of so much use to women, opens out to her so much more of
life, and puts her in the way of so much more freedom and usefulness,
that, whether she marry ill or well, she can hardly miss some benefit.
It is true, however, that some of the merriest and most genuine of women
are old maids; and that those old maids, and wives who are unhappily
married, have often most of the true motherly touch.

*****

The fact is, we are much more afraid of life than our ancestors, and
cannot find it in our hearts either to marry or not to marry. Marriage
is terrifying, but so is a cold and forlorn old age. People who share a
cell in the Bastile, or are thrown together on an uninhabited isle,
if they do not immediately fall to fisticuffs, will find some possible
ground of compromise. They will learn each other's ways and humours,
so as to know where they must go warily, and where they may lean their
whole weight. The discretion of the first years becomes the settled
habit of the last; and so, with wisdom and patience, two lives may grow
indissolubly into one.

*****

'Well, an ye like maids so little, y'are true natural man; for God made
them twain by intention, and brought true love into the world, to be
man's hope and woman's comfort.'

*****

There are no persons so far away as those who are both married and
estranged, so that they seem out of earshot, or to have no common
tongue.

*****

My idea of man's chief end was to enrich the world with things of
beauty, and have a fairly good time myself while doing so.

*****

But the gymnast is not my favourite; he has little or no tincture of
the artist in his composition; his soul is small and pedestrian, for
the most part, since his profession makes no call upon it, and does not
accustom him to high ideas. But if a man is only so much of an actor
that he can stumble through a farce, he is made free of a new order of
thoughts. He has something else to think about beside the money-box. He
has a pride of his own, and, what is of far more importance, he has
an aim before him that he can never quite attain. He has gone upon a
pilgrimage that will last him his life long, because there is no end to
it short of perfection. He will better himself a little day by day; or,
even if he has given up the attempt, he will always remember that once
upon a time he had conceived this high ideal, that once upon a time he
fell in love with a star. 'Tis better to have loved and lost.' Although
th