be made
close only by making divorce easy, by extending female labor. For labor
makes woman less attractive and to be attractive is rather a trap: how
much higher can a woman rise? But the economic freedom of woman will
mean that she need not bind herself; she will be able to break away, and
in those days she will be most completely bound, for who would run away
from a jail if the door were always left open?

I detest Utopia, and these things seem so far away that I am more
content to take marriage as it is in the hope that unhealthy novels,
unnecessary discussions, unwholesome views, and unnatural feelings may
little by little reform mankind. Meanwhile, I hold fast to the private
maxim that hardly anything is unendurable if one sets up that all
mankind could not give one a quite worthy mate. But there is another
alleviation: understanding not only that one is married to somebody
else, but also that somebody else is married to yourself, and that it is
quite as hard for the other party. There are many excellent things to be
done; here are a few:

(1) Do not open each other's letters. (For one reason you might not
like the contents.) And try not to look liberal if you don't even
glance at the address or the postmark.

(2) Vary your pursuits, your conversation, and your clothes. If
required, vary your hair.

(3) If you absolutely must be sincere, let it be in private.

(4) (Especially for wives.) Find out on the honeymoon whether
crying or swearing is the more effective.

(5) Once a day say to a wife: "I love you"; to a husband: "How
strong you are!" If the latter remark is ridiculous, say: "How
clever you are!" for everybody believes that.

(6) Forgive your partner seventy times seven. Then burn the ledger.

[Illustration]

* * * * *

_By the author of "The Second Blooming"_

THE STRANGERS' WEDDING

_By_ W. L. GEORGE

12mo. Cloth. 450 pages. $1.35 _net_.

Readers of "The Second Blooming," one of the most discussed novels of
1915, will welcome the announcement of another novel of married life by
this talented English author.

"The Strangers' Wedding" is the story of Roger Huncote, a young man of
the upper classes who, inflamed with philanthropic ideals, joins a
settlement to work among the poor. He is speedily undeceived as to the
usefulness of the movement and the worthiness of those who control it,
and conce