What can the man do who is down?  Frankly, nothing, unless his strength holds.  I advise such a one never to seek for help from any one but himself, and never to try for any of the employments which are supposed to be “easy.”  Cool neglect, insulting compassion, lying promises, evasive and complimentary nothings—­these will be his portion.  If he cannot perform any skilled labour, let him run the risk of seeming degraded; and, if he has to push a trade in matches or flowers, let him rather do that than bear the more or less kindly flouts which meet the supplicant.  To all who are young and strong I would say, “Live to-day as though to-morrow you might be ruined—­or dead.”

VII.

ILL-ASSORTED MARRIAGES.

The people who joke and talk lightly about marriage do not seem to have the faintest rational conception of the awful nature of the subject.  Awful it is; and, as serious men go through life, they become more and more impressed with the momentous results which depend on the choice made by a man or woman.  A lad of nineteen lightly engages himself; he knows nothing of the gloom, the terror, the sordid horror of the fate that lies before him; and the unhappy girl is equally ignorant.  In fourteen years the actual substance of that young fellow’s very body is twice completely changed; he is a man utterly different from the boy who contracted the marriage; there is not a muscle or a thought in common between the boy and the man—­yet the man takes all the consequences of the boy’s act.  Supposing that the pair are well matched, life goes on happily enough for them; but, alas, if the man or the woman has to wake up and face the ghastly results of a mistake, then there is a tragedy of the direst order!  Let us suppose that the lad is cultured and ambitious, and that he is attracted at first by a rosy face or pretty figure only; supposing that he is thus early bound to a vulgar commonplace woman, the consequences when the woman happens to have a powerful will and an unscrupulous tongue are almost too dreadful to be pictured in words.

Let no young folk fancy that mind counts for nothing in marriage.  A man must have congenial company, or he will fly to company that is uncongenial; he must have joy of some kind, or he will fall into despair.  The company and the joy can best be supplied by the wife to the husband, and by the husband to the wife.  If the woman is dull and trivial, then her husband soon begins to neglect her; if she is meek and submissive, the neglect does not rouse her, and there are no violent consequences; but it is awful to think of the poor creature who sits at home and dimly wonders in the depth of her simple soul what can have happened to change the man who loved her.  She has no resources—­she can only love; she is perhaps kindly enough—­yet she is punished only because she and her lad made a blundering choice before their judgments were formed.