In reference to marriage and to everything else in life, we should sometimes reflect how much worse off we might be instead of how much better. Perhaps you are like the man who said, "I must put up with it," when he had only turkey and plum pudding for dinner. If, as it has often been said, all men brought their grievances of mind, body, and estate--their lunacies, epilepsies, cancers, bereavement, beggary, imprisonment--and laid them on a heap to be equally divided, would you share alike and take your portion, or be as you are? Without question you would be as you are. And perhaps if all matrimonial bargains were to be again distributed, it would be better for you to keep what you have than to run the chance of getting worse. A man who grumbled at the badness of his shoes felt ashamed on meeting with one who had no feet. "Consider the pains which martyrs have endured, and think how even now many people are bearing afflictions beyond all measure greater than yours, and say, 'Of a truth my trouble is comfort, my torments are but roses as compared to those whose life is a continual death, without solace, or aid, or consolation, borne down with a weight of grief tenfold greater than mine.'" "Oft in life's stillest shade reclining, In desolation unrepining, Without a hope on earth to find A mirror in an answering mind, Meek souls there are, who little dream Their daily strife an angel's theme, Or that the rod they take so calm Shall prove in Heaven a martyr's palm." One of these "meek souls" is reported to have said to a friend, "You know not the joy of an accepted sorrow." And of every disappointment, we may truly say that people know not how well it may be borne until they have tried to bear it. This, which is true of disappointment in general, is no less true of the disappointments of a married pair. Those who have not found in marriage all that they fondly, and perhaps over sanguinely, anticipated, may, after some time, become to a certain extent happy though married, if they resolve to do their best under the circumstances. CHAPTER VII. MARRIAGE CONSIDERED AS A DISCIPLINE OF CHARACTER. "Certainly wife and children are a kind of Discipline of Humanity."--_Bacon._ "I well remember the bright assenting laugh which she (Mrs. Carlyle) once responded to some words of mine, when the propriety was being discussed of relaxing the marriage laws. I had said that the true way to look at marriage was as a discipline of character."--_Froude._