to deliver to the world the sacred message which the Creator has
given them?

I believe in marriage, but I do not believe in that marriage which
paralyzes self-development, strangles ambition, discourages evolution and
self-growth, and which takes away the life purpose.

To be continually haunted by the ghosts of strangled talents and
smothered faculties prevents real contentment and happiness. Many a home
has been made miserable, not because the husband was not kind and
affectionate, not because there was not enough to eat and to wear, but
because the wife was haunted with unrealized hopes and disappointed
ambitions and expectations.

Is there anything more pitiful than such a stifled life with its crushed
hopes? Is there anything sadder than to go through life conscious of
talents and powers which we can not possibly develop; to feel that the
best thing in us must be strangled for the want of opportunity, for the
lack of appreciation even by those who love us best; to know that we can
never by any possibility reach our highest expression, but must live a
sordid life when under different conditions a higher would be possible?

A large part of the marital infelicity about which we hear so much comes
from the husband's attempt to cramp his wife's ambition and to suppress
her normal expression. A perversion of native instinct, a constant
stifling of ambition, and the longing to express oneself naturally,
gradually undermine the character and lead to discontentment and
unhappiness. A mother who is cramped and repressed transmits the seeds
of discontent and one-sided tendencies to her children.

The happiest marriages are those in which the right of husband and wife
to develop broadly and naturally along individual lines has been
recognized by each. The noblest and most helpful wives and mothers are
those who develop their powers to their fullest capacity.

Woman is made to admire power, and she likes to put herself under the
domination of a masterful man and rest in his protection. But it must be
a _voluntary_ obedience which comes from admiration of original force, of
sturdy, rugged, masculine qualities.

The average man can not get away from the idea of his wife's service to
him personally; that she is a sort of running mate, not supposed to win
the race, but to help to pull him along so that _he_ will win it. He can
not understand why she should have an ambition which bears no direct
relation to his comfo