The idea that in this world each young person is to wait until he or
she finds that precise counterpart who alone of all creation was meant
for him or her, and then fall instantly in love with it, is pretty
enough, only it is not Nature's way. It is not at all essential that
all pairs of human beings should be, as we sometimes say of particular
couples, "born for each other." Sometimes a man or a woman is made a
great deal better and happier in the end for having had to conquer the
faults of the one beloved, and make the fitness not found at first, by
gradual assimilation. There is a class of good women who have no right
to marry perfectly good men, because they have the power of saving
those who would go to ruin but for the guiding providence of a good
wife. I have known many such cases. It is the most momentous question a
woman is ever called upon to decide, whether the faults of the man she
loves are beyond remedy and will drag her down, or whether she is
competent to be his earthly redeemer and lift him to her own level.

A person of _genius_ should marry a person of _character_. Genius does
not herd with genius. The musk-deer and the civet-cat are never found
in company. They don't care for strange scents,--they like plain
animals better than perfumed ones. Nay, if you will have the kindness
to notice, Nature has not gifted my lady musk-deer with the personal
peculiarity by which her lord is so widely known.

Now when genius allies itself with character, the world is very apt to
think character has the best of the bargain. A brilliant woman marries
a plain, manly fellow, with a simple intellectual mechanism; we have
all seen such cases. The world often stares a good deal and wonders.
She should have taken that other, with a far more complex mental
machinery. She might have had a watch with the philosophical