Chapter I: Mention These Tricks (3)

who loved another man's wife all his life, simply because he fell in love with her before she married the other fellow, does not strike me as exactly the proper thing, or exactly the manly thing. I like better the Sensible Shepherd of George Wither, who sang jauntily:

Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flowery meads in May,

If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?

Kill off your love if it be not returned, as though it were a condemned felon. The execution is a painful scene, but the effect on your manhood is good. "True love were very unlovely," says Sir Philip Sidney, "if it were half so deadly as lovers term it!" "There are few people," says Rochefoucauld, "who are not ashamed of their loves when the fit is over." "In love we are all fools alike," says Gay. "We that are true lovers" says Shakspeare, "run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly." "O love," cries LaFontaine, "when thou gettest dominion over us,

WE MAY BID GOOD-BY TO PRUDENCE."

"Love can hope where reason would despair," says Lyttleton. "O love, the beautiful, the brief!" exclaims Schiller. "Love at two-and-twenty is a terribly intoxicating draught," says Ruffini. "At lovers' perjuries they say Jove laughs," smiles Shakspeare. "Where love and wisdom drink out of the same cup, in this everyday world, it is the exception," said Madame Neckar. "The poets, the moralists, the painters, in all their descriptions, allegories, and pictures," says Addison, "have represented love as a soft torment, a bitter sweet, a pleasing pain, or an agreeable distress." "O how this spring of love resembleth the uncertain glory of an April day!

ADIEU, VALOR! RUST, RAPIER!

be still, drum! for your manager is in love; yea, he loveth!" says Shakspeare. "I do much wonder," says the King of Thought, again, "that one man, seeing how much another man is a fool when he dedicates his favor to love, will, after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in others, became the argument of his own scorn, by falling in love."

"LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP EXCLUDE EACH OTHER,"

says DuCoeur. "Love begins by love, and the strongest friendship could only give birth to a feeble love." "Love, which is only an episode in the life of man," says Madame DeStael, "is the entire history of woman's life." "Love is a spaniel," says Colton, "that prefers even punishment from one hand to caresses from another." "A man loved by a beautiful and virtuous woman, carries a talisman that renders him invulnerable," says Madame Dudevant; "everyone feels that such a one's life has a higher value than that of others." "There are no little events with love," says Balzac; "it places in the same scales the fall of an empire and the dropping of a woman's glove." "There's nothing half so sweet in life as love's young dream," says Moore. "Where there is love in the heart," says Beecher, "there are rainbows in the eyes, which cover every black cloud with gorgeous hues." "The greatest happiness of life," says Victor Hugo, "is the conviction that we are loved for ourselves--say,

RATHER IN SPITE OF OURSELVES."

"Love makes its record in deeper colors," says Longfellow, "as we grow out of childhood into manhood; as the Emperors signed their names in green ink when under age, but when of age, in purple." "The heart of a young woman in love is a golden sanctuary," says Paulin Limayrac, "which often enshrines an idol of clay." This thought, the reader can see is a close neighbor of the Boston poet's idea of the "base wooden god," spoken of a while back. "We forgive more faults in love than in friendship," says Henry Home; "expostulations betwixt friends end generally ill, but well betwixt lovers."

"Gold," says Deluzy, "does not satisfy love; it must be paid back in its own coin." "The platform of the altar of love," says Jane Porter, with great accuracy of metaphor, "is constructed of virtue, beauty, and affection; such is the pyre, such the offering; but the ethereal spark must come from heaven that lights the sacrifice." "This passion is," says Dr. South, "the great instrument and engine of nature, the bond and cement of society, the spring and spirit of the universe. It is the whole man wrapped up into one desire, all the power, vigor, and faculties of the soul

ABRIDGED INTO ONE INCLINATION."

"Samson was so tempted," says Shakspeare, "and he had an excellent strength; yet was Solomon so seduced; and he had a very good wit." There has always been one time in a man's life when he felt poets should sing only of this one act in the drama of life. Here is the idea--the same idea we have all had, only dressed in better raiment, for Alexander Smith took great pride in the children of his brain: "Methinks all poets should be gentle, fair, and ever young, and ever beautiful; I would have all poets to be like to this--gold-haired and rosy-lipped, to sing of love." Finally, said the Great Napoleon: "Love is the occupation of the idle man, the amusement of the busy one, and

THE SHIPWRECK OF A SOVEREIGN."

Thus, if we will turn through the pages of our books, we will see everywhere the marks of love upon men's minds. It is a rude bath, which when we have grown more accustomed to the waters, delights and satisfies, and in our sleep our dreams are beautiful. It is natural, and therefore need not be called laudable--though if it were not a part of our development, schools of love would be a necessity, to teach men how to love without scandal in the sight of God.

