ne
thing that does interest me is human admixtures. It does no one any good to
get too much attached to his own point of view."

"But surely," said Rose, "there are some marriages which are obviously bad
for all concerned--real incompatibilities? People who can't understand each
other or their children--children who can't understand their parents? It
always seems to me rather horrible that people should be shut up together
like rats in a cage."

"I expect we shall have legislation before long," said Father Payne, "for
breaking up homes where some definite evil like drunkenness is at work--but
I don't want industrial schools for children; that is even more inhuman
than a bad home. We want more boarding out, but that's expensive. Someone
has to pay, if children are to be planted out, and to pay well. There's no
motive of duty so strong for an Englishman as good wages. People are honest
about giving fair money's worth. But it is no good talking about these
things, because they are all so far ahead of us. The question is whether
anyone can suggest any practical means of filing away any of the
roughnesses of marriage. I do not believe that the problem is very serious
among workers. It is the marriage of idle people that is apt to be
disastrous."

"The thing that damages many marriages," said Rose, "is the fact that
people have got to see so much of each other. What people really want is a
holiday from each other."

"Yes, but that is impossible financially," said Father Payne. "Apart from
love and children, marriage is a small joint-stock company for cheap
comfort. But it is of no use to go vapouring on about these big schemes,
because in a democracy people won't do what philosophers wish, but what
they want. Let's take a notorious case, known to everyone. Can anyone say
what practical advice he could have given to either Carlyle or to Mrs.
Carlyle, which would have improved that witches' cauldron? There were two
high-principled Puritanical people, which is the same thing as saying that
they both were disposed to consider that anyone who disagreed with them did
so for a bad motive, and exalted their own whims and prejudices into moral
principles; both of them irritable and sensitive, both able to give
instantaneous and elaborate expression to their vaguest thoughts,--Carlyle
himself with eloquence which he wielded like a bludgeon, and Mrs. Carlyle
with incisiveness which she used like a sharp knife--Carlyle with too much