n and true
wife satisfies the Protestant husband, as a rule, and he makes no
objection to her carrying out the contract with her Church regarding the
education of the children.

If they are as moral and good as their mother, he does not care what
faith occupies their hearts or in what way they worship God.

But to the mother this is a matter of vital importance.

Woman is by nature more devout than man.

Woman is by nature more tyrannical than man.

Take those two characteristics, and add to them the tendency of many
women to bigotry and intolerance, and it makes the matter of creeds
vital in marriage.

Rosalie is broader-minded than many women, yet she is devoted to the
Congregational Church, and rarely misses attendance.

It will be an easy matter for her to accept your faith for yourself and
to allow you to attend your own church, and she is, I am sure, broad
enough to go with you occasionally, if you request it.

But when she becomes a mother, and the children's minds are unfolding, I
doubt her willingness to have them brought up in any faith save her own.

To an unwedded girl in love, a child is a very indistinct creature.

To a mother, it is a very real being.

I have seen men as deeply in love as you are, with women as
liberal-minded as Rosalie, become very unhappy after marriage through
the opposite ideas of the wife regarding the education of children.

You must remember how much more closely a mother's life is entwined
about her children, and how much more of their association usually falls
to her than to the father.

This is especially true of daughters, and is true of sons up to a
certain age.

You can understand, I am sure, how much more companionship a mother
would find in children who accepted her faith and attended her church
than in those whose spiritual paths led in another direction.

I know Rosalie realizes that a good life, not a certain creed, leads to
the goal she seeks, after this phase of existence closes, and she does
not ask you to change your faith. But while she would also believe her
children were on the road to that goal, she would want them to walk
through her path and by her side.

It will be hard to relinquish the woman you love, to-day, for the
children who might not come to-morrow.

Yet I can give you the counsel you asked on this matter only from my
personal observation of similar unions.

I should advise you to try an absence of some duration, and to forget
Ro