THE FIRST ATTACK OF LOVE IS RIDICULOUS

to those not acting one of the two parts, yet it is well to remember our own experience. "Love is the fulfilling of the law," says the Bible; "many waters cannot quench it, neither can the floods drown it." Neither can the selfish aim nor the cruel jest of the parent whom it discommodes do aught but fan the flame if God and not folly have truly lighted it. The danger of handling carelessly the fire of the heart is one of the gravest which confront the guardians of younger lives. The switch is fixed; the train is approaching; if you attempt to turn the train you must not only know where it is going after it shall be turned, but you must have the skill to see whether there yet remains time to make the movement with success. A wreck by a switchman is a fearful thing!

COURTSHIP

"Their Love was like the lava-flood
That burns in Ætna's breast of flame."

And when with envy Time, transported,
Shall think to rob us of our joys,
You'll in your girls again be courted,
And I'll go wooing in my boys.--Percy.

On flies time, and thus the tale goes on. You are in love with an amiable maiden, and she is pleased. If you could see further into her heart you would find she was idolatrous. But this matter of courtship must have shown you how careless you have been with your money through all those years you might have been hoarding it for this great need. But you did not save your wages, probably, or if you did you are an exceptional young man. You now need money. You should work about fifteen months before you marry. It will be a long, tedious, unpleasant pull, trying to the affections, and it is generally very trying to the health; but it is necessary, and if you have not the persistence to save money for fifteen months, in the meantime quarreling and making up, with all the quarters of the moon, you have not the solidity of citizenship, and will be better unmarried. "Successful love takes a load off our hearts, and puts it upon our shoulders" says Bovee. Square up your shoulders! Get under the load so that you can carry it! The days of responsibility have come. The larger the responsibilities look, the deeper the young man usually loves. The day of the Chicago fire a man put up a pine shed on the ruins of a marble palace, and on his sign he painted

"ALL GONE BUT WIFE AND HOPE!"

People who thought those two things a small capital were greatly mistaken, for that same man is now rich again. When you hear of a man being ruined by getting married, ask for names and dates. The name will usually settle it. Along the front of the lake at Chicago is a breakwater. In hot weather this pier is nearly covered with men of leisure, taking midsummer-night dreams. They are the so-called "harvesters" who start out in droves into the country after something to do--"forced to search for work and not find it!" Marriage has not ruined them. You will find that the men your adviser shows you who has been ruined by marriage, was a born wharf-rat, fit only to be shot with a gun big enough to save the expense of any further funeral.

THERE IS NO POSSIBLE CHANCE

of a man being worse off married than single. As a married man, he is on the right path. As a single man, there is no anchor for him. He may be here to-day, in San Francisco next week. Then, in two or three years, he will be back, as poor as ever. You will have to work, of course. But you have never before done your share of the work. If you are a smart man, you can do your share and more too. You will have a home of your own. You could never get one as a single man, perhaps, because you would not need one.

YOU WILL BE SAFER

as a married man. It seems to me that a virtuous, sober, christian, unmarried man should have twice the credit of a married man, for he is certainly exposed to thousands of extra temptations. Everything is natural in marriage. The builder has "builded wiser than he knew." At thirty-five he finds himself well along on the successful journey of life. His bachelor friend who has lived a selfish existence is poorer, has lost the charm of youth, and is skurrying around to get a wife who will be a queen and slave at the same time. His bachelor friend is

A LAUGHING-STOCK

among the last crop of young girls, who can recollect how he went with their married sisters, and he will be satisfied with nothing above eighteen, though his hair is dropping out, or frosting like a cold night in September. If he had not been so selfish he would have been married eight or ten years ago. Now

NATURE BEGINS TO ASSERT HERSELF.

The friends of his youth have formed the new ties that have come with the march of the years. The trees have their leaves, and cast a grateful shadow, cool and sweet. The bachelor is bare, and under his branches the hot and withering sun pours down unpleasantly. You are lucky to have escaped such a lot, for it is O, so lonesome and unsatisfactory to man! It is not good for him to be alone. Now,

IN TALKING TO YOUR SWEETHEART,

there is one bearing alone which will bring forth good fruit. Be honest and sincere. Remember that the philosophers and sages of the centuries have been studying and marveling over the thing called Truth--why it is that it always asserts itself--why it is that its parts always coincide with each other, as though they had first been put together! When you see cut stones unloading before the site of a building, you know by the marks on them that, when they are put together, they will make a fine-looking front, for the architect has copied them from the front of some building which has, sometime or other, been erected just as this projected structure will be. But here is

THIS QUARRY OF TRUTH;

you enter it without a human architect, hew out a stone, hew out another, and another, and soon a beautiful edifice arises, in the walls of which there is not a single peep-hole or blemish. Everything fits. So bear yourself toward your future partner for life that when you enter the quarry of your brain for her information, you also enter this quarry of Truth. The stones you now cut out will stand as the buttresses of the walls!

HOW SHOCKING IF THEY ARE LIES!

Tell her, when you tell her anything at all, the exact truth. Be very careful about this. Tell her particularly about your money affairs. Your happiness depends more on food and clothes than you are now able to understand. But if you put in solid blocks of truth for the basement, the finer developments of your life will join on with precision and effect. I know a young man who went in debt for a fine span of horses and wagon. His bride supposed they were his own, and he "let her suppose."

