together provided respectively, with the very qualities, likes and
dislikes, that the partner needs and prefers.

Add to the improbability aforesaid the inevitable variance of views
upon divers important subjects consequent upon the standpoint
masculine and the standpoint feminine, and the wonder grows--not that
some marriages are unhappy, but that a large percentage of wedded
couples jog on comfortably, and, if not without jar, without open
scandal. That they do speaks volumes for the wisdom of Him who
ordained marriage as man's best estate--and something--not
volumes--perhaps, but a pamphlet or two--in behalf of human powers of
philosophical endurance.

Before going farther it would be well to look our subject in the
face--inspect it fairly and without prejudice pro or con.

Stand forth, honest John! and let us behold you, as God made and your
mother--in blood, or in heart--trained you. Let the imagination of my
readers survey him, as he plants himself before us. Albeit a trifle
more conscious than a woman would be in like circumstances, of the
leading fact that he has the full complement of hands and feet usually
prescribed by Nature, he bears scrutiny bravely. He is what he would
denominate in another, "a white man;" square in his dealings with his
fellow-men and with a soft place, on the sunny side of his heart, for
the women. He would add--"God bless them!" did we allow him to speak.
Men of his sort rarely think of their own womenkind or of pure, gentle
womanhood in the abstract, without a benediction, mental or audible.

Our specimen, you will note, as he begins to feel at ease in the
honorable pillory to which we have called him--puts his hands into his