438 MORE POT-POURRI 



We all know ' Punch's' advice to a man about to 

 marry: 'Don't.' My advice is exactly the contrary. 

 I say : Do, and don't wait till love of your bachelor- 

 hood becomes too strong a custom. But except when 

 very young, in which case the wild oats will probably be 

 sown in an undignified way at the end of life, don't 

 marry exclusively for what is called love. Let the heart 

 and the head go together. For a woman, I think it is 

 wise and often right to marry a man out of a sort of 

 gratitude; it rarely answers for a man to marry for this 

 reason a woman who has loved him not wisely but too 

 well. 



I do not, for one, entirely condemn the French customs 

 as regards marriage, though I believe they themselves 

 are modifying them. When marriages are a question of 

 reason and arrangement, I think it is better that such 

 things should be managed by the elders than by the 

 young people ; and if Englishmen of sense, when they 

 make up their minds to marry, would take the help and 

 advice of older women in seeking a wife, instead of 

 going about with the hope that they may be fancy- 

 stricken through the eye, I think more suitable mar- 

 riages would be brought about, both as regards character 

 and the very natural wish that the woman should have a 

 certain proportion of money to help the joint manage. 



If a man who has married with his best judgment 

 really cares to win the love of a girl after marriage, and 

 takes pains to do so, he is sure to succeed it is so 

 natural for a good, affectionate woman to love her hus- 

 band and the father of her children. 



Of course if a girl, with no sense of duty, merely 

 sells herself to shine in the world, or for admiration and 

 notoriety, which she thinks she will get better married 

 than single, there is nothing to be said. Such things 

 will always be; but a girl of that type is rare, and al- 



