he belonged to the Anglo-Saxon race, and 
 when he commenced to talk, it became evident 
 that the English vocabulary at his command was 
 very limited. A Gladstone who cannot speak 
 English fluently will naturally arouse some sus- 
 picion. On the other hand it is a rather deli- 
 cate affair to ask a man if he is sure that a 
 name so distinctly written as in this instance is 
 his own. The conversation having been turned 
 upon the great diversity of surnames, he was 
 made to understand that the clerk presumed 
 that his father was born in England and had 
 settled in Germany. The man objected to that 
 presumption. None of the family were English 
 as far as his knowledge of his ancestors reached. 
 They were all Germans with little or no knowl- 
 edge of the English language. The conversa- 
 tion having taken a more familiar turn, he was 
 asked how it happened that he had such a dis- 
 tinctively English name. Then the explanation 
 was given. He had emigrated not very long 
 
198 
 
 ago with the bona-fide intention to become an 
 American; but an American, he claimed, must 
 have a name that under all circumstances points 
 to his descent from an English-speaking people. 
 He therefore had translated his name, that in 
 his mother-tongue was Freudenstein, the cor- 
 rect translation of which is Gladstone. Having 
 been fully convinced that in order to change a 
 name certain legal formalities have to be ob- 
 served, he once more took his original name, 
 and the certificate of birth of his first-born baby 
 announces that Freudenstein and not Gladstone 
 is the name the family is still enjoying. 
 
 Sometimes a name will get a comical sound 
 when pronounced with a foreign accent. As an 
 illustration may here be given an episode, in 
 which the central figure was a little man with 
 an iron gray beard that covered his face, com- 
 mencing just beneath his eyes. He stood in a 
 motley crowd of young men all waiting for their 
 licenses. He had signed his name, but the let- 
 ters not being distinctly written, he was asked 
 to tell his name. Being a little hard of hearing 
 he, like most hard-hearing or deaf people, spoke 
 very loudly. Finally understanding the ques- 
 tion he cried out at the top of his voice, "rats." 
 His name was Raths, but with his American 
 
199 
 
 pronunciation it sounded like "rats." He re- 
 peated it several times, and the effect was in- 
 stantaneous. The crowd howled "rats," and 
 from one end of the office to the other nothing 
 but "rats" was heard during the hilarity that 
 arose. Mr. Raths was a very good-natured 
 man, most likely utterly ignorant of the mean- 
 ing of this, at that time, popular slang in the 
 jargon of the country. He shook hands with the 
 bystanders, and he who did not know better 
 might have thought that here stood a man 
 among a host of friends joyful at surprising him 
 in taking out a license in his old age. 
 
 While the name to a certain degree indicates 
 the nationality, the personal, if not typical ap- 
 pearance of individuals may not seldom lead to 
 false conclusions. The instances are not few 
 where even the keenest observer may be in 
 doubt whether the man before him is an Irish- 
 man or a Scandinavian. It is a very common 
 idea that all Scandinavians have blue eyes and 
 blonde hair, but the exceptions with dark eyes 
 and black hair may be counted by the thousands. 
 Nor are blonde Irishmen so scarce as some per- 
 sons are inclined to believe. Naturally the out- 
 ward appearance of North Germans and Scan- 
 dinavians is the same, the different manners and 
 
200 
 
 bearing being almost the only marks of differ- 
 ence, where the typical is not predominant. 
 Amongst people of the Latin race it is not diffi- 
 cult to discern the typical Frenchman from the 
 typical Italian, but where the specific typical is 
 wanting, the similarity ceases and it will be dif- 
 ficult to determine who is the Frenchman and 
 who the Italian. 
 
 On women the national peculiarities seem to 
 be more strongly impressed. A clerk is seldom 
 in doubt as to the nationality of the many 
 women who, during the year, appear before the 
 license window. We are here considering only 
 the emigrated women. As a rule they are less 
 susceptible of foreign impressions than the men 
 whom the strife of life brings in contact with 
 all nationalities. Cosmopolitan views are not 
 so easily entertained by the average woman. 
 In their way they are more patriotic than the 
 men. To the woman we appeal in many na- 
 tional undertakings; she influences her husband 
 and sons, and not seldom will she make patriots 
 of those lacking a deeper understanding of pa- 
 triotism. Her own language as mother-tongue 
 is to her more than the mere regard of conven- 
 ience. She teaches her children in that lan- 
 guage, and she sings the songs of her country to 
 
201 
 
 them while rocking the cradle. Children of 
 emigrated parents, at least the first-born, know 
 as a rule their mother's language long before 
 their native language. It is true that a com- 
 mon-school education will soon bring the 
 mother's language in oblivion, but it is also true 
 that teachers sometimes have a hard task in 
 accustoming the child's ear and tongue to the 
 use of the language of his native country. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Girls as Applicants — Nervous Men — "Under 
 the Weather" — Hypnotism. 
 
