d. The two kindred souls were bound up in each other. The lady
was not learned or clever, and indeed her husband said, "She was the
best of creatures; but she never could tell which came first--the
Greeks or the Romans." But she had something more than cleverness--she
had the confidence, generosity, and unselfishness which I have set
forth as the main conditions of happiness. I must repeat an old story;
for it cannot too often be repeated. Think of the woman who gathered
all her resolution and uttered no sound, although the end of her
finger was smashed by the closing of the carriage-door! Mr. D'Israeli
was about to make a great speech; so his wife would not disturb him on
his way to Westminster, though flesh and bone of her finger were
crushed. She fainted when the orator had gone to his task; but her
fortitude did not forsake her until her beloved was out of danger of
being perturbed. That one authentic story is worth a hundred dramatic
tales of stagey heroism. And we must remember how the statesman repaid
the simple devotion of his wife. All his spare time was passed in her
company, and the quaint pair wandered in the woods like happy boy and
girl. Then, when the indomitable man had raised himself to be head of
the State, and was offered a peerage, he declined; but he begged that
his wife might be created countess in her own right. Could anything be
more graceful and courtly? "You are the superior," the first man in
England seemed to say; "and I am content to rejoice in your honours
without rivalling them." All the fanciful rhymes of the troubadours
cannot furnish anything prettier than that.

If we leave the Beaconsfields and the Chathams and come among less
exalted folk, we find that the same laws regulate happy marriages.
Confidence, generosity, unselfishness--that is all. In this beautiful
England of ours there are happy households which are almost
numberless. The good folk do not care for fame or power; their
happiness is rounded off and completed within their own walls, and
they live as the lordly Chatham lived when he was free from the ties
of place and Parliament. On summer days, when the quiet evening is
closing, the wayfarer may obtain chance glimpses of such happy homes
here and there. Some are inhabited by wealthy men, some by poor
workmen; but the essential happiness of both classes is arrived at in
the same way.

A young man wisely waits until his judgment is matured, and then
proceeds to choose his m