love us. We cannot afford
claret, so we will have to drink beer. Well, what would you have us do?
Yes, let us curse Fate by all means--some one to curse is always useful.
Let us cry and wring our hands--for how long? The dinner-bell will ring
soon, and the Smiths are coming. We shall have to talk about the opera
and the picture-galleries. Quick, where is the eau-de-Cologne? where are
the curling-tongs? Or would you we committed suicide? Is it worth while?
Only a few more years--perhaps to-morrow, by aid of a piece of orange
peel or a broken chimney-pot--and Fate will save us all that trouble.

Or shall we, as sulky children, mope day after day? We are a
broken-hearted little Jack--little Jill. We will never smile again; we
will pine away and die, and be buried in the spring. The world is sad,
and life so cruel, and heaven so cold. Oh dear! oh dear! we have hurt
ourselves.

We whimper and whine at every pain. In old strong days men faced real
dangers, real troubles every hour; they had no time to cry. Death and
disaster stood ever at the door. Men were contemptuous of them. Now
in each snug protected villa we set to work to make wounds out of
scratches. Every head-ache becomes an agony, every heart-ache a tragedy.
It took a murdered father, a drowned sweetheart, a dishonoured mother,
a ghost, and a slaughtered Prime Minister to produce the emotions in
Hamlet that a modern minor poet obtains from a chorus girl's frown, or
a temporary slump on the Stock Exchange. Like Mrs. Gummidge, we feel it
more. The lighter and easier life gets the more seriously we go out to
meet it. The boatmen of Ulysses faced the thunder and the sunshine alike
with frolic welcome. We modern sailors have grown more sensitive.
The sunshine scorches us, the rain chills us. We meet both with loud
self-pity.

Thinking these thoughts, I sought a second friend--a man whose breezy
common-sense has often helped me, and him likewise I questioned on this
subject of honeymoons.

"My dear boy," he replied; "take my advice, if ever you get married,
arrange it so that the honeymoon shall only last a week, and let it be a
bustling week into the bargain. Take a Cook's circular tour. Get married
on the Saturday morning, cut the breakfast and all that foolishness, and
catch the eleven-ten from Charing Cross to Paris. Take her up the Eiffel
Tower on Sunday. Lunch at Fontainebleau. Dine at the Maison Doree,
and show her the Moulin Rouge in the evening. Take the nig