"O let us walk the world, so that our love
Burns like a blessed beacon, beautiful,
Upon the walls of life's surrounding dark."
—Massey.
The true marriage is the result of years of mutual endeavor to please, and comes of patient efforts to learn each other's disposition and taste. This can be done by all who cherish right views of the duties and pleasures of the marriage relation.
You have but one life to live, and no amount of money or influence or fame can pay you for a life of unhappiness. You can not afford to quarrel with one another. You can not afford to cherish a single thought, to harbor a single desire, to gratify a single passion, nor indulge a single selfish feeling, that will tend to make this union any thing but a source of happiness to you. So it becomes you at starting to have a perfect understanding with one another. It becomes you to resolve that you will be happy together at any rate, or that if you suffer it shall be from the same cause and in perfect sympathy. You are not to let any human being step between you under any circumstances.
Human character, by a wise provision of Providence, is infinitely varied, and there are not two individuals in existence so entirely alike in their tastes, habits of thought, and natural aptitude that they can keep step with one another over all the rough places in the journey of life. There must be a leaning to one another. The compromise can not be all on one side. You can be happy together if you will, but the agreement to be happy must be mutual. Draw your souls closer and closer together from year to year. Get all obstacles out of the way. Just as soon as one arises attend to it, and get rid of it. At last they will all disappear. You will have become wonted to one another's habits and frames of mind and peculiarities of disposition, and love, respect, and charity will take care of the rest.
If you observe faults in your companion keep them to yourself. What right have you, who should be the very one to kindly conceal faults, to inform others of their presence? Neither father nor mother, neither brother nor sister, have any right to be informed of the secrets of your domestic life. A husband and wife have no business to tell one another's faults to any body but themselves. They can not do it without shame. Their grievances are to be settled in private between themselves, and in all public places and among friends they are to preserve towards one another that nice consideration and entire respectfulness which their relations enjoin. With a true wife the husband's faults should be secret. A wife forgets when she condescends to that refuge of weakness, a female confidant. A wife's bosom should be the tomb of her husband's failings, and his character far more valuable in her estimation than life.
Happiness between husband and wife can only be secured by that constant tenderness and care of the parties for each other which are based upon warm and demonstrative love. The heart demands that the man shall not sit silent, reticent, and self-absorbed in the midst of his family. The wife who forgets to provide for her husband's tastes and wishes renders her home undesirable for him. In a word, ever-present and ever-demonstrative gentleness must reign, or else the heart starves.