he matches, because Doc's friends would have married him to Deacon
Dody's daughter, who was so chuck full of good works that there was no
room inside her for a heart. She afterward eloped with a St. Louis
drummer, and before he divorced her she'd become the best lady poker
player in the State of Missouri. But with Leila and the Doc it was a
case of give-and-take from the start--that is, as is usual with a good
many married folks, she'd give and he'd take. There never was a better
minister's wife, and when you've said that you've said the last word
about good wives and begun talking about martyrs, because after a
minister's wife has pleased her husband she's got to please the rest
of the church.

I simply mention Doc's honeymoon in passing as an example of the fact
that two people can start out in life without anything in common
apparently, except a desire to make each other happy, and, with that
as a platform to meet on, keep coming closer and closer together until
they find that they have everything in common. It isn't always the
case, of course, but then it's happened pretty often that before I
entered the room where an engaged couple were sitting I've had to
cough or whistle to give them a chance to break away; and that after
they were married I've had to keep right on coughing or whistling for
the same couple to give them time to stop quarreling.

There are mighty few young people who go into marriage with any real
idea of what it means. They get their notion of it from among the
clouds where they live while they are engaged, and, naturally, about
all they find up there is wind and moonshine; or from novels, which
always end just before the real trouble begins, or if they keep on,
leave out the chapters that tell how the husband finds the rent and
the wife the hired girls. But if there's one thing in the world about
which it's possible to get all the facts, it's matrimony. Part of them
are right in the house where you were born, and the neighbors have the
rest.

It's been my experience that you've got to have leisure to be unhappy.
Half the troubles in this world are imaginary, and it takes time to
think them up. But it's these oftener than the real troubles that
break a young husband's back or a young wife's heart.

A few men and more women can be happy idle when they're single, but
once you marry them to each other they've got to find work or they'll
find trouble. Everybody's got to raise something in this wor