"I will do anything," says Portia, in the "Merchant of Venice," "ere I will be married to a sponge;" and in answer to the question--"How like you the young German, the Duke of Saxony's nephew?" she answers: "Very vilely in the morning, when he is sober; and most vilely in the afternoon, when he is drunk: when he is best he is a little worse than a man; and when he is worst he is little better than a beast: an the worst fall that ever fell, I hope I shall make shift to go without him." When a poor girl has not had Portia's discernment to discover such faults before marriage, what can she do? She can do her best. "What knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband?" Endeavouring to do this, you will not only have the answer of a good conscience, but will have taken the best precaution against falling yourself, so that it never can be truly said of you-- "As the husband is, the wife is; thou art mated with a clown, And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down." It has been said that to have loved and lost--either by that total disenchantment which leaves compassion as the sole substitute for love which can exist no more, or by the slow torment which is obliged to let go day by day all that constitutes the diviner part of love, namely, reverence, belief, and trust, yet clings desperately to the only thing left it, a long-suffering apologetic tenderness--this lot is probably the hardest any woman can have to bear. "What is good for a bootless bane?-- And she made answer, 'Endless sorrow.'" This answer should never have been made, for none but the guilty can be long and completely miserable. The effect and duration of sorrow greatly depends upon ourselves. "If thou hast a bundle of thorns in thy lot, at least thou need'st not insist on sitting down on them." Nor must we forget that there is a "wondrous alchemy in time and the power of God" to transmute our sorrows, as well as our faults and errors, into golden blessings. It is an old maxim that if one will not, two cannot quarrel. If one of the heads of a house has a bad temper, there is all the more reason for the other to be cool and collected, and capable of keeping domestic peace. Think of Socrates, who, when his wife Zanthippe concluded a fit of scolding by throwing at him a bucket of water, quietly remarked, "After the thunder comes the rain." And when she struck him, to some friends who would have had him strike her again, he replied, that he would not make them sport, nor that they should stand by and say, "_Eia Socrates, eia Zanthippe!_" as boys do when dogs fight, animate them more by clapping hands.