In courteous and polished circles, there are no stiff railroad-tracks, cutting straight through everything, and grating harsh thunders all along their course, but smooth, meandering streams, tranquilly bending hither and thither to every undulation of the flowery banks. What makes the charm of polite society would make no less the charm of domestic life; but it can come only by watchfulness and self-discipline in each individual. Some people have much more to struggle with in this way than others. Nature has made them precise and exact. They are punctilious in their hours, rigid in their habits, pained by any deviation from regular rule. Now Nature is always perversely ordering that men and women of just this disposition should become desperately enamored of their exact opposites. The man of rules and formulas and hours has his heart carried off by a gay, careless little chit, who never knows the day of the month, tears up the newspaper, loses the door-key, and makes curl-papers out of the last bill; or, _per contra_, our exact and precise little woman, whose belongings are like the waxen cells of a bee, gives her heart to some careless fellow, who enters her sanctum in muddy boots, upsets all her little nice household divinities whenever he is going on a hunting or fishing bout, and can see no manner of sense in the discomposure she feels in the case. What can such couples do, if they do not adopt the compromise of reason and sense,--if each arms his or her own peculiarities with the back force of persistent self-will, and runs them over the territories of the other? A sensible man and woman, finding themselves thus placed, can govern themselves by a just philosophy, and, instead of carrying on a life-battle, can modify their own tastes and requirements, turn their eyes from traits which do not suit them to those which do, resolving, at all events, however reasonable be the taste or propensity which they sacrifice, to give up all rather than have domestic strife. There is one form which persistency takes that is peculiarly trying: I mean that persistency of opinion which deems it necessary to stop and raise an argument in self-defence on the slightest personal criticism. John tells his wife that she is half an hour late with her breakfast this morning, and she indignantly denies it. “But look at my watch!” “Your watch isn’t right.” “I set it by railroad time.” “Well, that was a week ago; that watch of yours always gains.” “No, my dear, you’re mistaken.” “Indeed I’m not. Did I not hear you telling Mr. B---- about it?” “My dear, that was a year ago,--before I had it cleaned.” “How can you say so, John? It was only a month ago.” “My dear, you are mistaken.” And so the contest goes on, each striving for the last word.