Grandfather Leiseder’s Ode to Marriage

An ode to marriage by Reverend Martin Leiseder, written in 1917 after he came to the United States and was about to marry Sarah Sutter.  They married and had a marriage that was a long conversation.  Their first-born was Ruth Josephine Leiseder Wilson Stauffer.  Then the two twins, Gwen and Bea were born.  Ruth married Jack Wilson and thus came Jack, David, and Peggy. Jack had three daughters, Erika, Gretchen, and Jessica, and one son, John.  David had a son and daughter, Nicholas and Lisl. Peggy had one daughter Kristin.  This was read at the marriage of David to Diane, Peggy to Andy Schmitt, Ruth to Alex “Bud” Stauffer after Jack had died, Jack and Judi, and now at the wedding of Erika Sarah Wilson to Vilmantas Vitas.

 

Love is the doorway through which the human soul passes from selfishness into service, from solitude into kinship with all humanity.”  This definition of love was written in our Grandfather Leiseder’s journal on February 23, 1919.  The words were read as part of my (Ruth, David, Peggy, Jack, Erika ) marriage ceremony, and [Peggy and Andy, Jack and Judi, Erika and Vilmantas] thought they were appropriate today. 

To think deeply about life and living was not only my Grandfather’s joy, but also his job as a Congregational minister for 55 years in one Church in Etna, Pennsylvania.  I want to read as a part of this marriage celebration another entry concerning love and marriage taken from his old journal.

Dated 1917 … Grandfather (known to us as PopPop) comments on choosing a wife:

“In looking for a wife, I would pass up the exotic beauty and the fashion plate – the one would be sure to be selfish and the other extravagant.  Of course, I should want my wife to be pleasant to look upon – not a monstrosity to hurt the eyes as you look across the breakfast table; and I should want her to know and care about clothes to keep reasonably within the fashion and not be the sort of woman that looks like her husband’s mother or his cook that he is kindly taking out for an airing.”

“Nor should I lay overmuch stress on a girl’s domestic accomplishments.  Any girl with a thimbleful of brains can learn to cook adequately - if she wants to.  Some say that marriage is just a long conversation.  Think of having years upon years of the undiluted society of a woman who never had a fresh idea, or a new viewpoint, who never read anything, and who was so tiresome that the very clock yawned in her face.”

“The real trouble with matrimony is boredom.  The patron saint of all wives should be Scherezade, the gifted woman raconteur who saved her own life and kept her husband by keeping his interest at the boiling point with stories that were always “to be continued.”

“I want a woman who is a good sport.  A woman who could meet the emergencies of life with philosophy, and who would not expect matrimony to be only a romantic dream, but a working partnership, in which a man and a woman, pool all they had in the world and do their best for the partnership.  Man and wife must play the game, taking the ups and downs without boasting or whining, and taking each other just as they are.” 

“As for my part -- I ask God for a firm will to be true, devoted, and of high ideals.  Cheerfulness and mutual cooperation are natural consequences of genuine love.  If love does not make us cheerful and willing to cooperate, then it is no love at all.  God give that my love will never be lacking in these qualities.”

 

These words are as relevant today in XXX as they were in 1917, 83 years ago.

Take them with you {Peggy and Andy, Jack and Judi, Vilamantas and Erika}