Often enough the wife proves herself the more effective Sovereign, the forms of monarchy must be conceded to the man, even though the executive is left to the woman.

* * *

How often the only breast to which one can go on to “rain out the heavy mist of tears” is the one inhibited!

* * *

Two wills are not so easily blended into one as that the task may be left to Cupid.  Yet,

Unless Cupid has a hand in blending two wills, it is bound to be a sorry business at best.

Always and in all wedlock there comes a time when will conflicts with will.

If both wills are inflexible, one must break—­or both will fly apart.  But

Love and tact will relieve many a strain.  Though sometimes one discovers that

Human eyes have a certain store of tears.  It is not difficult to weep them all away.  However,

In the final rupture between man and wife, it is the children that turn the scales.  But, O ye young husbands and wives, remember that

Youth regards the whole world as its friend; age finds itself desolate in the midst of friends.  Wherefore,

O youth, cleave unto the wife of thy bosom; since

A loving wife is worth a multitude of friends.

Sweet are friends, and fame is sweet; but sweeter far a wifely heart whereon to lay a weary head.  But

Each married pair must solve its own difficulties as best it can.  If any advice were worth the offering, it would be this: 

O ye Husbands, and O ye Wives, if not for your own sakes then for your children’s, lead a straight, clean, honorable life; any other sort of life leads to despicability, to dismalness, to disaster.—­Which only means, after all, that

In the marriage relation, as in every relation—­the social, the industrial, the commercial, the political—­it is conduct, it is character, that counts, nothing else;

Beauty—­Wealth—­Culture—­Gr
ace—­Wit—­Intellect—­Sprightliness—­ Vivacity—­Humor—­these are much but they are simply naught, and less than naught, when just this simple, single, yet insatiable thing called Man wants to live amicably, affectionately, martially, with that simple, single, but incomprehensible thing called Woman.

Character—­Conduct—­rule the world, the Matrimonial equally with the Municipal.

* * *

XIV.  On this Human Heart

“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?” —­Holy Writ

It does not take much to make two hearts beat faster than one.

* * *

The heart can deceive itself when it cannot deceive another.—­Which will be cold comfort to some lovers, though it may console others.

* * *

To admit a sacred visitant into the inner recesses of the human heart, those recesses must be neat indeed.  Remember, too, that you can