A WHOLE AFTERLIFE

of the veriest toil and the most honorable career never wholly expunged the blame which attached to him in both her mind and the minds of her people. It was so foolish in him! One little speech, and long years of bitter pride-wounding would have been averted. The young woman would have married him, just as quickly, for it is easy to make terms before marriage in this country. Do not promise to do things which depend more on events than on yourself. Do not promise to love your future wife always. She may prove unworthy of it. You may prove incapable of it.

INWARDLY MAKE UP YOUR MIND

to ennoble yourself so that your affections will solidify. The companionship of a woman will do much to help you. Promise little by word of mouth--everything by actions. Then, as your days come and go, your character constantly comes more fully into the light, and that light is one of broad, pleasant, humanly love. Your wife will be sure to live happily, for you have built within her mind no extravagant expectations.

LOOK AT A CIRCUS POSTER!

See the absurd and ridiculous promises made upon it! Why do they dare so to humbug the people? Because, in no other way could they get people to ride ten or twelve miles through a summer drouth to hand over their money to the man who is anxious to get it! Here is a man in a chariot, with tigers plunging under his rein like the rays from the sun.

"New hope may bloom, and days may come.
Of milder, calmer beam,
But there's nothing half so sweet in life,
As love's young dream."]

Here is a pyramid of elephants four elephants high! Here is the acrobat in the midst of the smoke and blaze of an Armstrong cannon, beginning some flight to a far-off trapeze, or swing, in the air! It is somewhat different inside.

THE CHARIOT OF TIGERS

is an enlarged rat trap with two sleepy, disgusted overgrown cats in it--cats which do not thrive well in this cold land, and which do not smell any too sweet and clean. The pyramid of fine-looking picture-elephants is an ugly live elephant or two standing on a beer-keg or two, which is a wonderful feat for elephants, of course, but not an entertaining one to human sight-seers; and as a final swindle, the cannon act is a man on a spring disguised as a wooden cannon, who is thus hoisted a few feet into the air, where he catches hold of his swinging bar and completes the usual act of an "aerial acrobat." "Fi on't!" as Hamlet says; "reform it altogether!"

DO NOT "BILL YOURSELF TOO STRONGLY"

before your divinity. She would love you if she thought you were just a common man, like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln; so, if you tell her you are poverty-stricken and prodigal, and it be true, then she will think that she had rather have a demi-god, poor as Job's turkey, than a common young man, like your brother or your friend, with all the gold of King Plutus! Bring to her an honest heart, and you will, indeed, bring treasures before her, and she would have no right to complain, even were she so inclined. Love does not seem to be a matter of volition--

OF "WANT TO, OR DON'T WANT TO."

"No man or woman," says Arthur Helps, "was ever cured of love by discovering the falseness of his or her lover. The living together for three long rainy days in the country, has done more to dispel love than all the perfidies in love that have ever been committed." Just think of that during all the time of your courtship. Dread the "living together," and when you come to stand the test, the test will not be too great for you. A young man, truly, doesn't need to be married, as a full-grown one does. But

IN ORDER TO REAP WE MUST SOW.

Our bachelor friend of forty wants to reap just as badly as you, but his fields will be waste while yours will be growing. When you get your life insured at twenty-one they charge you about ten times what the risk really is. Why? Because, although they have not the least idea that you are going to die now, they know the mortgage is on your life, and the dues, when you pass fifty, would, in justice, be higher than mortal man would pay. Therefore they even it up.

YOU LAY ASIDE A SURPLUS

for your old age, and, until lately, the courts held you could collect that surplus, if your contract were not completed to the end of your existence. Thus, in marrying, you are following the wise ordinance of God. You are choosing a blooming, healthy young woman while you are yourself fresh enough to attract her love and hold it. You are living as a married man while you might, probably, live with more strictly selfish personal comfort up to thirty-five as a single man; but you are,

AFTER THIRTY-FIVE,

immensely better off than the single man, and you will, besides, always be given a better place in society than he, because society likes to see every member in its ranks doing his duty like a man and helping to bear the burdens as well as reap the benefits which our system of living deals out to those who participate in it.

IF YOU HAVE THE CONSUMPTION

and the young lady also have that disease, consult the physicians of your families. A very learned man, in a series of papers in the _Atlantic Monthly_, some years ago, refused to forbid such marriages entirely. Put yourselves especially under the care of your doctors, and follow their advice implicitly. If the young lady, alone, is consumptive, extend your engagement and wait for events. If you yourself are thus tainted with disease, I have little hesitation in saying that it is not manly to get married until you are entirely out of the reach of pecuniary want without your labor, and even then there are other considerations of nearly equal importance which should lead you to frequent conferences with your family doctor.

YOU THUS SEE THAT "LIFE IS REAL,

and life is earnest." If you are healthy, thank God for it, and sing merrily while you build the nest which will hold the mate in warmth and comfort. After the harbor of refuge is built, the ship will find a pleasant and ever-welcome anchorage during the big storms outside.

