Thus, if I leave out altruistic considerations and include egoistic
considerations only, I may still look back from these declining days
of life with content. One drawback indeed there has been, and that a
great one. All through those years in which work should have had the
accompaniment of wife and children, my means were such as to render
marriage impossible: I could barely support myself, much less others.
And when, at length, there came adequate means the fit time had passed
by. Even in this matter, however, it may be that fortune has favored
me. Frequently when prospects are promising, dissatisfaction follows
marriage rather than satisfaction; and in my own case the prospects
would not have been promising. I am not by nature adapted to a
relation in which perpetual compromise and great forbearance are
needful. That extreme critical tendency which I have above described,
joined with a lack of reticence no less pronounced, would, I fear,
have caused perpetual domestic differences. After all, my celibate
life has probably been the best for me, as well as the best for some
unknown other.
[Footnote 53: From Part XII of the "Autobiography." Copyright 1904, by
D. Appleton & Co.]