young doctor who
marries into the old doctor's family. In this connection one recalls the
father who advised his sons not to marry for money, but to love where
money was. No doubt the possession of a little money or 'influence' is
an added attraction to a maiden's charm in the eyes of the go-ahead
young man of to-day; and considering how hard it appears to be to earn a
living nowadays one cannot altogether blame them--distressing as it
seems from the sentimental point of view. I don't believe, however, that
there are so many wholly sordid marriages outside the confines of the
set generally prefixed as 'smart.' People who are not members of this
glittering circle are already sufficiently shy of matrimony nowadays,
and are afraid of the enormous additional handicap such a match would
carry. Of course these unions are almost inevitably miserable failures,
and one wonders what else the victims could have expected.

* * *

We now come to the third division, _Marriage for a Purpose_. These
matches are distantly allied with the partially-sordid, but there is
nothing sordid about them, as they are frequently undertaken from the
highest motives. In this class are the widowers who wed for the sake of
their children, the spinsters whose motive is their desire for
motherhood, the men and women who marry to possess a home, or for the
sake of companionship. All these reasons are justifiable enough, and
people who embark on matrimony with a set purpose generally take it very
seriously, and determine to make a success of it. Such marriages often
prove extremely happy, perhaps for the very reason that so little is
asked. The spirit of contentment is an excellent influence in married
life, since love is often killed by its own excessive demands, as I
shall endeavour to show later.

* * *

_Haphazard Marriages_ seem to me the best way to describe those unions
into which men drift without any special reason, sometimes almost
against their own wish. Nature does not care how the young people come
together as long as they do come, and sometimes a man finds himself
drifting into matrimony almost before he is aware. I write a 'man'
advisedly as women never _drift_ into wifehood. In these cases it is
generally their set and deliberate purpose that has steered the man into
the conjugal harbour unknown to him. He has merely followed the line of
least resistance and found to his surprise that it leads to the altar.
Mr Bernard Sh