“Forever in my spirit spake
The natural whisper, ‘Well ’twill be
When loving wife and children break
Their bread with thee!’”
Or, put more broadly by Kipling:—
“But since our women must walk gay,
And money buys their gear,
The sealing vessels filch this way
At hazard, year by year.”
The contest in every good man’s heart to-day between the “ought to” and the “must,” between his best work and the “potboiler,” is his personal share of this incessant struggle between social interest and self-interest. For himself and by himself he would be glad to do his best work, to be true to his ideals, to be brave in meeting loss for that truth’s sake. But as the compromising capitalist says in “Put Yourself in His Place,” when his sturdy young friend—a bachelor—wonders at his giving in to unjust demands, “Marriage makes a mouse of a man.” To the young business man who falls into evil courses in the sex-relation the open greed of his fair dependant is a menace to his honesty, to his business prospects. On the same man married the needs of his wife often operate in the same way. The sense of the dependence of the helpless creature whose food must come through him does not stimulate courage, but compels submission.