You are my true and wedded wife;
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart.--Shakspeare.
She's adorned
Amply that in her husband's eye looks lovely--
The truest mirror that an honest wife
Can see her beauty in.--John Tobin.
"Of all the actions of a man's life, his marriage does
least concern other people," says Selden, "yet, of all actions of our
life, it is most meddled with by other people." In fact, if people would
take home their attention thus so liberally bestowed abroad, it would
enable them to make matches of their own far better than those which now
burden the records of the churches and the courts. If a young man and a
young woman can be left alone three or four years, to wear into the new
relations they have assumed, there is little chance of their being
unhappily married. An instinct of the strongest character brought them
together, and is likely to hold them by its own force. Man is a creature
of habit. Strip him of his home after he has been for four years
habituated to it, and he will be unhappy, no matter how unpeaceful that
home may have been. Therefore, if possible, have your wife and yourself
in a house by yourselves for the first four years of your married life.
As a general thing this is possible, and I think a firm will, in most
cases, greatly aids the possibility of such a course. One thing, at
least, is clear,