XLVIII.
A TALK ABOUT DIVORCE.
Somebody asked me the other day if I favored divorce. Like everything else in the world the matter depends largely upon special circumstance, but in the main I do not believe in divorce. If husbands and wives cannot live together without quarreling, let them live apart, but they have no business to sever the bond that unites them. The promise to take each other for "better or for worse" must be regarded in both readings of the clause. If the "worse" comes along we have no right to ignore it because the "better" has failed. If your husband is a drunkard, all the more reason for you to stand by him if you are a good woman. If he is cruel and abusive, you need not put your life in danger by staying under his roof, but you need not throw him over and get another husband. If he goes into the gutter, pull him out, and know that your experience is only a big dose of the "worse" you promised to take along with the "better." It is the quinine with the honey, and you have no right to reject it. There are 10,000 things that work discord in married life that a little tact and forbearance would dissipate, as a steady wind will blow away gnats. The trouble with all of us is, we make too much of trifles. We nurse them, and feed them, and magnify them, until from gnats they grow to be buzzards with their beaks in our hearts. Not for one sin, nor seven sins, nor seventy sins, forsake the friend you chose from all the world to make your own. A good woman will save anything but a liar, and God's grace is adequate, in time, for even him. I say unto wives, be large-hearted, wide in your charity, generous, not paltry, nor exacting, (exaction has murdered more loves than Herod murdered babies!) companionable, forbearing and true, and stand by your husbands through everything. And I say unto men, be men! Don't choose a wife, in the first place, for the mere exterior of a pretty face and form. Be as alert in the choice of a wife as you are in a bargain. You don't invest in a house just because it looks well, or buy a suit of clothes at first sight, or dash on change and snatch at the first deal. After you are once married stand by your choice like a man. If you must have your beer, don't sneak out of it on a clove and a lie; carefully weigh the cost, and if you conclude to risk everything for the gratification of an appetite drink at home and above board, and don't attempt to deceive your wife with subterfuges and excuses. Don't run after other women because your wife is not so young as she once was, or because the bloom is faded a little from the face you once thought so fair. It is the part of an Indian to retract a gift once given, or to go back on a bargain. Don't live together if you can't rise above the level of fighting cats, but be careful how you throw aside the bonds that God has joined between you. Live the lot you have chosen as bravely as you can, remembering that the thorn that you have developed will never change into a rose by mere change of circumstances. Divorce and the mere shifting of the stage setting will never make your tragedy over into a vaudeville or a light opera.