its various unhappinesses; then subtract from that schedule all that come alike to the single state, and you will find that marriage, for its separate joys, has not a separate set of troubles in as great proportion.  The very highest evidence of the usefulness and agreeableness of marriage is gathered from the well-known haste in which both men and women, when death takes away their companions, seek, in a second marriage, a renewal of those relations which, in their opinion, lend additional charm to the drama of life.

WEDDED LIFE

You are my true and wedded wife;
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart.—­Shakspeare.

                                     She’s adorned
     Amply that in her husband’s eye looks lovely—­
     The truest mirror that an honest wife
     Can see her beauty in.—­John Tobin.

“Of all the actions of a man’s life, his marriage does least concern other people,” says Selden, “yet, of all actions of our life, it is most meddled with by other people.”  In fact, if people would take home their attention thus so liberally bestowed abroad, it would enable them to make matches of their own far better than those which now burden the records of the churches and the courts.  If a young man and a young woman can be left alone three or four years, to wear into the new relations they have assumed, there is little chance of their being unhappily married.  An instinct of the strongest character brought them together, and is likely to hold them by its own force.  Man is a creature of habit.  Strip him of his home after he has been for four years habituated to it, and he will be unhappy, no matter how unpeaceful that home may have been.  Therefore, if possible, have your wife and yourself in a house by yourselves for the first four years of your married life.  As a general thing this is possible, and I think a firm will, in most cases, greatly aids the possibility of such a course.  One thing, at least, is clear,

NO HUSBAND IS DOING RIGHT

to admit to his home as a sharer of its comforts any other man.  It is a common sentiment among any two homeless young men that the first one who marries shall take the other to live with him.  Nothing is more absurd or out of place.  I do not think there could be so dangerous a foe to the peace of the wife, in case the young man do not think his friend has married wisely,—­and he must think so, or he would himself have married her if he could have done so.  His criticisms will estrange the husband’s heart and cool his love.  On the other hand, if he has admired the lady, then the situation is all the more atrocious.

THOSE HORRIBLE EVENTS IN LIFE,