Though fools spurn Hymen’s gentle pow’rs,
We who improve his golden hours,
By sweet experience know,
That marriage, rightly understood,
Gives to the tender and the good
A paradise below. 
—­Cotton.

As a walled town is more worthier than a village, so is the forehead of a married man more honorable than the bare brow of a bachelor.  —­Shakespeare.

God the best maker of all marriages.—­Shakespeare.

A light wife doth make a heavy husband.

The following “marriage” maxims are worthy of more than a hasty reading.  Husbands should not pass them by, for they are designed for wives; and wives should not despise them, for they are addressed to husbands:—­

1.  The very nearest approach to domestic happiness on earth is in the cultivation on both sides of absolute unselfishness.

2.  Never both be angry at once.

3.  Never talk at one another, either alone or in company.

4.  Never speak loud to one another unless the house is on fire.

5.  Let each one strive to yield oftenest to the wishes of the other.

6.  Let self-denial be the daily aim and practice of each.

7.  Never find fault unless it is perfectly certain that a fault has been committed, and always speak lovingly.

8.  Never taunt with a past mistake.

9.  Neglect the whole world besides rather than one another.

10.  Never allow a request to be repeated.

11.  Never make a remark at the expense of each other,—­it is a meanness.

12.  Never part for a day without loving words to think of during absence.

13.  Never meet without a loving welcome.

14.  Never let the sun go down upon any anger or grievance.

15.  Never let any fault you have committed go by until you have frankly confessed it and asked forgiveness.

16.  Never forget the happy hours of early love.

17.  Never sigh over what might have been, but make the best of what is.

18.  Never forget that marriage is ordained of God, and that His blessing alone can make it what it should ever be.

19.  Never be contented till you know you are both walking in the narrow way.

20.  Never let your hopes stop short of the eternal home.  —­Cottager and artisan.

Mothers who force their daughters into interested marriage, are worse than the Ammonites who sacrificed their children to Moloch—­the latter undergoing a speedy death, the former suffering years of torture, but too frequently leading to the same result.—­Lord Rochester.

Let us no more contend, nor blame
Each other, blamed enough elsewhere, but strive
In offices of love, how we may lighten
Each other’s burden, in our share of woe. 

          
                          —­Milton.