Take the daughter of a good mother.

MARRIAGE.

The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men;
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage-bell.--Byron.

Quotation of this verse is made, not because it celebrated a marriage--it, rather, commemorated the frightful carnage of Waterloo--- but because it very faithfully represents the fashionable beginning of wedded life, to which it alludes. There seems to be in woman an inherited, instinctive desire for this kind of thing at her marriage. It is cruel to deny her, therefore man usually goes through with it like a martyr. My prejudices are so heartily enlisted against "blow-outs" of this kind that I feel the compunctions of an honest judge at sitting in such a case. Nevertheless, I may relate some things I have seen, to show how badly a couple may start in life. Here is one instance: The dust has filled the air for six blocks around some stately church. The "hacks" and private barouches and coupes have been packed together so that any movement was entirely impossible; the bride has come like a queen of the orient; she has walked on flowers to the vestibule; there she has passed under an arch of tuberoses; half-way down the aisle a gate of jessamines and smilax has opened with a smothering sense of richness; at the altar she has actually knelt on a pillow of camellias (fifty cents apiece); and a fifty-dollar organist has put on his full instrument, as though he were proclaiming the glory of God most mighty, instead of the folly of man most miserable. Into the church have thronged the elect, proud and disdainful; on the outside has stared the vulgar multitude, too ignorant for anything but rapt wonderment. From the temple of high-priced worship the celebrants have passed, in a still more exclusive body, to a residence where a banquet has been prepared by a man who generally makes ice cream for a living, and where a dazzling display of wedding presents has been uncovered to the careless gaze. Then the train bears away the twain of one foolish flesh, and the farce is over.

OF COURSE IT WAS A FARCE.

The elect read the newspapers next morning with a smile. None but he of the vulgar multitude was hoodwinked. The man and the woman have spent all their money to purchase a "swell wedding." The presents were hired, so were most of the "hacks." The florist has got part of his money. The couple, six months afterward, are "beating" some poor landlady out of their board, and the man, in all likelihood, will never again be heard of. But the women have been intensely agitated by the event. They have never thought about the subsequent aspects of the case.

NO ONE OF THE SAME "SET"

would be willing to spare a single "hack" or one double camellia. Why did the young man and the young woman do it? They did it principally out of vanity, in imitation of some rich person who desired to distribute his money among hard-working folks and at the same time create a feeling of envy among his fellows and "please the women folk."

LET US HAVE THE MANHOOD AND THE WOMANHOOD,

if we have five hundred or a thousand dollars, to buy those necessaries of life which will enable us to live without debt after we are settled for life. We are sailing out of the harbor. Would it not be ridiculous for us to heave into the water our provisions, as a symbol of our delirious joy?--would not our ship be a ship of death when we reached the middle of the sea? There is just as much joy in a simple wedding which has properly shown our respect for the event as the third in importance of all which will punctuate our history. We have been born; we will die;

WE NOW MARRY.

"A man finds himself seven years older, the day after his marriage," says Lord Bacon. "Men should keep their eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut afterwards," says Madame Scuderie. "Marriage is a feast," says Colton, "where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner." "Mistress," cries Shakspeare, "know yourself; down on your knees, and thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love. For I must tell you friendly in your ear,--sell when you can; you are not for all markets." "To love early and marry late," says Richter, "is to hear a lark singing at dawn, and at night to eat it roasted for supper." "Marriages are best of dissimilar material," says Theodore Parker.

"TO BE A MAN

in a true sense," says Michelet, "is, in the first place, and above all things, to have a wife." "It is in vain for a man to be born fortunate," says Dacier, "if he be unfortunate in his marriage." "When it shall please God to bring thee to man's estate," says Sir Philip Sidney, "use great providence and circumspection in choosing thy wife. For from thence will spring all thy future good or evil; and it is an action of life, like unto a stratagem of war; wherein a man can err but once!" "We are not very much to blame for our bad marriages," says Ralph Waldo Emerson;

"WE LIVE AMID HALLUCINATIONS,

and this especial trap is laid to trip up our feet with, and all are tripped up, first or last. But the mighty mother nature, who had been so sly with us, as if she felt she owed us some indemnity, insinuates into the Pandora box of marriage some deep and serious benefits and some great joys." "It is a mistake to consider marriage merely as a scheme of happiness," says Chapin; "it is also a bond of service. It is the most ancient form of that social ministration which God has ordained for human beings, and which is symbolized by all the relations of nature." "Marriage" says Selden, "is a desperate thing;

THE FROGS IN ÆSOP

were extremely wise; they had a great mind to some water, but they would not leap into the well, because they could not get out again." Why were they wise? They were not wise at all. I have seen frogs in wells who are more contented than they would be outside. "Men are April when they woo, December when they wed," says Shakspeare; but he also says that "maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives," so it is an even tilt between two forms of human nature. "If idleness be the root of all evil," says Vanbruch, "then matrimony is good for something, for it sets many a poor woman to work." "In the opinion of the world," says Madame Swetchine, "marriage ends all; as it does in a comedy;

THE TRUTH IS PRECISELY THE REVERSE.

