What God does not hold together by LOVE let not man try to paste together by law.

One great cause of the increase of divorces is the financial emancipation of woman.  Women can now get out and take care of themselves, where a few years ago they had to grin and bear it; or bear it without grinning.

If the new thought means anything, Brother Wing, it means that every individual man or woman, has the RIGHT to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness wherever and with whom he chooses to seek it, so long as he or she does not attempt to abridge the same rights for others.  It means that a woman is as much an Individual as a man, and must stand or fall, hold her husband or lose him, on her own merits.  The new thought deals with Individuals regardless of sex.

Marriage is a partnership, subject in the eyes of Justice to the same rules which govern other partnerships.  Let us be just to the deserter, be he man or woman, before we are sentimentally generous to the deserted.

And don’t let us be too sure that we know all the facts in these separation cases.  It is human nature to fix up outward appearances for the benefit of the passer-by.

Seek rather to understand.  Condemn not.

Has any one told you it is lucky to be married?

I hasten to inform you it is just as lucky to be divorced, and I know it.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE OLD, OLD STORY.

This is the springtime, when fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love and everybody wants to go a-soul-mating.  Consequently my mail is leavened with letters from those who are unhappily married but who are sure they have got their eye on the One who from the foundation of the ion was intended for them.  They all want to leave the old mis-mate and go to the new found soul mate, and they all want my advice and encouragement—­to do it!  Some of these writers have already left their husbands (?) and want to know whether or not they should go back, or go on.  To one such I wrote the following letter, which I publish in the hope that it will help others to find and follow themselves.  Here is the letter: 

One thing at a time!  Get off with the old love before you go fretting about a new one!  Don’t you think you are a silly girl to ask anybody’s advice as to whether or not you are to go back to your so-called husband?  If I know what you ought to do I don’t see what you are worth to yourself or the universe.  The truth is that YOU are the only person in creation who can make that decision.  If you don’t yet know that you have a right to make your own life as you see fit; if you don’t yet know whether or not you could go back to him; then be still until you do know.

You know things today that you did not know yesterday, and tomorrow you will know things you “can’t decide about” today.  So attend strictly to business and keep still, and stiller yet, until you KNOW what is best to do.