mber an infinity of acquaintances, and are not chargeable with any
one friend, promise an easy disposition and no rival to the wife's
influence. I will not say they are the best of men, but they are
the stuff out of which adroit and capable women manufacture the best
husbands.

*****

A ship captain is a good man to marry if it is a marriage of love, for
absences are a good influence in love, and keep it bright and delicate;
but he is just the worst man if the feeling is more pedestrian, as habit
is too frequently torn open and the solder has never time to set.

*****

A certain sort of talent is almost indispensable for people who would
spend years together and not bore themselves to death. But the talent,
like the agreement, must be for and about life. To dwell happily
together, they should be versed in the niceties of the heart, and born
with a faculty for willing compromise. The woman must be talented as a
woman, and it will not much matter although she is talented in nothing
else. She must know HER METIER DE FEMME, and have a fine touch for the
affections. And it is more important that a person should be a good
gossip, and talk pleasantly and smartly of common friends and the
thousand and one nothings of the day and hour, than that she should
speak with the tongues of men and angels; for a while together by
the fire happens more frequently in marriage than the presence of a
distinguished foreigner to dinner.... You could read Kant by yourself,
if you wanted; but you must share a joke with some one else. You
can forgive people who do not follow you through a philosophical
disquisition; but to find your wife laughing when you had tears in your
eyes, or staring when you were in a fit of laughter, would go some way
towards a dissolution of the marriage.

*****

Now this is where there should be community between man and wife. They
should be agreed on their catchword in FACTS OF RELIGION, OR FACTS
OF SCIENCE, OR SOCIETY, MY DEAR; for without such an agreement all
intercourse is a painful strain upon the mind.... For there are
differences which no habit nor affection can reconcile, and the Bohemian
must not intermarry with the Pharisee. Imagine Consuelo as Mrs. Samuel
Budgett, the wife of the successful merchant! The best of men and the
best of women may sometimes live together all their lives, and, for want
of some consent on fundamental questions, hold each other lost spirits
to the end.

*****

Marriage is