Of all the revolutionary suggestions for improving the present marriage system, the most sensible and feasible seems to me marriage ‘on approval’--in other words, a ‘preliminary canter.’ The procedure would be somewhat as follows: a couple on deciding to marry would go through a legal form of contract, agreeing to take each other as husband and wife for a limited term of years--say three. This period would allow two years for a fair trial, after the abnormal and exceptionally trying first year was over. Any shorter time would be insufficient. At the conclusion of the three years, the contracting parties would have the option of dissolving the marriage--the dissolution not to become absolute for another six months, so as to allow every opportunity of testing the genuineness of the desire to part. If no dissolution were desired, the marriage would then be ratified by a religious or final legal ceremony, and become permanently binding. In the case of a marriage dissolved, each party would be free to wed again; but the second essay must be final and permanent from the start. This restriction would be absolutely necessary if the preliminary canter plan is not to degenerate into a species of legalised free love, as there are many men, and some women, who would ‘always go on cantering,’ as Amoret expressed it once--and the upshot would be nothing less than leasehold marriage for the short term of three years. It might be urged against this plan that many couples who come to grief in the danger zone of married life--_i.e._ nearing the tenth year--are perfectly happy in the early years. But human love being as mutable as it is, and people and conditions being so liable to change, it is impossible to arrive at any permanent marriage system which allows for this. It must, however, be remembered that, in the majority of unhappy unions, it is not the system, but the individuals who are to blame. The institution of the conjugal novitiate would, however, reduce the number of divorces considerably, by making less possible the miserable misfits in temperament now so prevalent. It would give a second chance to those who had made a mistake, yet without resulting in that promiscuity of intercourse which is a danger to society and fatal to the best interests of the race. Of what other scheme can the same be said? For married women in the novitiate period a new prefix would have to be invented, which they would retain if the union were dissolved. _Mrs_ would be the distinguishing prefix of women who had entered on the final and permanent state of matrimony. Whether the wife would take the husband’s surname during the probationary term would be another question for decision by the majority; I should incline to her retaining her maiden name with the aforesaid prefix, and only assuming that of the husband with the Mrs of finality. But these are mere details.