ship; we quote old saws, and fancy
ourselves cruelly used. We think ourselves philosophic martyrs, when the
simple truth is, that we are disappointed.

The major part of the misery in marriage arises from the false estimate
which we make of married happiness. A young man, who is a pure and good
one, when he starts in life is very apt to fancy all women angels. He
loves and venerates his mother; he believes her better, purer far, than
his father, because his school-days have taught him practically what men
are; but he does not yet know what women are. His sisters are angels
too, and the wife he is about to marry, the best, the purest woman in
the world, also an angel, of course. Marriage soon opens his eyes. It
would be out of the course of nature for every body to secure an angel;
and the young husband finds that he has married a woman of the ordinary
pattern--not a whit better on the whole than man; perhaps worse, because
weaker. The high-flown sentiment is all gone, the romantic ideas fade
down to the light of common day. "The bloom of young desire, the purple
light of love," as Milton writes in one of the most beautiful lines ever
penned, too often pass away as well, and a future of misery is opened up
on the basis of disappointment. After all, the difficulty to be got over
is this--how is mankind to be taught to take a just estimate of things?
Is it possible to put old heads upon young shoulders? Is not youth a
perpetual state of intoxication? Is not every thing better and brighter
far then than in middle life? These are the questions to be solved, and
once solved we shall be happy; we shall have learnt the great lesson,
that whatever is, is ordained by a great and wise power, and that we are
therewith to be content.

A kindly consideration for others is the best method in the world to
adopt, to ease off our own troubles; and this consideration is to be
cultivated very easily. There is not one of those who will take up this
book who is perfectly happy, and not one who does not fancy that he or
she might be very much better off. Perhaps ten out of every dozen have
been disappointed in life. They are not precisely what they should be.
The wise poor man, in spite of his wisdom, envies the rich fool; and the
fool--if he has any appreciation--envies the wisdom of the other. One is
too tall, the other is too short; ill-health plagues a third, and a bad
wife a fourth; and so on. Yet there is not one of the sorrows or
trou