the plaint of poet and novelists; the charm of woman disappears with
her mystery, with possession. And the typical humorist speaks of the
curl papers and kimono of the wife, the snores and unshaven beard of the
husband. "Familiarity is the death of passion" is the theme of countless
writers who bemoan its passing in the matrimonial state.

How much harm the romantic tales have done to marriage and the
sober-satisfying everyday life, no one can estimate, no one can
overestimate. Romanticism, which extols sex as the prime and only thing
of life, prudery which closes its eyes to it and makes sour faces, need
special places in Dante's Inferno. Neither has dealt with
reality,--reality, which is satisfying and pleasant unless examined
with the prejudices instilled by the hypersexual romance writer and the
perverted sexuality of the prude.

Nevertheless that two people brought up entirely differently, and having
different attitudes towards love and life, should come into sharp
conflict is to be expected. Further, that disillusionment follows after
the excitement and heightened expectation of courtship is inevitable.
Marriage at the best includes a settlement to routine; it carries with
it an adjustment to reality, a getting down to earth that is painful and
disappointing to minds fed to expect thrill and passion with each
moment.

The idealization of the mate--the man or woman--gives way to a gradually
increasing knowledge of imperfection and common clay. Common sense,
earnestness of purpose, willingness to adjust, and a sense of humor save
the situation and change the love of the engaged period into a more
solid, robust affection which gains in durability and wearing quality
what it loses in intensity.

Unfortunately, in many cases to a great extent and in all to some
extent, there arises dissension natural wherever two human beings meet
on anything like equal terms.

In times past (and in many countries at the present time), the
patriarchal household prevailed. The Head of the House was the father, a
sovereign either stern or indulgent according to his nature. Perhaps his
wife ruled him through his love for her, as women have ruled from the
beginning of things, but if she did it was not by right but by
privilege.

America has changed all that, so say all native and foreign observers.
Here the woman rules; here she drags her husband after her like a tail
to a kite; here she is mistress and he obeys, though nominally s