each other too well; sweet,
amiable women of poetic dispositions, chained to matter-of-fact, brutal
men; honest, saving, hard-working men fastened for life to silly,
thoughtless, extravagant women; romantic women married to men who see no
difference between Vesuvius in eruption and the smoking chimneys of
Pittsburg or Birmingham; women of a keen, humorous disposition living
with dullards unable to see a joke; Wagnerians having for wives women
who prefer the music of 'The Casino Girl' to that of 'Lohengrin':
almost everywhere tragedy or comedy.

* * *

Matrimony is a very narrow carriage. If you want to be comfortable in it
you have to be careful, or one will soon be in the way of the other. To
put yourself to a little inconvenience now and then is the only way of
making the other comfortable. To believe that love alone, without
careful study, will resist all the shocks and will be all the more
durable that it is ardent is the greatest mistake one can make in the
world. Violent passion may be compared to Hercules, who might have
enough strength to raise a palace on his shoulders, but not enough to
stand a cold in his head. It is the thousand and one little drawbacks of
matrimonial life that undermine it. Love will survive a great
misfortune, but will be killed by the little miseries of conjugal
partnership. In matrimony it is the little things that count and which,
added up, make a terrible total. The waning love of a wife will not be
revived by the present of a thousand pound pair of ear-rings, but it may
be kept up by the daily present of a penny bunch of violets, which
reminds her that you think of her every day of your life. It is not the
great sacrifices that appeal to her as do constant little concessions.
Many men would sacrifice their lives who would not give up smoking or
their too frequent visits to their clubs for their wives. Many women
will be the incarnation of devotion and self-abnegation who will not do
their hair as their husbands beg them to.

* * *

Surely matrimony ought to procure happiness, for the greatest bliss on
earth should be to love in peaceful security with the guarantee of the
morrow. Matrimony is all right. So are the symphonies of Beethoven--when
they are performed by orchestras who play in time and in tune.

The worst--indeed, the only serious--drawback to matrimony is that it is
an everyday meal which, palatable as it may be, runs the risk of
becoming insipid, a