It begins all. So they say of death, 'It is the end of all things.' Yes, just as much as marriage!" "Humble wedlock," says St. Augustine, "is far better than proud virginity." "Never marry but for love," says William Penn, in his will; "but see that thou lovest what is lovely!" "Strong are the instincts with which God has guarded the sacredness of marriage," says Maria McIntosh. We cannot bear this remark too constantly in mind. You would not dare shut off your supply of water, because you know you will need it. But you are sometimes tempted to shut off your supplies of love; and men do sometimes do it, and

AFTERWARD GO MAD

from clear soul-starvation. "Up to twenty-one I hold the father to have power over his children as to marriage," says Coleridge; "after that age he has authority and influence only. Show me one couple unhappy merely on account of their limited circumstances, and I will show you ten who are wretched from other causes." "He that takes a wife takes care," says Ben Franklin. "I chose my wife," says Goldsmith, "as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would wear well." "Before marriage," says Addison,

"WE CANNOT BE TOO INQUISITIVE

and discerning in the faults of the person beloved, nor after it too dimsighted and superficial. Marriage enlarges the scene of our happiness and miseries.

A MARRIAGE OF LOVE

is pleasant; a marriage of interest easy; and a marriage where both meet, happy. A happy marriage has in it all the pleasures of friendship, all the enjoyments of sense and reason, and, indeed, all the sweets of life." "It is the policy of the Londoners," says Thomas Fuller, "when they send a ship into the Mediterranean Sea, to make every mariner therein a merchant, each seaman venturing somewhat of his own, which will make him more wary to avoid, and more valiant to undergo dangers. Thus married men, especially if having posterity, are

THE DEEPER SHARERS IN THAT NATION

wherein they live, which engageth their affections to the greater loyalty." "Matrimony hath something in it of nature, something of civility, something of divinity," says Bishop Hall. "Though matrimony may have some pains, celibacy has few pleasures," says old Dr. Johnson, a bachelor. Again says he: "Marriage is the best state for man in general; and every man is a worse man in proportion as he is unfit for the married state." "Marriage is an institution," says Sir Richard Steele "celebrated for a constant scene of as much delight as our being is capable of."

ONE THING KEEP IN MIND!

When the sages, the critics, and the people who love to say smart things, paint the infelicities of marriage, they as often paint simply the general troubles of life, which are common to all people. The bachelor is more apt to be kept awake by the crying child in the next chamber than is the father in the same room with the child. The young man quarrels with his landlady as often as the young husband quarrels with his wife. The young man notoriously finds his wants as lightly resting on the memories of those he hires to attend to them as does the husband of the most careless wife. He cannot escape the sickness of life with even the good fortune of a married man, according to the statistics of the Government. The married woman is also healthier than the maid. So, then, get the critics of the married state to specify its various unhappinesses; then subtract from that schedule all that come alike to the single state, and you will find that marriage, for its separate joys, has not a separate set of troubles in as great proportion. The very highest evidence of the usefulness and agreeableness of marriage is gathered from the well-known haste in which both men and women, when death takes away their companions, seek, in a second marriage, a renewal of those relations which, in their opinion, lend additional charm to the drama of life.

WEDDED LIFE

You are my true and wedded wife;
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart.--Shakspeare.

She's adorned
Amply that in her husband's eye looks lovely--
The truest mirror that an honest wife
Can see her beauty in.--John Tobin.

"Of all the actions of a man's life, his marriage does least concern other people," says Selden, "yet, of all actions of our life, it is most meddled with by other people." In fact, if people would take home their attention thus so liberally bestowed abroad, it would enable them to make matches of their own far better than those which now burden the records of the churches and the courts. If a young man and a young woman can be left alone three or four years, to wear into the new relations they have assumed, there is little chance of their being unhappily married. An instinct of the strongest character brought them together, and is likely to hold them by its own force. Man is a creature of habit. Strip him of his home after he has been for four years habituated to it, and he will be unhappy, no matter how unpeaceful that home may have been. Therefore, if possible, have your wife and yourself in a house by yourselves for the first four years of your married life. As a general thing this is possible, and I think a firm will, in most cases, greatly aids the possibility of such a course. One thing, at least, is clear,

NO HUSBAND IS DOING RIGHT

to admit to his home as a sharer of its comforts any other man. It is a common sentiment among any two homeless young men that the first one who marries shall take the other to live with him. Nothing is more absurd or out of place. I do not think there could be so dangerous a foe to the peace of the wife, in case the young man do not think his friend has married wisely,--and he must think so, or he would himself have married her if he could have done so. His criticisms will estrange the husband's heart and cool his love. On the other hand, if he has admired the lady, then the situation is all the more atrocious.

