Hints for Lovers Part 34

It would be difficult, sometimes, to determine whether constancy was an autogenous or enforced virtue.

Never play pranks with your wife, your horse, or your razor.

There is a thing which not gold nor favor nor even love can buy. Its true name is secret; but it is content to be called Sympathy.

Accordingly,

Let no man or woman think when he or she has won wife or husband all has been won that is necessary. For,

If sympathy cannot be gained from one quarter, it will probably be sought in another.

At the moment of the formation of a matrimonial syndicate of two, each member of this as yet unincorporated joint-stock company verily believes that each has put into the concern his whole real and personal property.

Yet it is to be feared that, although

The woman, possibly, invests her whole capital, the man--often, no doubt, unwittingly to himself--retains not a few unmatured bonds and debentures. That is to say,

Love, it is to be feared, is often enough a bargain in which the woman comes off second-best. For

A woman gives herself; man accepts the gift.

Rarely, if ever, does a man give himself. He cannot. His work, his play, his politics, his friends, his club--these are matters to him highly important.

To a woman the only highly important things are: her husband and her home.

A woman rules until she tries to rule,--which will be an enigma to many.

Out of a wife's obedience will grow her governance; never out of her dominance.--Those who think this sheer nonsense, are welcome to think so. But it is worth thinking about.

A man ought to rule his wife. Granted. But he cannot do this unless he rules himself. The Colonel of a Regiment cannot command if he himself breaks the King's or the State's Regulations. And

An uncontrolled wife deems her husband indifferent--or weak.

The number of husbands who, though they think they rule, yet in reality are ruled, would astonish--not their wives, but themselves.

It is customary to call the man the head of the household; yet, between man and wife, it is a question after all whether it is not the stronger will and the cooler judgment that should, and generally does, guide the family, independent of s.e.x or custom.

As in the solar spectrum, so in love: beyond and intermingled with the visible rays of pa.s.sion are numerous actinic but invisible rays of affection, invisible to careless spectators, but known and felt by the recipients. These, too, must be introduced if the connubial domicile is to be warmed as well as illuminated.

The marriage tie loosens all other ties. In fact,

Neither men or women are always aware of the absoluteness of the marriage tie: thenceforward the woman belongs not to her own people, hardly to herself.--As to the man, well,

Often a wife will actually be jealous of the time and attention her husband spends on things and matters unconnected with her--his work --his play--his politics--his friends--his club.

Many are there who still believe that the marriage service, like a legal indenture, irrevocably entails the whole estate of a human heart. In sober truth,

There never was a married couple yet who had not to purchase their own happiness. And

The only charms that increase in value as time goes on are the charms of character; beside these, those of person, and even those of mind, are weak. In short,

In marriage, as in every human relations.h.i.+p, it is character that avails and prevails, naught else.

Chemists draw a distinction between a chemical and a mechanical mixture.

Moralists might discover the same in marriage.

To encircle monogamy with an ever-increasing halo of romance--that is a problem deserving of study.

Monogamy is one of the disharmonies of life; it seems (as I have said) to be the decree of politics rather than of nature.

But surely polygamy or polyandry would be more disharmonious still.

Marriage renders no one immune. That is to say;

Unless husband and wife both avoid infection, both can catch amatory fevers.

The woman who has learned how to minister to a man's creature comforts has learned much. And

It has disconcerted many a young wife to discover how important a part of her education this is! Since

It is certainly sometimes hard to reconcile a suitor's poetic protestations with a spouse's prosaic requisitions.

In the game of life a man may venture many stakes; a woman's fate is determined by a single throw of the dice. Thus,

How often it happens that a young and inexperienced maid will look about her, will weigh and consider, will pick and choose, and, when she thinks she has found a man to her purpose, will set her cap at him will attract him, enslave him, bring him to her feet, make him propose, accept him as husband, give him all the sweets of engagement, regard herself and proclaim herself his affianced bride,--all with most prudential--it may be, most praise-worthy--motives. On a sudden, the man discovers that this was no real attachment, but a fict.i.tious, almost an enforced, one; that the methods (so he thinks) were artificial, the results delusive.