his unkindness."--SIR WALTER SCOTT--_Waverley._


Marriage is the crown of woman's life, a dignity that is all the more
honorable because it is of general expectation and realization. There
is a presumption that the unmarried woman has missed the central and
significant reason for her existence, the perpetuation and nurture of
the race, and that the burden is upon her for compensating society by
other services for this lost opportunity. Marriage for a woman means
attainment first and fulfilment after, the reward given in advance of
labor, and therefore entailing a special moral obligation that it be
justified in its fruits. Nature gives the future mother peace of mind,
rest from doubt as to career and from responsibility as to breadwinning,
in order that she may tranquilly devote herself to her special function
as the maker of the home.

The fact that in the normal home the wife is relieved from the necessity
of earning the living of the home sometimes has the effect of making her
careless about expenditure. The thoughtless wife, and here thoughtless
means selfish, assumes that the problem of providing is "up to" the
husband and takes no care to aid him in its solution. If the suggestion
of her being a burden to him ever does cross her mind, she is ready to
excuse herself by consolatory sayings such as "Two can live cheaper than
one," the truth of which, though universal when every wife was a
producer of such things as clothing that are now bought is now the case
only in agricultural homes, and even there has lost a great deal of its
force. Men do not marry now, as they once did, for economic reasons,
but rather in spite of them, for the higher rewards of love and
companionship of wife and children, and this the wife should recognize
by giving her husband the things for which he has made his economic