Another thing to remember is that you will not always be young, and that many years of your life will probably be passed when the respect of the world, a great position, and the material advantages will count more than the romantic part of love.
And if, through your disillusion and disgust, and the pain of broken idols, you permit yourself to act foolishly and with want of dignity at a period when love seems of supreme importance, you will be laying up limitations for yourself. And it is only the fool who lays up limitations for himself or herself. You will not have got love back by acting so, and you will have lost what might have compensated you in the future. Nothing is more pitiful than the position of the woman of forty-five who has made scandals in her youth, quarreled with her husband and broken up her home, just because she herself was unhappy and the man was a brute. She is then left with none of the consolations of middle age. No one considers her; she is spoken of by her friends and relations as “poor So-and-so.” If she has had children, they have grown up under the wretched conditions of an atmosphere of partisanship for either parent. She is ever conscious of an anomalous position, and has to go through more humiliations than she would have had to do if she had borne bravely the anguishes of the time of trial, and used the whole of her intelligence to better the state of things.
However much a man may turn into a brute, if he has once loved the woman she must in some way be to blame, because love is so strong a master that it can soften the greatest wretch, and if the woman had kept him loving her she would have kept her influence over him as well.
So you can see, Caroline, the tremendous responsibility you will be taking upon yourself when you marry, and how terribly, tragically foolish it will be of you to enter into this bond lightly and without due reflection.
Now for the other subject I alluded to: the permitting and encouraging of vagrant fancies. In these days, when no discipline has been taught girls, and very little principle, they are prone to indulge any caprice which comes into their heads. Good-looking and attractive young women like you, Caroline, are bound to have many temptations to look elsewhere for diversions very soon after they are married. And here wisdom—quite apart from high principle—should teach you to resist as much as possible, because of the end. Ask yourself if it is worth while to start a ball rolling which can only roll down hill—if it is worth while, for the momentary gratification of vanity, to open a door which will let in complete disillusion for the life which you have undertaken to live. Because all forbidden excitements are like drugs—they have to be taken in stronger and stronger doses to produce their effect, until the patient is a wretched maniac or dies under the strain. Suggestion and a strong will are such great helps to happiness. Suggest to your subconscious mind that you are perfectly happy and contented with your legitimate mate—make the current between you one of tenderness and charm, and sternly control every unbalanced fancy. I quote here another of my maxims: “It is a wise man who knows when he is happy and can appreciate the divine bliss of the tangible now. Most of us retrospect or anticipate, and so lose the present.”
Do not retrospect—do not anticipate. Go on from day to day enjoying the good things which fate has given you: ménage them like a careful housewife—use forethought—quite a different thing to anticipation! Recognize that you are happy and decide what makes you so, and how you can continue to employ the methods to keep this joyous state. Be perfectly calm, and believe that nothing can alter or interrupt the enchanting present. For do not forget—each one draws to himself or herself what his or her thoughts dwell upon. Those who lay up for a rainy day attract the rainy day as surely as those who always believe that good will come secure good. A very useful thing for you to do is to look round at all your young married friends, and see what niches they have carved for themselves in the world—which ones are considered and have prestige, which are treated as nobodies, which are laughed at or pitied. Then try to decide upon the grade in public opinion you would desire to occupy yourself, and what are the causes of your friends being in whatever places they are. You will get a number of advantageous hints if you do this before you embark upon marriage yourself.