t of
life becomes next to a moral impossibility.

Mental qualities are certainly admirable gifts in domestic life. But
though they may dazzle and delight, they will not excite love and
affection to anything like the same extent as a warm and happy heart.
They do not wear half so well, and do not please half so much. And yet
how little pains are taken to cultivate the beautiful quality of good
temper and happy disposition! And how often is life, which otherwise
might have been blessed, embittered and soured by the encouragement of
peevish and fretful habits, so totally destructive of everything like
social and domestic comfort! How often have we seen both men and women
set themselves round about as if with bristles, so that no one dared to
approach them without the fear of being pricked. For want of a little
occasional command over one's temper, an amount of misery is occasioned
in society which is positively frightful. Thus is enjoyment turned into
bitterness, and life becomes like a journey barefooted, amongst
prickles, and thorns, and briars.

In the instance we have cited, the pretty face soon became forgotten.
But as the young man had merely bargained for the "face"--as it was that
to which he had paid his attentions--that which he had vowed to love,
honour, and protect.--when it ceased to be pretty, he began to find out
that he had made a mistake. And if the home be not made attractive,--if
the newly married man finds that it is only an indifferent
boarding-house,--he will gradually absent himself from it. He will stay
out in the evenings, and console himself with cigars, cards, politics,
the theatre, the drinking club; and the poor pretty face will then
become more and more disconsolate, hopeless, and miserable.

Perhaps children grow up; but neither husband nor wife know much about
training them, or keeping them healthy. They are regarded as toys when
babies, dolls when boys and girls, drudges when young men and women.
There is scarcely a quiet, happy, hearty hour spent during the life of
such a luckless couple. Where there is no comfort at home, there is only
a succession of petty miseries to endure. Where there is no
cheerfulness,--no disposition to accommodate, to oblige, to sympathize
with one another,--affection gradually subsides on both sides.

It is said, that "When poverty comes in at the door, loves flies out at
the window." But it is not from poor men's houses only that love flies.
It flies quite a