age
and even life itself would take on new beauty and charm. If a woman has
daily evidence of a man's devotion, no matter in how small a way, her
hunger and thirst for love are bountifully assuaged. Misunderstandings
rapidly grow into coldness and neglect, and foolish woman, blind with
love, adopts retribution and recrimination as her weapons. There are a
great many men who love their wives simply because they know they would
be scalped if they didn't.

Making an issue of a little thing is one of the surest ways to spoil
happiness. One's personal pride is felt to be vitally injured by
surrender, but there is no quality of human nature so nearly royal as
the ability to yield gracefully. It shows small confidence in one's own
nature to fear that compromise lessens self-control. To consider
constantly the comfort and happiness of another is not a sign of
weakness but of strength.

[Sidenote: Spoiled Children]

Too many men and women are only spoiled children at heart. The little
maid of five or six takes her doll and goes home because her playmates
have been unkind. Twenty years later she packs her trunk and goes to her
mother's because of some quarrel which had an equally childish
beginning.

But the hurts of the after-years are not so easily healed. The children
kiss and make up no later than the next day, but, grown to manhood and
womanhood, they consider it far beneath their dignity and importance to
say "Forgive me," and thus proceed to the matrimonial garbage box by way
of the divorce court.

Lovers are wont to consider a marriage license a free ticket to
Paradise. Sometimes happiness may be freely given by the dispenser of
earthly blessings, but it is more often bought. It is a matter of
temperament rather than circumstance, and is to be had only by the two
who work for it together, forgiving, forgetting, graciously yielding,
and looking forward to the perfect understanding which will surely
come.

Matches are not all made in heaven. Even the parlour variety sometimes
smell of brimstone, and Cupid is blamed for many which are made by
cupidity. The gossips and the busybodies would die of mal-nutrition were
it not for marriage and its complications.

[Sidenote: The Tabbies]

Two people who have quarrelled cheerfully before marriage and whose
engagement has been broken three or four times often surprise the
tabbies who prophesy misfortune by settling down into post-nuptial
content. Two who are universally p