An excitable, volatile, garrulous, “neighbourly” woman, or one who can do little save strum on the piano or make embroidery as intricate as it is useless, means divorce or murder.  For him, sweetness, gentleness, self-control, sound common sense, shrewdness, and domestic virtues are incomparably superior to any mental brilliance or physical comeliness.  He needs a “homely” woman, and should remember that no banking account can match a sweet, womanly personality, and no charms compare to a sunny heart, and an ability steadfastly to “see the silver lining”.

He must on no account marry a woman in indifferent health, for under the strain of her husband’s infirmity the woman, who if she were well would be a help, is a source of expense, worry and friction.

On the other hand the woman who receives a proposal from a neuropath, be he ever so gifted, has grave grounds for pausing, though it is hard to counter the specious arguments of one who may be “a man o’ pairts”, a witty companion and an ardent lover.  It is doubtful if a neuropath is ever permeated by a steadfast emotion, for all his emotions are fierce but unstable, the love of an inconsistent man being ten times more ardent than that of a faithful one, while it lasts.

    “You can’t marry a man without taking his faults with his virtues,”

and love must be strong enough to stand, not storms alone, but the minor miseries of life, the incessant pinpricks, the dreary days when the smile abroad has become the scowl at home.  At best, her husband will be capricious, hard to please, and though rabidly jealous without cause, at the same time very partial to the attractions of other women.  He usually needs the attention of the whole household, which his varying health and moods keep in a mingled state of anxious solicitude and smouldering resentment.

His infirmity may mean a very secluded and humdrum life.  She will have to make home an ever-cheery place, an ideal that means hard work and self-sacrifice through lonesome years in which her nobility will be unrecognized and unrewarded.

A woman fond of amusements and sport, and having many acquaintances would find this unbearable.  Any happiness in marriage to a neuropath is largely dependent on the self-sacrifice of the wife.

Should marriage occur, the wife must judiciously curb her husband’s passions without driving him to other women by coldness, a problem which is often solved by separation.  The suggestion should never come from her, and the more she can curb his ardour by tactful suggestion, the healthier will he and the happier will she be, for nothing causes such an irritable, nervous state as excessive coitus.

She will often have to give way in this matter, but must be firm on the necessity for preventing conception, for she can only bear a tainted child; her responsibility is great, and she must insist that her husband use those simple methods which prevent conception, thereby ending in himself one branch of a worthless tree.  This must be done at any cost, for her happiness is nought compared to the welfare of future generations.  Bitter though it be that no fruit of her womb may call her blessed, it is less bitter than hearing her children call themselves accursed.