After all, these enumerations of the comparative advantages of marriage and celibacy are of little use, for a single glance of a pair of bright eyes will cause antimatrimonial arguments to go down like ninepins. The greatest misogamists have been most severely wounded when least expecting it by the darts of Cupid. Such a mishap, according to the anatomist of melancholy already quoted, had "Stratocles the physician, that blear-eyed old man. He was a severe woman's-hater all his life, a bitter persecutor of the whole sex; he foreswore them all still, and mocked them wheresoever he came in such vile terms, that if thou hadst heard him thou wouldst have loathed thine own mother and sisters for his word's sake. Yet this old doting fool was taken at last with that celestial and divine look of Myrilla, the daughter of Anticles the gardener, that smirking wench, that he shaved off his bushy beard, painted his face, curled his hair, wore a laurel crown to cover his bald pate, and for her love besides was ready to run mad." If it be true that "nothing is certain but death and taxes," we must not seek for mathematical demonstration that the road we propose to travel on is the right one when we come to crossroads in life. A certain amount of probability ought to make us take either one or the other, for not to resolve is to resolve. In reference to such questions as marriage _versus_ celibacy, the choice of a wife, the choice of a profession, and many others, there must be a certain venture of faith, and in this unintelligible world there is a rashness which is not always folly. There are, of course, many persons who, if they married, would be guilty of great imprudence, not to say of downright crime. When, however, two _lovers_--we emphasise the word--have sufficient means, are of a suitable age, and are conscious of no moral, intellectual, or physical impediment, let them marry. It is the advice of some very wise men. Benjamin Franklin wrote to a young friend upon his marriage: "I am glad you are married, and congratulate you most cordially upon it. You are now in the way of becoming a useful citizen, and you have escaped the unnatural state of celibacy for life--the fate of many here who never intended it, but who, having too long postponed the change of their condition, find at length that it is too late to think of it, and so live all their lives in a situation that greatly lessens a man's value. An old volume of a set of books bears not the value of its proportion to the set. What think you of the odd half of a pair of scissors? It can't well cut anything--it may possibly serve to scrape a trencher!"