an's love may survive any defect in
her husband, but ridicule never.'

The fact is that words or acts of a man ridiculous enough to make his
wife wish she were a mile deep under the floor will lower him so much in
her estimation that she will never be able to look up to him again; and
no woman has ever been known to drop her love--she sends it up always. I
will conclude with the opinion of an American lady:

'The ideal husband should never part with any of his most refined
manners in his home, where he should endeavour ever to appear at his
best, in dress, language, and behaviour, in the presence of his wife,
who is his queen.'

I expected as much from her supreme and magnificent majesty, Mrs.
Jonathan, Queen of the United States.

CHAPTER XIII

MARRYING ABOVE OR BELOW ONE'S STATION

It is said in England that, of all men who occupy high positions in
professional life, judges are those who oftenest marry below their
station.

Many are even said to have married impossible women, and on these
women many amusing stories are related in the smoke-rooms of London
clubs--stories which, I have no doubt, are of the _se non e vero, e ben
trovato_ type, and as faithful to truth as the stories that are told on
the feet of the Chicago women or the intellect of the Boston girls.

CHORUS-GIRL MARRIAGES

However, it must be admitted that fools are not the only men who marry
women that are greatly inferior to them in manner, education, and social
standing; the cleverest men and the most aristocratic ones have often
been known to do the same.

Dukes, marquises, and earls have married chorus-girls and shop-girls;
great literary men and artists have married uneducated girls, and have
led very happy lives with them. Of course, I pass over the aristocracy
who marry among the common people in order to get their coats of arms
out of pawn. If they are poor and marry rich girls, you can hardly call
this a case of _mesalliance_, since the superiority of birth in the man
is compensated by the superiority of fortune in the woman.

Of course, _mesalliances_ appeal to people, because they always suggest
marriages for love, and novelists of all countries have worked this
theme for all it is worth. In real life they very seldom work well, for
the simple reason that matrimony places a man and a woman on absolutely
equal footing, and that happiness for them, in the case of a
_mesalliance_, is only possible on condition that one go