Cottage Life and "Marriage and Its Real Purpose"

Dear Friends,

A merry Friday to you, today! Thank you for coming over today; we might even have a bit of sunshine to share with you!

Let's see what's been going on around the cottage~ We would like to introduce two "new" members of the doll family; Meriweather and Fauna, who have been to the big, big city and have just been reunited with their big sister, Annabelle (Who is feeling a little quite the country bumpkin next to their fine clothes).



These two dolls belonged to my mother's younger sisters back in the early 1950s, and Annabelle for many years reigned supreme at the head of my grandmother's bed. So you can see that they go way back! I was very thankful that my mother trusted me to keep them here (on the very tippy-top shelf, of course).

And here are two Godey's plates that we tried to resist buying, but when they were marked down to $2.50 each, well. . .

See how much Grandma's old Dutch girl likes them!

AnnaMarie and I decided that instead of painting over this, ummm, lovely wallpaper that used to greet the eye upon entering the kitchen, we would wallpaper over with the same wallpaper we put up in the parlor three years ago~


It looks SO much more pleasing to the eye, that we wonder why we did not think of it sooner! And of course, it was very economical, coming from the thrift store :) .


We hope that you do not tire of our sharing little tidbits from our old books and magazines~ this little article jumped out at us so that we thought we'd finish off with it today (We will leave to our married friends to arrange sharing it with their spouses):

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Marriage and its Real Purpose

"Real marriage, ideal marriage, should mean the union of a man and a woman, living their lives together, and spending their entire lives learning to know each other." This is the statement of John Arthur Graves in one of his recent essays. "The man who has been married a week, a month, a year or five years, and who imagines that he knows his wife, is a man to be pitied.

"Each human soul represents the development of thousands and thousands of years back of us. Even the simplest human creatures cannot be really known except by years of study, lasting over a lifetime.

"The man and woman really married, and happily married, are the couple that each day and each week and each year find new attractions, new and charming characteristics, in each other. Nine-tenths of the troubles of married life are due to the fact that the average husband neglects to study his wife, fails to realize her beauty of character--ignores the wonderful gift that has been bestowed upon him.

"A woman gives herself, her entire life, everything that she has, to a man, staking her happiness upon his intelligence and appreciation, and expecting him, as the years pass, to study and know her as she strives to know him, until a perfect union of soul has been completed between them. This is real marriage."

~The Mother's Magazine, April 1908

Until next time, dear friends,

Love,

Marqueta