THOSE HORRIBLE EVENTS IN LIFE,

where a man's home is transformed suddenly into what has been bitterly but justly termed a "hell on earth," are more than half the time traceable to the carelessness of the husband in not throwing around his wife those barriers which shall ever keep her from temptation. The wife of pure instincts will generally object to the admission of another man to her home as a member of it. How often her womanly and honorable objection is overruled by the husband as the mark of an inhospitable nature. Live alone. Let no one see your meannesses, for the third party will remember and recite those meannesses where you would either never have seen them, or have forgotten them altogether.

BE KIND TO YOUR WIFE.

If you find this difficult, begin by making up your mind that, during the next week, you will not, under any circumstances whatever, speak a cross word to her. Carry out this resolution as well as you can. Then the next week takes off the strain. The natural tendency of cross words to misery will so startle you that you will soon try it for another week. You will do better on the second trial. This is important for your own peace of mind, for, in scolding and fretting, the average woman, if you get her started, can easily hold her own. This woman is bound to you by stronger ties than you suppose.

GO OFF TWO HUNDRED MILES AND SEE!

She is also bound to you by very strong bonds in the law, as you would find out if you deserted her. She is also entitled to a very high place in your goings and comings, as society teaches you. When the President is inaugurated, there is a front seat close by for his wife. The Chief Justice administers the oath, and there is another front seat for his wife, also. So you need not be afraid of doing her too much honor. Speak to her respectfully. Perhaps there is a youngster watching you--you have no idea how closely. This youngster will try on his hand governing his mother, if he sees any opportunity whatsoever. Just look to it that he does not see such an opening! Your wife as you will know, has cares of a multifarious kind. Her hours of labor greatly exceed yours, though she cannot concentrate her mind on one thing as you can. She is fitted, by long years of inherited housewifery, to do this and then that with untiring devotion to the interests of her household. You cannot, as a general thing, lighten those legitimate cares save by your smiles. But you are a selfish man if you increase them by requiring any great amount of extra personal attention. You will find it her nature to minister to you in many ways. Let her alone in it. Accept all gratefully, and do something in return

BY WAY OF FORMAL RECEIPT.

You will grow happier day by day, and your wife will be the happiest woman in the neighborhood. She will be proud of you because you have had the brains to be happy and sensible. We hear a good deal of railing against the general wisdom of getting married. There seems to be a sort of popular contagion lately, making it fashionable to fling jeers and jibes at the cares and sorrows of marriage. We find young men writing to the newspapers that it costs them six dollars to board singly, and that the same "style" of living and enjoyment could not be purchased at

A "BOARDING-HOUSE OF ONE'S OWN"

for less than twenty-two. And again the same sort of writer will assert that he can quit one "boarding-house" when he pleases, whereas he must eat the cold roast beef and cranberry sauce of the other until he crosses the creek called Styx. Let me call this young man Mr. Bachelor, and reply to him in about his own style:

A FEW THOUGHTS IN GENERAL:

1. A man named Payne wrote a seemingly-ordinary song entitled "Home, Sweet Home." This piece, on account of certain sentiments conveyed, at once received the seal of nearly universal approbation. It is safe to say Mr. Bachelor and the class in which he may be placed were not among those who accorded extraordinary attention to the little song. He is and they are, therefore, at once separated from the vast mass of the people. Evidently the sentiments of the song were based on experiences largely known to the general gender and unknown to Mr. Bachelor.

2. The man Daniel McFarland was so worthless that his wife refused to live with him, and, sadly enough, fell in love with still another man. The worthless husband, discovering that Richardson was coming into property which had not always been his own, resorted to an ambuscade, and killed Richardson. To the dullest comprehension this act revealed a deep jealousy. Jealousy is founded on a solid fear of losing something. In this unhappy family, where the man believed he had nothing to care for, he suddenly awoke to find he had thrown away a pearl richer than all his tribe.

3. It seems to me as natural for a man to establish a home, with a wife, as to grow a beard on his face.

SOME CONSIDERATIONS IN PARTICULAR.

1. At twenty-seven years of age a man whom I know met the finest young woman he had ever seen. He wanted her and he got her. Five years have passed.

2. At marriage the man found himself endowed with a godlike selfishness. This he probably owed to the past struggle for existence. With this not very estimable faculty he carried to his home a young woman endowed with nearly the opposite faculties. She only acquired selfishness through association with her companion. At the start, then, they were both willin' oxen--one ox was willing to do all the pulling, and the other ox was willing he should.

3. Now the man had also a high faculty called judgment. He continually wondered why the woman did not despise him on account of his selfishness. He soon discovered that it was because the woman lacked sadly in judgment. The baby would lift up its voice in the night. That baby must be attended to. The weather might be very cold. The man despised that fact, but the woman, because it made her teeth ache and her body cake and cramp, feared the cold. But the man also despised the baby and all its appertainings--particularly the appertainings. Therefore, the man debated within himself that he was very selfish, or he would get up. Perhaps, being a "just" man, the way men go, he really got up about once in a dozen times, but, candidly, he would probably have seen that baby suffer ere he would have attended its wants any oftener. The woman took it for granted that the man would not get up, and yet she did not despise him. She did not have judgment enough to do it.

