matrimony--the regularity with which husbands relate the irregularities
of their friends. Very little of the world's woe is caused by silence,
however it may be in fiction and the drama.

[Sidenote: Exchange of Confidence]

In return for the generous confidence regarding other people's doings,
the married man is made conversant with those things which his wife
deems it right and proper for him to know. And he is not unhappy, for it
isn't what he doesn't know that troubles a man, but what he knows he
doesn't know.

The masculine nature is less capable of concealment than the feminine.
Where men are frankly selfish, women are secretly so. Man's vices are
few and comprehensive; woman's petty and innumerable. Any man who is not
in the penitentiary has at most but three or four, while a woman will
hide a dozen under her social mask and defy detection.

Women are said to be fickle, but are they more so than men? A man's
ideal is as variable as the wind. What he thinks is his ideal of woman
is usually a glorified image of the last girl he happened to admire. The
man who has had a decided preference for blondes all his life, finally
installs a brown-eyed deity at his hearthstone. If he has been fond of
petite and coquettish damsels, he marries some Diana moulded on large
lines and unconcerned as to mice.

A man will ride, row, and swim with one girl and marry another who is
afraid of horses, turns pale at the mention of a boat, and who would
look forward to an interview with His Satanic Majesty with more ease and
confidence than to a dip in the summer sea.