Marriage

its Beneficent

INSTEAD of on two or three, you stake, your happiness on one life only. But still, as the bargain is more explicit and complete Effects on your part, it is more so on the other; and you have not to fear so many contingencies; it is not every wind that can blow you from your anchorage; and so long as death withholds his sickle, you will always have a friend at home. People who share a cell in the Bastile, or are thrown together on an uninhabited isle, if they do not immediately fall to fisticuffs, will find some possible ground of compromise. They will learn each other's ways and humours, so as to know where they must go warily, and where they may lean their whole weight. The discretion of the first years becomes the settled habit of the last; and so, with wisdom and patience, two lives may grow indissolubly into one.

But marriage, if comfortable, is not at all heroic. It certainly narrows and damps the spirit of generous men. In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being. . . . The air of the fireside withers out all the fire wild

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Its Com

mon

place

ness

To
Women

it is En

larging

ings of the husband's heart. He is so comfortable and happy that he begins to prefer comfort and happiness to everything else on earth, his wife included. Yesterday he would have shared his last shilling; to-day "his first duty is to his family," and is fulfilled in large measure by laying down vintages and husbanding the health of an invaluable parent. Twenty years ago this man was equally capable of crime or heroism; now he is fit for neither. His soul is asleep, and you may speak without constraint; you will not wake him. It is not for nothing that Don Quixote was a bachelor and Marcus Aurelius maimed ill. For women there is less of this danger. Marriage is of so much use to a woman, opens out to her so much more of life, and puts her in the way of so much more freedom and usefulness, that, whether she marry ill or well, she can hardly miss some benefit. It is true, however, that some of the merriest and most genuine of women are old maids; and that those old maids, and wives who are unhappily married, have often most of the true motherly touch. And this would seem to show, even

for women, some narrowing influence in comfortable married life. But the rule is none the less certain: if you wish the pick of men and women, take a good bachelor and a good wife. Virginibus Puerisque. I.

TIMES are changed with him who mar

ries; there are no more by-path meadows where you may innocently linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave. Idleness, which is often becoming and even wise in the bachelor, begins to wear a different aspect when you have a wife to support. Suppose, after you are married, one of those little slips were to befall you. What happened last November might surely happen February next. They may have annoyed you at the time, because they were not what you meant; but how will they annoy you in the future, and how will they shake the fabric of your wife's confidence and peace! A thousand things unpleasing went on in the chiaroscuro of a life that you shrank from too particularly realising: you did not care, in those days, to make a fetish of your conscience; you

MarriageIts Experience Chasten

ing

would recognise your failures with a nod,
and so, good-day. But the time for these re-
serves is over. You have wilfully introduced
a witness into your life, the scene of these de-
feats, and can no longer close the mind's eye
upon uncomely passages, but must stand up
straight and put a name upon your actions.
And witness is not only the judge, but
your
the victim of your sins; not only can she con-
demn you to the sharpest penalties, but she
must herself share feelingly in their endurance.
And observe, once more, with what temerity
have chosen precisely her to be your spy,
you
whose esteem you value highest, and whom
you have already taught to think you better
than you are. You may think you had a con-
science, and believed in God; but what is a
conscience to a wife? Wise men of yore erected
statues of their deities, and consciously per-
formed their part in life before those marble
eyes. A god watched them at the board, and
stood by the bedside in the morning when
they woke; and all about their ancient cities,
where they bought or sold, or where they
piped and wrestled, there would stand some

symbol of the things that are outside of man. These were lessons, delivered in the quiet dialect of art, which told their story faithfully, but gently. It is the same lesson, if you will — but how harrowingly taught! when the woman you respect shall weep from your unkindness or blush with shame at your misconduct. Poor girls in Italy turn their painted Madonnas to the wall; you cannot set aside your wife. To marry is to domesticate the Recording Angel. Once you are married, there is nothing left for you, not even suicide, but to be good. Virginibus Puerisque. II.

ability

ESPECTABILITY is a very good thing Respectin its way, but it does not rise superior to all considerations; I would not for a moment venture to hint that it was a matter of taste; but I think I will go as far as this; that if a position is admittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and superfluously useless, although it were as respectable as the Church of England, the sooner a man is out of it, the better for himself, and all concerned.

An Inland Voyage.