with healthful color; the whole system, indeed, renovated, refreshed and
re-invigorated.+




_CHAPTER VII._

THE DUTIES, RESPONSIBILITIES AND FAILURES
IN AND OF MARRIED LIFE.


What more perfect or pleasing picture than that of happy married life.
Yet how little of it we see! How the newspapers dish up to us in strong
words the misery, despair, wretchedness, infidelity and deceit of the
divorce court. How it stares at us from the desolate fireside of friend
and acquaintance; is hinted at or suppressed by the records of the
Coroner's office; leers at us from the sumptuous mansion of the
affluent; lurks in the humble cottage of the mechanic. How sad the
contrast between the home where nestle happiness, love, contentment,
offspring; and the abode of suspicion, deceit, infidelity or barrenness.

And yet men and women are being married every day, every hour--ay, every
minute. Men and women incompatible physically, mentally, morally--urged
on by lust, cupidity, love; to escape unhappy homes; to hide sad
sins--for a thousand reasons, some good, many bad--are constantly
marrying.

A man selects a wife less carefully than he would a horse; a woman
yields herself, her life, her happiness, blindly, unreasoningly, to a