The widow who
may have held her head high in her days of prosperity, soon receives
lessons from women: they call it teaching her what is her proper
place. Those good and discreet ladies have a notion that their conduct
is full of propriety and discretion and sound sense; but how they make
their sisters suffer--ah, how they make the poor things suffer! I
believe that, if any improvident man could see, in a keenly vivid
dream, a vision of his wife's future after his death, he would stint
himself of anything rather than run the risk of having to reflect on
his death-bed that he had failed to do his best for those who loved
him. Women sometimes out of pure wantonness try to exasperate a man so
that he falls into courses which bring his end swiftly. Could those
foolish ones only see their own fate when the doom of being down in
the world came upon them, they would strain every nerve in their
bodies so that their husband's life and powers of work might be spared
to the last possible hour.

What can the man do who is down? Frankly, nothing, unless his strength
holds. I advise such a one never to seek for help from any one but
himself, and never to try for any of the employments which are
supposed to be "easy." Cool neglect, insulting compassion, lying
promises, evasive and complimentary nothings--these will be his
portion. If he cannot perform any skilled labour, let him run the risk
of seeming degraded; and, if he has to push a trade in matches or
flowers, let him rather do that than bear the more or less kindly
flouts which meet the supplicant. To all who are young and strong I
would say, "Live to-day as though to-morrow you might be ruined--or
dead."

VII.

ILL-ASSORTED MARRIAGES.

The people who joke and talk lightly about marriage do not seem to
have the faintest rational conception of the awful nature of the
subject. Awful it is; and, as serious men go through life, they become
more and more impressed with the momentous results which depend on the
choice made by a man or woman. A lad of nineteen lightly engages
himself; he knows nothing of the gloom, the terror, the sordid horror
of the fate that lies before him; and the unhappy girl is equally
ignorant. In fourteen years the actual substance of that young
fellow's very body is twice completely changed; he is a man utterly
different from the boy who contracted the marriage; there is not a
muscle or a thought in common between the boy and the man--yet the ma