 ON an average of twice a week a female 
 partner in the matrimonial contract will 
 take out the license. Questioned why the 
 bridegroom does not come, the answer in most 
 instances will be that he is working, not being 
 able to leave the shop without loss of money. 
 But the answer may also be that he does not 
 like to come because he is bashful. A bashful 
 lover on the threshold of matrimony at the close 
 of the nineteenth century may seem an anomaly, 
 and yet he exists and has many brothers. But 
 it is not always that the bashfulness is in proper 
 relation to the age. Middle-aged gentlemen, 
 who never were married before, will sometimes 
 have an abundance of bashfulness. As a special 
 favor they ask their sweethearts to transact the 
 business with the license clerk. The ladies do 
 not like it, but they, of course, will yield to the 
 
 foolish demands in preference to having the 
 
 (202) 
 
203 
 
 wedding postponed, perhaps for a long time. If 
 the bashful man is not possessing a greater 
 quantity of bashfulness than his bride, he may 
 leave it to the minister to take out the necessary 
 documents. A very beloved and amiable min- 
 ister, who frequently took out licenses for 
 members of his congregation, never neglected 
 to call the clerk's attention to the fact that it 
 was not he, who was going to get married. By 
 signing his name to the affidavit, it had several 
 times happened that his name appeared in the 
 published license list. The first time his wife 
 had put in a mild objection, and though she had 
 been used to it, still she wished to avoid the 
 mistake if possible. 
 
 Nearly related to the bashful are the nervous 
 applicants. A clerk, not too hardened in his 
 agency- as deputy for Cupid, will always extend 
 his sympathy to a nervous applicant, and he will 
 try to encourage him, knowing that in many 
 instances a man needs all his nerve when entering 
 married life. The nervousness manifests itself 
 sometimes by a violent shaking of the hand. 
 The applicant may vainly make two or three 
 attempts to sign his name, and will not succeed 
 until he takes the advice to withdraw from the 
 counter and retire to a lonesome desk where he 
 
204 
 
 without any spectators can regain his composure 
 or gain some strength. It is not always small 
 and faintly built individuals in whom the nervous 
 disposition makes itself apparent. On the con 
 trary, strong and robust men may be what we 
 in daily parlance call "rattled" to such a degree 
 that, taking their powerful frame into considera- 
 tion, they look very ridiculous. 
 
 Sometimes an explanation of the nervous 
 attack is given with the assurance that the evil 
 is only a passing one called forth by a little 
 festival the night before, the last convention of 
 friends before the wedding. It has happened 
 that applicants have been under direct influence 
 of liquor while making their application. They 
 have admitted that they were intoxicated, but 
 as drunken people are not disinclined to enter 
 into an argument, they frequently protest against 
 the refusal of a license until the effects have 
 disappeared. 
 
 "But, Mr. clerk," argued an intoxicated 
 gentleman, " let us for a moment and for the sake 
 of an argument suppose that I, and not you, am 
 drunk, what about it? I know my name, don't 
 I? I know my girl's name, her age, — no sir, I 
 take that back, for I will not swear to any girl's 
 age, even if I were sober. Or do you call this 
 
205 
 
 the talk of a drunken man ? Well then, knowing 
 the facts in this case, why try to interfere with 
 my happiness, for I am happy, perhaps happier 
 than I ever will be. — Do you trust in this office? 
 You don't, well, I will excuse you, but you know, 
 as well as I, you could not refuse me because I 
 or you are drunk." 
 
 The following day the man took out the 
 license in sober condition. He acted as if he 
 had never seen the clerk, who of course did not 
 know him, had never seen him before. To 
 argue with drunken people would be a very 
 useless task, for their comprehension of the sit- 
 uation is naturally different from that of the clerk. 
 
 In speaking of men under influence of liquor 
 a scene of a rather comical character suggests 
 itself. The groom had taken out the license, 
 when the door suddenly sprang open and his 
 fiancee came staggering in, throwing her arms 
 around his neck. She had been drinking, there 
 was no doubt, for her breath told the whole 
 misery. The couple wanted to be married 
 immediately, and the groom seized the oppor- 
 tunity to explain that the lady was not full. 
 "What else is the matter with her" interposed 
 a bystander, on whose toes the lady had stepped 
 with no light foot. 
 
206 
 
 " I can't tell, I am sure, unless what a doctor 
 once told me concerning myself was true, that 
 I was loaded with too much magnetism that 
 might influence my nearest surroundings and 
 bring them in a kind of hypnotic or comatose 
 condition. I guess we better postpone the 
 wedding till to-morrow." 
 
 The next day the couple returned to the office 
 wishing to know where to find a Justice. The 
 bride expectant was then in a perfectly sober 
 condition, while the groom was strongly intoxi- 
 cated. 
 
 "He is not drunk, the girl explained, but only 
 suffering from intermittant fever. He has for a 
 while been suffering as you see him now, every 
 second day." 
 
 What a terrible fate ! She being in a hypnotic 
 condition the day he is free from fever, and he 
 being sick the day when the effects of her 
 hypnotic condition is over. Were they ever 
 married? Nobody can tell. For opposite their 
 names in the record is a blank space, indicating 
 that the license was never returned. 
 
9 
 
*;• 
 
 
% 
 
.< 
 
 *-l^OW 
 
 *?se 
 
$Whr 
 
 mmMM