year; but
after these periods marriage is their proper sphere of action, and one
in which they must play a part or suffer actual pain as well as the
loss of one of the greatest of earthly pleasures.

MARRIAGES ARE MOST HAPPY

and most productive of handsome and healthy offspring when the husband
and wife differ, not only in mental conformation, but in bodily
construction. A melancholy man should mate himself with a sprightly
woman, and _vice versa_; for otherwise they will soon grow weary of
the monotony of each other's company. By the same rule should the
choleric and the patient be united, and the ambitious and the humble;
for the opposites of their natures not only produce pleasurable
excitement, but each keeps the other in a wholesome check. In the size
and form of the parties the same principles hold good. Tall women are
not the ideals of beauty to tall men; and if they marry such, they
will soon begin to imagine greater perfections in other forms than in
those of their own wives. And this is well ordered by nature to
prevent the disagreeable results which are almost certain to grow out
of unions where the parties have a strong resemblance.

For instance, tall parents will probably have children taller than
either, and mental imbecility is the usual attendant of extreme size.
The union of persons prone to corpulency, of dwarfs, etc., would have
parallel results; and so, likewise, of weakly and attenuated couples.
The tall should marry the short, the corpulent the lean, the choleric
the gentle, and so on, and the tendency to extremes in the parents
will be corrected in the offspring.

Apart from these considerations, there are reasons why persons of the
same disposition should not be united and wedlock. An amiable wife to
a choleric man is like oil to troubled waters; an ill-tempered one
will make his life a misery and his home a hell. The man of studious
habits should marry a woman of sense and spirit rather than of
erudition, or the union will increase the monotony of his existence,
which it would be well for his health and spirits to correct by a
little conjugal excitement; and the man of gloomy temperament will
find the greatest relief from the dark forebodings of his mind in the
society of a gentle, but lively and smiling partner.

However, in some particulars the dispositions and constructions of

MARRIED PEOPLE MUST ASSIMILATE

or they will have but few e