anged choice for marriage, in the first place, secured, and still
secures in countries not yet changed in this particular, a similar
financial position. Often greed of family prestige made the money end
the chief one and sacrificed everything else to the bringing together
of two great fortunes. Yet the fact that family choices usually united
those of similar financial standing and power of gratification of
taste did lead toward an easy adjustment of the young couple to life
together. One of the chief causes of unhappiness in marriages wholly
from personal choice and in response to an impulse of passionate
attachment is that the taste and "style" of living of the two has been
so different that it is hard, after the first glamour wears away, to
settle down to agreeable compromises. As a rule, "the beggar maid and
King Cophetua" can get on better than the young woman heiress and the
ex-chauffeur in such compromises; for it is always easier to extend
one's income than to contract it, and women can still owe all to the
loved one with better grace than men can bear the position of one
"marrying above his lot." The tendency of the older custom, however,
to limit all marriage choices on the basis of money to be contributed
to the common fund was, and is when now in force, as destructive to
real happiness in marriage as any ill-considered leaping across social
barriers could well be. It is well, therefore, that it is outgrown.

The second condition believed essential to success in marriage from
the point of view of family stability, when the marriage choice of the
loved one was made by the elders, is far more important than that of
financial equality. It is the congeniality of the two families to be
united by the marriage. The custom of betrothing their children as a
means of carrying on the close friendship of a lifetime beyond its
natural limit into the generations yet to be, is an old and not a
wholly bad one. It insures for the young couple a genuine love from
both sides the family line. To be sure, that love may be an oppressive
and undesired gift which one or the other of the young people ardently
wishes to ignore or to be freed from, but it contains also some
elements of a good start for those same young people in a mutually
devoted double parentage. When, however, as in Eastern countries, it
leads to betrothal in infancy or very early childhood and sets the
girl who is to be the wife in the family of her betrothed when sh