You will grow happier day by day, and your wife will be the happiest woman in the neighborhood.  She will be proud of you because you have had the brains to be happy and sensible.  We hear a good deal of railing against the general wisdom of getting married.  There seems to be a sort of popular contagion lately, making it fashionable to fling jeers and jibes at the cares and sorrows of marriage.  We find young men writing to the newspapers that it costs them six dollars to board singly, and that the same “style” of living and enjoyment could not be purchased at

A “BOARDING-HOUSE OF ONE’S OWN”

for less than twenty-two.  And again the same sort of writer will assert that he can quit one “boarding-house” when he pleases, whereas he must eat the cold roast beef and cranberry sauce of the other until he crosses the creek called Styx.  Let me call this young man Mr. Bachelor, and reply to him in about his own style: 

A FEW THOUGHTS IN GENERAL: 

1.  A man named Payne wrote a seemingly-ordinary song entitled “Home, Sweet Home.”  This piece, on account of certain sentiments conveyed, at once received the seal of nearly universal approbation.  It is safe to say Mr. Bachelor and the class in which he may be placed were not among those who accorded extraordinary attention to the little song.  He is and they are, therefore, at once separated from the vast mass of the people.  Evidently the sentiments of the song were based on experiences largely known to the general gender and unknown to Mr. Bachelor.

2.  The man Daniel McFarland was so worthless that his wife refused to live with him, and, sadly enough, fell in love with still another man.  The worthless husband, discovering that Richardson was coming into property which had not always been his own, resorted to an ambuscade, and killed Richardson.  To the dullest comprehension this act revealed a deep jealousy.  Jealousy is founded on a solid fear of losing something.  In this unhappy family, where the man believed he had nothing to care for, he suddenly awoke to find he had thrown away a pearl richer than all his tribe.

3.  It seems to me as natural for a man to establish a home, with a wife, as to grow a beard on his face.

SOME CONSIDERATIONS IN PARTICULAR.

1.  At twenty-seven years of age a man whom I know met the finest young woman he had ever seen.  He wanted her and he got her.  Five years have passed.

2.  At marriage the man found himself endowed with a godlike selfishness.  This he probably owed to the past struggle for existence.  With this not very estimable faculty he carried to his home a young woman endowed with nearly the opposite faculties.  She only acquired selfishness through association with her companion.  At the start, then, they were both willin’ oxen—­one ox was willing to do all the pulling, and the other ox was willing he should.