O youth, cleave unto the wife of thy bosom; since
A loving wife is worth a multitude of friends.
Sweet are friends, and fame is sweet; but sweeter far a wifely heart whereon to lay a weary head. But
Each married pair must solve its own difficulties as best it can. If any advice were worth the offering, it would be this:
O ye Husbands, and O ye Wives, if not for your own sakes then for your children's, lead a straight, clean, honorable life; any other sort of life leads to despicability, to dismalness, to disaster.—Which only means, after all, that
In the marriage relation, as in every relation—the social, the industrial, the commercial, the political—it is conduct, it is character, that counts, nothing else;
Beauty—Wealth—Culture—Grace—Wit—Intellect—Sprightliness— Vivacity—Humor—these are much but they are simply naught, and less than naught, when just this simple, single, yet insatiable thing called Man wants to live amicably, affectionately, martially, with that simple, single, but incomprehensible thing called Woman.
Character—Conduct—rule the world, the Matrimonial equally with the
Municipal.
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XIV. On this Human Heart