Live on the interest.
If you touch the capital, you are bound to become bankrupt sooner or later.
Married life is a comedy (sometimes, alas! a tragedy) in several acts. Like in a play, avoid putting into the first act of your married life all your strongest situations and all your smartest dialogue, for fear lest the interest should go on flagging steadily to the end.
The clever dramatist is invariably satisfied with writing a quiet and sober first act. No situations of any strength are required. He makes his audience thoroughly acquainted with his characters.
Then the action begins, and the climax is never reached before the end of the last act but one. A genius sometimes gives it in the last act.
The intelligent husband should bear this in mind and do the same.
The first act of matrimony should be a careful and sympathetic study of character, the laying down of a little plan of campaign full of considerate concessions and well-conceived resolutions.
It is only after at least ten years of matrimony that a climax should be reached, when the man is above forty, in the full possession of his manly powers, when the woman is above thirty, in the full possession of her glorious womanly charms, when both are sure of each other and tried friends.
Then, and then only, they can allow themselves to be lovers in the full meaning of the word. They will be able to enjoy that great bliss if they have not made the mistake of trying too soon.
The epicure, like the diplomatist, is the one who knows how to wait.