r and says that "she
would rather hear a child cry than a man swear," the door opens towards
the club or public house. Likewise, a man who has given so many jewels
that the mother of the Gracchi might be jealous, will never understand
the appalling weariness that can come over the mother in the evening,
when she has administered, say, twelve meals, four or eight baths, and
answered several hundreds of questions varying between the existence of
God and the esoterics of the steam engine. Loving the children too much
to blame them, she must blame some one, and blames him.

People do not confess these things, but the socio-psychologist must
remember that when a man quietly picks up a flower pot and hurls it
through the window, the original cause may be found in the behavior of
the departmental manager six hours before. The irritation of children
can envenom two lives, for it seems almost inevitable that each party
should think the other spoils or tyrannizes. It is not always so, and
sometimes children unite by the bond of a common love; very much more
often they unite by the burden of a common responsibility. Indeed, it is
this financial responsibility that draws two people close, because tied
together they must swim together or sink together, until they are so
concerned individually with their salvation that they think they are
concerned with the salvation of the other. That bond of union is
dangerous, because marriage is expensive, and because one tends to
remember the time when bread was not so dear and flesh and blood so
cheap. There is affluence in bachelordom; there is atrocious discomfort
too, but when one thinks of the good old times, one generally forgets
all except the affluence. Of the present, one sees only that one cannot
take the whole family to Yellowstone; of the past, one does not see the
sitting room, or the hangings on which the landlady merely blew. The
wife thinks of her frocks, garlands of the sacrificial heifer, the
husband of the days when he could afford to be one of the boys. And, as
soon as the past grows glamorous, the present day grows dull; always
because one must blame something, one blames the other. It is so much
more agreeable to spend a thousand dollars than to spend a hundred, even
if one gets nothing for it. It is power. It is excitement. One thinks of
money until one may come to think of nothing but money, until, as
suggested before, a husband turns into a vaguely disagreeable person who