AUGUST 419 



One of the many pranks love plays us is that, when 

 women love, one of their chief joys is to pour out their whole 

 souls past, present, and to come thinking that, because 

 the man enjoys it and shows sympathy, he understands ; but 

 he does not a bit, and quickly forgets all she has told him. 

 One reason why the early months of marriage are so often 

 the least happy is that the two individuals expect each to 

 understand the other. Mr. Lecky somewhere puts it that 

 the art of a politician in a great measure is that of skilful 

 compromise, and that someone whose name I forget ' was 

 ever ready with the offer of a golden bridge or via media 

 in order to reconcile effectually differences of opinion.' 

 Does not this wisdom equally extend to married, and 

 indeed to all family life ? If one of the two is always 

 offering this golden bridge, I do not see how things can 

 go very far wrong. I have known many married people 

 of all ages some older, some contemporary, and some 

 younger and my astonishment is that on the whole so 

 few marriages have been real failures. What gives the 

 impression of failure to the young is that they often 

 judge of the happiness or unhappiness of married life from 

 the generation of their parents. When people have been 

 married for eighteen or twenty years the conditions of 

 their lives are entirely different from what they were in 

 earlier years. Even if mutual devotion is still there, 

 the display of it is subdued, and children instinctively 

 assume that neither their parents nor their parents' 

 friends were ever in love with each other. Also it is true 

 that this middle life is frequently the most trying time in 

 the marriage tie. Early love is over, time has developed 

 the differences of the two individuals, and they have not 

 yet attained to the more reasonable calm that often 

 supervenes in later years. And yet this half-way time is 

 just what is presented to the critical eyes of the young 

 as they are growing up. 



