far
outbalanced by its pleasures. Marriage does not change man or woman.
The impressive ceremony over, the bridal finery laid aside, the last
strain of the wedding-march wafted into space, and the orange-flowers
dead and scentless,--John becomes once more plain, everyday John, with
the same good traits which first won his Mary's heart, and the many
disagreeable characteristics that exasperated his mother and sisters.
And Mary, being a woman, and no more of a saint than is her
life-partner, will also be exasperated. If John is an honest gentleman
who loves Mary, the chances for her happiness depend upon her
common-sense and her love for John. It is utterly impossible to have
too much of the last-named commodity. It will be all needed,
well-blended with the divine attribute of patience, and judiciously
seasoned with woman's especial gift--tact, to enable man and wife to
live together peaceably for one year.

Moreover, Mary must understand that John the lover and John the
husband have very different ways of showing affection. The lover would
loiter evening after evening waiting for other guests to go home that
he might have time for a few tender words with his sweetheart. Woman's
logic reasons,--"what more natural when he has hours of time than for
him to keep on saying those same tender words, only very many more of
them?" The fact remains that he does not. After the kiss of welcome on
his arrival home at the close of day, he is unsentimental enough to
want his dinner, and, that disposed of, he buries himself behind his
newspaper, from which perhaps he does not emerge before nine o'clock
when he is ready to talk to Mary and to be entertained by her.

And yet this John of whom I am talking is as good morally, as faithful
and conscientious in his manly way as Mary in her womanly.

But--suppose he were not a good man, what then? Could the mere fact of
his union with her change his entire nature?

A good man may be made better by association with a good woman; a man
with repressed evil tendencies may have them held more firmly in check
by his wife's restraining influence, but no woman should undertake to
"make over" a man who has given way to the wicked passions of his
being until they are beyond his control. He will not be made a
reputable member of society and a bright and shining light to the
community in which he dwells, by marrying. He does not go into the new
life as a sort of Keeley cure,--a reformatory institution