replied Pat, "we are both of one mind-she wants to be master and so do I." How shall a man retain his wife's affections? Is it by not returning them? Certainly not. The secret of conjugal felicity is contained in this formula: demonstrative affection and self-sacrifice. A man should not only love his wife dearly, but he should tell her that he loves her, and tell her very often, and each should be willing to yield, not once or twice, but constantly, and as a practice to the other. Selfishness crushes out love, and most of the couples who are living without affection for each other, with cold and dead hearts, with ashes where there should be a bright and holy flame, have destroyed themselves by caring too much for themselves and too little for each other.

Each young couple that begins housekeeping on the right basis brings the Garden of Eden before man once more. There are they, two, alone; love raises a wall between them and the outer world. There is no serpent there—and, indeed, he need never come, nor does he, so long as Adam and Eve keep him at bay; but too often the hedge of love is broken, just a little, by small discourtesies, little inattentions, small incivilities, that gradually but surely become wider and wider holes, until there is no hedge at all, and all sorts of monsters enter in and riot there.

"Out of the very ripeness of life's core,

A worm was bred."

The only real preservative against this worm is true religion. Unhappily for themselves the healthy and young sometimes fancy that they need not think of this. They forget that religion is required to ennoble and sanctify

this present life, and are too liable to associate it excluclusively with the contemplation of death. "So 'a cried out-God, God, God! three or four times: now I, to comfort him, bid him 'a should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet." This advice, which Mrs. Quickly gave to Falstaff on his deathbed, reflects the thoughts of many people, but it was not sound advice. Certainly it would be cruel rather than kind to advise a young pair who have leaped into the dark of married life not to think of God. He is a Saviour from trouble rather than a troubler, and the husband and wife who never try to serve Him will not be likely to serve each other or to gain much real happiness from their marriage.

The following is related in the memoirs of Mary Somerville. When a girl she and her brother had coaxed their timid mother to accompany them for a sail. The day was sunny, but a stiff breeze was blowing, and presently the boat began to toss and roll. 'George," Mrs. Fairfax called to the man in charge, "this is an awful storm! I fear we are in great danger; mind how you steer; remember I trust in you!" He replied, 66 Dinna trust in

me, leddy; trust in God Almighty.' In terror the lady exclaimed, "Dear me, is it come to that!" To that it ought to come on the day of marriage quite as much as on the day of death. It is not only in times of danger and distress that we want God's presence, but in the time of our well-being, when all goes merry as a marriage bell. Live away from Him, and the happiness you enjoy to-day may become your misery to-morrow.

"A bitter and perplexed 'What shall I do?'"-Coleridge.

"Then, why pause with indecision

When bright angels in thy vision

Beckon thee to fields Elysian?"-Longfellow.

O be or not to be-married?

That is the

question that may occur to readers of the last chapter. If so much precaution and preparation are necessary to ensure a harmless, not to say a happy marriage, is the game worth the candle? Is it not better for the unmarried to cultivate the contented state of mind of that old Scotch lady who said, "I wadna gie my single life for a' the double anes I ever Saw?"

The controversy as to whether celibacy or wedlock be the happier state is a very old one, perhaps as old as what may be called the previous question-whether life itself be worth living. Some people are very ingenious in

making themselves miserable, no matter in what condition of life they find themselves; and there are a sufficient number of querulous celibates as well as overanxious married people in the world to make us see the wisdom of the sage's words: "Whichever you do, whether you marry or abstain, you will repent." If matrimony has more pleasures and celibacy fewer pains, if loving be "a painful thrill, and not to love more painful still," it is impossible exactly to balance the happiness of these two states, containing respectively more pleasure and more pain, and less pleasure, and less pain. "If hopes are dupes, fears may be liars."

It has been said of the state of matrimony that those who are in desire to get out, and those who are out, wish to enter. The more one thinks on the matter in this spirit, the more one becomes convinced that the Scotch minister was by no means an alarmist who thus began an extempore marriage service: "My friends, marriage is a blessing to a few, a curse to many, and a great uncertainty to all. Do ye venture ?" After a pause, he repeated with great emphasis, "Do ye venture?" No objection being made to the venture, he then said, "Let's proceed."

With the opinion of this Scotch minister we may compare that of Lord Beaconsfield: "I have often thought that all women should marry, and no men." The Admiral of Castile said, that "he who marries a wife and he who goes to war must necessarily submit to everything that may happen." There will, however, always be young men and maidens who believe that nothing can happen

in matrimony that is worse than never to be married at all.

When Joseph Alleine, who was a great student, married, he received a letter of congratulation from an old college friend, who said that he had some thoughts of following his example, but wished to be wary, and would therefore take the freedom of asking him to describe the inconveniences of a married life. Alleine replied, "Thou would'st know the inconveniences of a wife, and I will tell thee. First of all, whereas thou risest constantly at four in the morning, or before, she will keep thee till six; secondly, whereas thou usest to study fourteen hours in the day, she will bring thee to eight or nine; thirdly, whereas thou art wont to forbear one meal at least in the day for thy studies, she will bring thee to thy meat. If these are not mischief enough to affright thee, I know not what thou art." Most people will think that such "inconveniences of a wife" are the strongest arguments in her favour. Nearly all men, but especially bookish men, require the healthy common-sense influence of women to guide and sweetly order their lives. If we make fools of ourselves with them, we are even greater fools without them.

With whatever luxuries a bachelor may be surrounded, he will always find his happiness incomplete unless he has a wife and children to share it.

Who does not sympathize with Leigh Hunt? When in prison he wrote to the governor requesting that "his wife and children might be allowed to be with him in the daytime: that his happiness was bound up in them, and