VANITY AND SELFISHNESS.

4. A man's vanity and selfishness are present (to a woman's perception) in every movement. She likes them. They are the characteristics of masculinity.

5. The man entered matrimony with all the trepidation born out of thinking too much about it. It seemed to him like buying a fifteen-thousand-dollar horse on instalments. This is just as it seems to Mr. Bachelor, too. It was a pretty good price, but it was a high-stepper, a flyer, a beauty. It would take him all his life to pay for it, and it might founder the first year. But he had never in his life wanted anything the way he wanted that woman. Mr. Bachelor has not yet got to that stage.

RETURNING GOOD FOR EVIL.

6. There is little doubt that, speaking of man as an animal, unchastened by the benign influence of religion, "the male hates the sick female." The female knows that. Yet in return she exhibits toward the sick male a tenderness that makes his hair stand on end when he thinks of his own short-comings.

7. The man's astonishment at reaching thirty was tremendous. He found he was changing, and that marriage was evidently

THE EXPRESS PREPARATION FOR THIS CONTINGENCY.

He used to go to the theatre a great deal. He did not then notice that the air in the auditorium was more rotten than the midnight winds that blow over Chicago from the industrious rendering-houses on her outskirts. It is now a real hardship to go to an ordinary dramatic performance, and he thinks theatre-goers are as a class the most discontented people there are in society. He used to spend his earnings in various other places which now weary him beyond measure, and are equally wearisome to those bachelor friends of his who used to keep him company, and are forced by single life, to still frequent such resorts.

THIS HE FINDS OUT

when his wife goes into the country for a week or two. Those two weeks are never halcyon days with him. There is a smell about a restaurant that eloquently pleads the sweetness of home, and there is a lack of confidence expressed in a pewter spoon and a general disinclination to believe that anyone is careful molded in with the thickness of the teacup, which startle him at once into a better conception of his wife's confidence in him.

8. My friend comes home and finds his dressing-gown and slippers in front of the fire. He is tired and cross, and doesn't want to sling ashes nor bang a coal-hod. But the sight of the fire makes him feel better at once, and if there be no fire, there are no ashes. He sits in front of a coke fire in a grate. His little girl brings his slippers and carries off his shoes--or carries off one shoe and one slipper. Then he falls to thinking that girls are poor property as compared with boys, but that any kind of children are a pretty good investment against one's old age. His increasing wonder is that the whole state of things is so natural. His wife takes comfort in having him in the same room with her. When he is reading and she is darning socks, she is the very embodiment of the fine French expression "I am content." She is not as beautiful as she once was. But

ALL THE ELEMENTS OF HER BEAUTY

are still present, and with a return of the flesh she has lost in hard work she will have all her looks. A handsome woman is just as handsome to a man as a handsome girl is to a green young man like Mr. Bachelor. My friend is hugging the shores of personal expense very closely for the purpose of having two weeks in the country with his wife during the heat of July. This woman's face does not intoxicate him as it once unquestionably did. Neither does the "Trovatore miserere," nor the "William Tell" or "Poet and Peasant" overtures so delight him as once upon a time. Nevertheless there is in him a secret joy of possession, calm and pleasant, in contemplating the wife, and a quiet satisfaction, in hearing the music, that the taste of his youth was so thoroughly good.

A WIFE'S PRAYER.

9. When his wife goes to bed she loves to put her head on her husband's knees to say her prayers, and he loves to have her. He has great confidence in a woman's prayers, and he is disposed, selfishly but correctly, to believe the supplication is nearly dual in its character. In his speech he treats his wife as though she were the wife of an honored friend. If he talked either loosely or coarsely to his wife he might fall in love with any woman to whom he showed greater respect. He would, beside, proclaim his folly, for woman has small sense of humor.

DEATH OR WORSE.

10. If my friend were suddenly to lose this home by the death of the wife, he would receive an unmeasured sympathy from all thoughtful men not included in the small class who never understood what there was in "Home, Sweet Home," to set people to humming it. If he were to have this wrenched from him by a sudden awakening of his wife to all his faults, and as blind an infatuation with the faults of another man as was once extended to his own, he would know just how Daniel McFarland felt. My friend is induced to believe, however, that his wife will be strongly under his influence so long as he does not inspire her with fear. He will not pound her unless he falls to whisky-guzzling, which, considering that he does not yet use tobacco, is impossible.

SO MUCH OF A PARTICULAR HOME.

By the study of other women than his own wife (which is a very unjust mode of study) man learns to hate women in general. By observing his wife, however, he is inclined to love all her sex. Again, by contemplating himself he falls into detestation of all humankind. Such "men" as young Mr. Bachelor have spent their time in exhaustive subjective researches. They know themselves too well. They should, in reforming, take an easy step upward, and, by contemplating the good points of Swift's Yahoos, somewhat elevate their opinion of the species which they so graciously ornament! A green old age is universally admired. The color of greenness at thirty, however, is not fashionable. If I have lacked in charity in defending the wisdom of married life, it is because I have seen too much grass thrown at bad boys. When you hear a fool prating of the misery of married men as compared with single men, answer him according to his folly, or, perhaps better, answer him not at all.

