e do not love too intensely. I am speaking of solid,
workaday happiness, not of ecstasies and raptures. The excessive claims
made by passionate love and the fevered state of mind it produces are
often the cause of its shipwreck. 'If I am horrid, darling,' a girl once
said to her lover, when trying to make up a quarrel she herself had
brought about, 'it's only because I love you so intensely.' 'Then, for
God's sake, love me less, and treat me better,' snapped the outraged
lover, and we can but sympathise with him.

I have purposely used the word _Affection_ in this division, in place of
one signifying a greater degree of feeling, and I unhesitatingly state
that generally speaking, the most successful marriages are those
which--'when the first sweet sting of love be past, the sweet that
almost venom is,' develop into the temperate, unexacting, peaceful and
harmonious unions which come under this heading. To the ardent youths
and maidens--restless seekers after the elusive joy of life--who will
have none of this prosaic and inglorious counsel, and who are prepared
to stake their all on the belief that the first sweet sting of love is
going to last for ever, I say: Get your roses-and-raptures over some
other way; don't look for romance in marriage or, unless your case prove
the exception to the rule, you will inevitably make a terrible
mistake! . . . Oh, don't ask _me_ how it is to be done, but remember
what I say, and don't marry until the quiet, sober, beautiful and
restful affection you now scorn becomes in your eyes a haven of peace
from the storm and stress of life, and the highest good it contains.

Another reason why the Marriage of Affection is the most likely to prove
a success is because mutual respect enters so largely into its
composition, and how enormously important this is in the holy estate,
none can realise until they marry. I shall have more to say later about
the urgent necessity for respect in married life.

II

WHY WE FALL OUT: DIVERS DISCORDS

'And yet when all has been said, the man who should hold back from
marriage is in the same case with him who runs away from battle.'
--R. L. STEVENSON.

We have discussed those types of marriage more or less doomed to failure
from the outset, and now come to the reason why so many matches prove
unhappy when apparently every circumstance has been favourable.

It was Socrates, I think, who said: 'Whether you marry or whether you
remain u