call that can be resisted. And when it is resisted and two selfish
people find themselves tied together for life, all the conditions of
misery are present. Selfish people are nearly always unhappy people,
and two unhappy people certainly cannot make a happy marriage.

And yet these generalities do not carry us very far. Unless we can
discover in further detail why marriages fail, these things were better
left unsaid. I believe, however, we can discover many of the
reasons.

To begin with, a good many unhappy husbands are idle men. Having no
hard work to which they must give themselves daily, they have to try to
find interest in life in some other way. And because there is no other
way they inevitably find themselves threatened with boredom. While
their love was new it seemed to them that it would fill life for
ever with romance and joy, but so soon as the first early stages of
marriage were past they found it failing them. Such men almost always
become moody or restless or irritable, and if they are much at home
their wives have to try to humor them through their troubles. It is
more than any woman ought to be asked to do, and more than any woman
can continuously accomplish. If such men came home in the evening
honestly tired through trying to do something worth doing they would
find their homes a delightful solace. But life's problem cannot be
solved by an idle man, whether he be married or unmarried.

And the same is true for idle wives, though there are not so many of
them. When a woman has turned over to her servants all household cares
and even the care of her children that she may run after pleasure she
has chosen to live on terms which never yet made anybody lastingly
happy. We are by nature too big for that way of life, and sooner or