the clouds darken and the tempests howl around his head; then,
indeed, we perceive the divinely beautiful arrangement which
marriage enforces. Man in his wisdom, his rare mental endowments, is
little fitted to bear adversity. He bows before the blast, like the
sturdy pine which the wintry storm, sweeping past, cracks to its
very centre; while woman, as the frail reed, sways to and fro with
the fierce gust, then rises again triumphant towards the blackening
sky. Her affection, pure and steadfast, her unswerving faith and
devotion, sustain man in the hour of darkness, even as the trailing
weed supports and binds together the mighty walls of some mouldering
ruin.

Would you know why so many unhappy marriages seem to falsify the
truth that they are made in Heaven? Why we see daily diversity of
interests, and terrible contentions, eating the very life away, like
the ghoul in the Arabian tales, that prayed on human flesh? It is
that women are wrongly educated. Instructed, trained, to consider
matrimony the sole aim, the end of their existence, it matters not
to whom the Gordian knot is tied, so that the trousseau, wedding,
and eclat of bridehood follow. Soon the brightness of this false
aurora borealis fades from the conjugal horizon; and the truths of
life, divested of all romance, in bitterness and pain rise before
them. Unfitted for duties which must be fulfilled, physically
incapacitated for the responsibilities of life--mere school-girls in
many instances--the chains they have assumed become cables of iron,
whose heavy weight crushes into the heart, erasing for ever the
footprints of affection, and leaving instead the black marks of
deadly hate. Then comes the struggle for supremacy. Man in his might
and power asserts his will, while woman, unknowing her sin, unguided
by the divine light of love, neglects, abandons her home; then come