BACHELORS.

I would not my unhoused free condition
Put into circumspection and confine,
For the sea's worth.--Shakspeare.

When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live
till I were married.--Shakspeare.

Nothing is further from the single man's thoughts than that he will continue in the single state all his life. He expects, when the young woman meets his gaze who satisfies either his esthetic or pecuniary ideas, generally the latter, or both, to take that young woman to his bosom and begin married life. This is a natural state of mind, and there is no harm in indulging it. It shall be the object of a few of these pages to present such aspects of the unmarried state of man as have principally commended themselves to general attention. The bachelor has plenty of arguments to keep him single while he is not in love. He thinks the arguments keep him single, good fellow. He says, as I heard one of them say: "I would ask the unbiased observer what there is in the world, after all, to induce a man to commit matrimony. Some one will say: 'To have some one to care for him when sick.' This is complimentary to woman--indicating that she marries to become a nurser of the sick and old. And must a man endure all the pains and throes of years of matrimonial cyclones that he may have some one to stew his gruel during the brief space of his last illness? If a bachelor have money, he will have friends to care for him, no fear, and if he be poor, a wife is the last thing in the world he needs. She divides his pleasures and doubles his sorrows.

HE MUST DANCE TO FASHION'S TUNE--

a palatial residence, a corps of servants, a livery, and dresses from Paris--for the sake of having some one to receive and entertain his friends' wives. He must support his wife's relations, and endure no end of feminine abuse, which is not always so feminine. The world is divided into two classes: Those who are unmarried, but wish they were, and those who are married, but wish they were not."

THIS IS A FAIR SPECIMEN

of the argument by which the bachelor convinces himself that he is happy. If it _does_ contribute to his peace of mind, why should the world care? And the world really does not care. When he comes to have his gruel stewed for him in a hospital, or, worse yet, a boarding-house, he finds out, all of a sudden, that he is really in the way, and that, in his life of perfect selfishness, he has never secured that thing which cannot be bought, yet which he so yearns for now in the hour of his feebleness, a woman's love. A good long sickness has greatly enlarged many a man's philosophy!

Still, it is not in the destiny of every man to have a wife, or to keep her if he get one. It is not unwise, therefore to consider that state as one of the phases of life, and to contemplate its various aspects, good and bad, as we have the other conditions of existence. "A man unattached and without wife," says Bruyere, "if he have any genius at all, may raise himself above his original position, may mingle with the world of fashion, and hold himself on a level with the highest; this is less easy for him who is engaged; it seems as if marriage put the whole world in their proper rank." "I have" says Burton, the melancholy, "no wife or children, good or bad, to provide for, and am a mere spectator of other men's fortunes and adventures."

THE ONE GRAND RESULT OF SINGLE LIFE,

so far as is generally noticeable, is selfishness. The chief lesson of marriage is self-denial. Which is the more pleasing of the two traits? When the bachelor views life, he sees nothing good in it, for it all looks selfish. Being so deeply jaundiced, the eye tints everything with yellow. At forty he is heartily sick of it all. Why? Because he has learned that he has squeezed the orange dry. The faculties which God gave him to be pleased with when a recipient have been worked to death.

HE HAS BEEN A RECIPIENT WITHOUT CEASE.

He has chewed on one side of his mouth all his life. The teeth on the other side have loosened and are ready to fall out, while the overworked molars on the other are about to run into decay. The faculties whereby he was expected to please other people have become rudimentary, and he can now no more fascinate other people than he can sing soprano. He makes an effort to engage the interest of a young lady. The hollowness of his attack at once arrests her attention. The ease with which he speaks long sentences of admiration proclaims his long practice in the art, and the utter lack of real meaning in them. He knows that the girl will

LAUGH BEHIND HIS BACK,

and it irritates him, and disposes him to attribute her act to "the falseness of her sex," when it is merely her keen intelligence in such matters. The fact of the matter is, that though an old bachelor is seemingly greatly smitten with nearly every young girl he sees, he does not succeed in marrying because he is a hard man to catch. The young woman takes his measurement. His devotion is overpowering, but she easily sees that it is a sham. The bachelor looks at her glove, and, instead of admiring the hand, as the "marrying young man" does, he says "Dollar and a half!"

HE LOOKS INTO HER EYES AND FIGURES

on the probable cost of board for two. The time of mating is past with him, and that young woman can see it "as quick as a flash of lightning." He may be the man she could love if she "let go of herself," but his slippery words do not mean "marry," and she "passes him around." He loves to go to picnics and church sociables, for he must be amused, and he hopes to find that pleasure in next Tuesday's donation party which he did not get at last Friday's rehearsal.

THE TROUBLE ALL LIES