kept one from the other. What one knows both must know. It is a bad
sign when one partner in the conjugal relation is afraid to have the
letters opened or read by the other partner. Surreptitious
correspondence is always dangerous. If a man comes to you and says, "I
am going to tell you a great privacy, and don't want you to tell
anybody, not even your wife," say to him, "Well, now, you had better
not tell me, for I shall tell her as soon as I get home."
There must be no secrecy of association. You ought not to be unwilling
to tell where you have been, and with whom you have been. Sometimes an
unwise wife will have a lady confidante whom she makes a depository of
privacies which they are pledged to keep between themselves. Beware!
Anything that implies that husband and wife are two and not one
implies peril, domestic peril, social peril, mighty peril.
In the vast majority of cases of domestic infelicity coming to
exposure in the courts, the trouble began by the accidental opening of
a letter which implied correspondence which was never suspected. In
the conjugal relations, secrets kept one from another are
nitro-glycerine under the hearthstone, and the fuse is lighted!