Yet many a woman whose house is a model of taste, whose rooms are spacious and restful, insists upon crowding her marriage with the bric-a-brac of violent affection.  She is not content with undecorated spaces; with interludes of friendship and the appreciation which is felt, rather than spoken.  She demands the constant assurances, the unfailing devotion of the lover, and thus loses her atmosphere—­and her content.

It seems to be a settled thing that men shall do the courting before marriage and women afterward.  Nobody writes articles on “How to Make a Wife Happy,” and the innumerable cook books, like an army of grasshoppers, consume and devastate the land.

If women did not demand so much, men in general would be more thoughtful.  If it were understood that even after marriage man was still to be the lover, the one who sent roses to his sweetheart would sometimes bring them to his wife.  The pretty courtesies would not so often be forgotten.

[Sidenote:  The Tender Thought]

If the tender thought were in some way shown, and the loving word which leaps to the lips were never forced back, but always spoken, marriage and even life itself would take on new beauty and charm.  If a woman has daily evidence of a man’s devotion, no matter in how small a way, her hunger and thirst for love are bountifully assuaged.  Misunderstandings rapidly grow into coldness and neglect, and foolish woman, blind with love, adopts retribution and recrimination as her weapons.  There are a great many men who love their wives simply because they know they would be scalped if they didn’t.

Making an issue of a little thing is one of the surest ways to spoil happiness.  One’s personal pride is felt to be vitally injured by surrender, but there is no quality of human nature so nearly royal as the ability to yield gracefully.  It shows small confidence in one’s own nature to fear that compromise lessens self-control.  To consider constantly the comfort and happiness of another is not a sign of weakness but of strength.

[Sidenote:  Spoiled Children]

Too many men and women are only spoiled children at heart.  The little maid of five or six takes her doll and goes home because her playmates have been unkind.  Twenty years later she packs her trunk and goes to her mother’s because of some quarrel which had an equally childish beginning.

But the hurts of the after-years are not so easily healed.  The children kiss and make up no later than the next day, but, grown to manhood and womanhood, they consider it far beneath their dignity and importance to say “Forgive me,” and thus proceed to the matrimonial garbage box by way of the divorce court.

Lovers are wont to consider a marriage license a free ticket to Paradise.  Sometimes happiness may be freely given by the dispenser of earthly blessings, but it is more often bought.  It is a matter of temperament rather than circumstance, and is to be had only by the two who work for it together, forgiving, forgetting, graciously yielding, and looking forward to the perfect understanding which will surely come.