420 MORE POT-POURRI 



a very wholesome cheek against an overpreponderance 

 being given to the romantic attitude so much advocated 

 by Miss Marie Corelli. She describes marriage as the 

 exalted passion which fills the souls ' of a man and 

 woman, 'and moves them to become one in flesh as 

 well as one in spirit.' Mrs. Steel says, and I must say I 

 agree with her, that this so-called 'exalted passion' is 

 quite as often likely to lead to evil as to good. 



Whether girls realise it or not, certainly an immense 

 number of them associate marriage with the very healthy 

 desire of having children of their own. With a little 

 further cultivation they will come to think of the man 

 they wish to marry as the father of these unborn chil- 

 dren ; and most women — even girls — can early discrim- 

 inate between the man they enjoy dancing with, and the 

 man they would like to be some day head of their house 

 and father of their children. This develops what I hold 

 to be of such great importance : that the girl herself 

 should feel respect, or at any rate approval, of the man 

 she thinks of marrying. There should be many solid 

 reasons for entering into so important a partnership 

 beyond the fact of love, even if that be ever so real. 

 At the same time, I do not mean to imply that the man's 

 moral standard in the past should necessarily have been 

 the same as the woman's. The man who understands 

 women extracts far more love from them — and so, in 

 the end, makes them happier — than the man who knows 

 little about them. I hold it to be a great mistake for a 

 man to have that kind of fear of the girl he is engaged 

 to, or of his wife, which leads him to think it is desir- 

 able to deceive her. That seems the great danger of 

 the tone of the present day, a woman expecting too much 

 of men. 



One of the chief difficulties in talking or writing of 

 love is that the word may be interpreted in so many 



