The most perfect reserve in courtship, even in cases of the most ardent attachment, is indispensable to the confidence and trust of married life to come.
All public display of devotion should be avoided, for it tends to lessen mutual respect, and it makes the actors ridiculous in the eyes or others. It is quite possible for a man to show every conceivable attention to the one to whom he is engaged, and yet to avoid committing the slightest offence against delicacy or good taste.
It is quite possible for a man to show attention, and even assiduity up to a certain point, without becoming a lover; and it is equally possible for the girl to let it be seen that he is not disagreeable to her, without actually encouraging him. No man likes to be refused, and no man of tact will risk a refusal.
Long engagements are usually entered into by people who are quite young, but who, for some reason, cannot marry. As the years go on their tastes may change, and yet each may feel that honor binds the one to the other. The woman chosen by a man when he is twenty-one is seldom the woman he would chose when he is forty. When people marry young they grow accustomed to each other, and, oddly enough, they grow to be alike; but during a long engagement their tastes are apt to change, and the result is apt to be anything but a happy one. Of course, there are exceptions, but, generalizing, the long engagement is to be feared.
DOMESTIC ETIQUETTE AND DUTIES.
Etiquette is a comprehensive term, and its observances are nowhere more to be desired than in the domestic circle.
If husbands and wives, generally, would render each other half of the little attentions they lavished upon each other before marriage, their mutual happiness would be more than doubled.
A wife should never let her husband have cause to complain that she is more agreeable abroad than at home, nor see her negligent of dress and manners at home when it is the reverse in company.
If, unhappily, any misunderstandings or annoyances occur between husband and wife, it is ill-bred and unjust for either to repeat them to a third person.
Faithful unto death in all things should be the motto of both husband and wife; and forbearance with each other’s peculiarities, their never-ending effort to attain.