It is time that people comprehended that it is not their duty to be disagreeably frank, when another’s comfort is the price thereof.  An unkind sentence has the power of lodgment in the mind.  It is like the red “chigoe” which inserts his tiny head in the flesh and burrows until he causes a throbbing fester.  For instance, I have never forgotten a speech which was addressed to me over twenty years ago.  It was just after we had built an unpretending, but thoroughly cozy summer cottage, nestled in a grove of trees that threw long shadows into a silvery lake.  The man in question told me he never saw our light at night from the other side of the pretty sheet of water that it did not “remind him of a charcoal-burner’s hut in the heart of a wilderness.”  It would be of interest to ascertain why this needlessly unkind remark was made.  Since there were at least one or two pleasant features in the landscape, why could he not call attention to them?

It is not necessary that we should flatter, but let us be lavishly generous with what French cooks call sauce agreable, since parsnips must be eaten.  Some efforts in this line remind me of a story I recently heard of a farmer who received at a New York restaurant the customary small pat of butter with his Vienna roll.  Imperiously beckoning to a waiter, he commanded him to “wipe that grease spot off that plate, and bring him some butter!”

Let us give more than the grease spot.  Better go to the other extreme, and drown our friend’s neglected parsnips in fresh, pure un-oleomargarined, and entirely sweet butter.

CHAPTER XV.

IS MARRIAGE REFORMATORY?

To no other estate are there so many varieties of phases as to that of matrimony.  Like the music of Saint Caecilia and old Timotheus combined, it is capable of raising “a mortal to the skies,” or of bringing “an angel down” to the lowest depths of misery.  At the best the betrothed couple can never say with absolute certainty—­“After marriage we shall be happy.”  The experience of wedded life is alarmingly like that of dying—­each man and woman must know it for himself and herself, and no other human being can share its trials or its joys.

The mistake the prospective wife makes is in obstinately closing her eyes to the fact that married life has any trials which are not far outbalanced by its pleasures.  Marriage does not change man or woman.  The impressive ceremony over, the bridal finery laid aside, the last strain of the wedding-march wafted into space, and the orange-flowers dead and scentless,—­John becomes once more plain, everyday John, with the same good traits which first won his Mary’s heart, and the many disagreeable characteristics that exasperated his mother and sisters.  And Mary, being a woman, and no more of a saint than is her life-partner, will also be exasperated.  If John is an honest gentleman who loves Mary, the chances for her happiness depend upon her common-sense and her love for John.  It is utterly impossible to have too much of the last-named commodity.  It will be all needed, well-blended with the divine attribute of patience, and judiciously seasoned with woman’s especial gift—­tact, to enable man and wife to live together peaceably for one year.