sted conference and decision given above are
counsels of prudence and wisdom. Many, perhaps most, however, of the
young couples starting out in life "go it blind" in all or some of
these particulars. The wonder is that these who start on the most
serious of compacts and the one leading to the greatest extremes of
both happiness and unhappiness with so little knowledge of each
other's condition, capacity, or deepest wishes, get along, on the
whole, so well. We see them on every side starting on the sea of
married life with gaiety of heart because the chosen one is obtained
for company and with no conception of the difficulties that may make
the voyage tempestuous. But they often make safe harbor of comfortable
comradeship for middle life and old age, and if they have had a harder
time than they need have had at least prove that "love is the greatest
thing in the world."

=The Need for Full and Mutual Understanding Before Marriage.=--The
rising tide of divorce, however, gives point to the plea of this
chapter for a more careful charting of the sailing course in advance.
The fact that so many get their discipline of knowledge and direction
as they go along and do not make shipwreck even if matrimonial storms
grow frequent or heavy, is a very good testimony to the native
goodness of men and women and to their ability to make good their
mistakes and work out success even from failure provided the
indispensable north star of unselfish affection leads them on. It
would be well, however, to lessen the failures if that can be done.
When men and women show what marriage can become for the wise, the
idealistic, and the loving, it gives a picture of satisfaction and
mutual service that makes most other human associations seem trivial
and short-lived. Only parenthood is equal or superior to marriage in
its possibilities of moral discipline and personal development. To
make it successful is worth striving for.

Literature, science, and art have many great marriages to their
credit--men and women brought together by identical tastes and similar
capacities, working together in high pursuits through a long life of
achievement. They illumine the way of life with a peculiar glow.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning sang:

"Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!
Our ministering two angels look surprise
On one another as they strike athwart
Their wings in passing."

but her union with Robert Browning showed that they were nea