4i8 MORE POT-POURRI 



admit that marriage has turned out 'hell' for them, and 

 see that a more philosophical attitude of mind enables 

 them to expect less and really find a great deal of happi- 

 ness on the lines of the quotation at the conclusion of 

 Lady Malmesbury's article : ' Two are better than one ; 

 because they have a good reward for their labour. For 

 if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow; but woe to 

 him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not 

 another to help him up.' In my youth I used to think 

 that the gain in marriage was almost entirely on the 

 woman's side ; but as I grow older I am inclined to 

 think the advantages and the disadvantages to men and 

 women are nearly equal. 



The crux of the whole position as regards the girl 

 seems to me to be hinted by Lady Jeune when she 

 implies that the mother should take the matter into her 

 own hands — if not of making, at any rate of unmaking, 

 marriages. And from this point of view, I think I have 

 something to suggest. 



The questions that are constantly put to me on this 

 subject by girls more or less young, prove to me that a 

 great part of the difficulty arises from the injudicious 

 ignorance in which they are allowed to grow up. Let 

 us begin at the beginning. A young girl of eighteen or 

 nineteen once said to me : ' What is the harm of kiss- 

 ing ? ' And it is not altogether an easy question to 

 answer if the girl herself has no feeling about it. When 

 I was twelve years old my mother deliberately explained 

 to me that for girls to kiss boys and men was childish 

 and infra dig.; that grown-up women thought most 

 gravely of kissing, and reserved it for those they loved 

 very much, and who had asked them to marry them. 

 This gradually puts the matter on a sounder basis. We 

 have to be much older to understand that 'kisses are 

 like grains of gold and silver found upon the ground, of 



