When the sages, the critics, and the people who love to say smart
things, paint the infelicities of marriage, they as often paint simply
the general troubles of life, which are common to all people. The
bachelor is more apt to be kept awake by the crying child in the next
chamber than is the father in the same room with the child. The young
man quarrels with his landlady as often as the young husband quarrels
with his wife. The young man notoriously finds his wants as lightly
resting on the memories of those he hires to attend to them as does the
husband of the most careless wife. He cannot escape the sickness of life
with even the good fortune of a married man, according to the
statistics of the Government. The married woman is also healthier than
the maid. So, then, get the critics of the married state to specify its
various unhappinesses; then subtract from that schedule all that come
alike to the single state, and you will find that marriage, for its
separate joys, has not a separate set of troubles in as great
proportion. The very highest evidence of the usefulness and
agreeableness of marriage is gathered from the well-known haste in which
both men and women, when death takes away their companions, seek, in a
second marriage, a renewal of those relations which, in their opinion,
lend additional charm to the drama of life.