_Don’t expect everything of one person._ Some expect to marry love, beauty, talent, riches, and affection all in one. It is unreasonable; you will never find it, and may as well give up looking in good season. “Waukeen” Miller was requested to rewrite an article sent to a New York magazine and returned this pithy reply: “I can’t re-copy it. I can’t do everything. What do you expect of a man, anyway--to be a genius, an inventor, and a writing-teacher? No, I can’t bother my brains with copying worth four to six hundred a year at the highest.” This covers the whole subject in a sentence. But it is well to add that Nature is sparing of her gifts. To one she allots beauty, to another strength, to another wisdom, to a third courage, to a fourth ability to acquire riches, to another that to write and speak, to teach, to manage, to paint, or to control armies: all are not alike, and to no one belong all virtues. _Don’t expect too much of a wife._ If she is beautiful, that will be her pride and ideal. If plain, she may make it up a thousand times in goodness, gentleness, industry, virtue (the plainest are the least tempted). Earnest in her duty, she may be of all women the most suited to your station. If talented, she will devote herself to it. You cannot own beauty, talent, domestic drudgery all in one. “Looking for angels, are you?” said an advanced maiden in the country. “Well, you’ll not find ’em fit for kitchen work; and, while I think of it, how would you look by the side of an angel, you brute you?” and he subsided. No, they are not much suited to kitchen work, the so-called angels; but many a mother who has brought up a large family as her own kitchen maid, without servants, who has braved the hardships of poverty and privation, has led a life but little lower than the angels, after all. _Don’t marry and cross your husband._ While on this division, don’t cross your wife just at dinner-time. After the cares of business he is tired, fretful, and she is of similar humor. To make a dispute is much easier than to make a coal fire. Wait! Don’t flash up and speak back, and irritate by quick answer. Wait! If man or woman could only wait in seasons of anger, all would blow over and harmony return like spring flowers, that are not always in blossom. Don’t both speak at once, nor both get angry at once, nor both be too determined at once. No one is ever convinced by angry tones. It is horribly repulsive to talk so; besides, you will both be sorry for it very many times. Wait, and let your judgment mature after dinner; quarrel, if you must, in whispers; that is the new fashion. Try the newer form. About ten thousand new divorces could be prevented each year by observing these rules of common sense and reason. When will married people and unmarried people, and lovers and neighbors, learn how pleasant peace is, and how awkward it is to quarrel together?