But for the children, marriage would indeed be a universal failure. In their interest it was instituted and it is they who make it possible. Children make a happy union perfect and an indifferent one happy. Very often they patch up an utter failure into at least an endurable partnership. When a childless marriage proves happy--really happy--it is generally because the man and woman are particularly attached to each other, or are people of unusual character. One knows of rare instances where husband and wife have grown dearer and more closely knit by reason of having no other object to divide their affection. The wife, with lesser cares, not needing to merge the sweetheart in the mother, remains more youthful in her husband’s eyes than would otherwise be possible, whilst on the man is lavished her maternal as well as her wifely devotion, and he is at once husband and child to her. In such a union one can see the sacred element, although it has produced no children; a couple of this kind does not seem to miss the little ones that never come. The same is sometimes the case with artists, whose whole interest and creative energies are absorbed in their work. With all my heart I despise those married people in full possession of health and strength who deliberately elect to remain childless. With all my heart I pity the celibate and those to whom children are denied. Yet they have compensations--though they lose the rapture, they miss also the infinite anxieties, the innumerable worries, the constant self-denial, the often bitter disappointments. Children bring many other pains than those of birth. Tennyson says, ‘the saddest soul in all the world is she that has a child and sees him err.’ Yet by some subtle alchemy of nature, the strings of mother hearts are sometimes attuned even more tenderly to the children who err. I think one of the most beautiful lines ever written occurs in Stephen Philips’ _Marpessa_. When the maid Marpessa rejects the god in favour of the humble mortal lover, of the latter she says: ‘And he shall give me passionate children, not Some radiant god that will despise me quite, But clamouring limbs, and little hearts that err.’ But the clamouring limbs soon wax great, alas! out of all recognition; the little hearts become wise and worldly and err in a less pleasing manner--our passionate children outgrow us quickly nowadays. That is the real tragedy of motherhood--_to be outgrown_. PART V HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED ‘To dwell happily together they should be versed in the niceties of the heart and born with a faculty for willing compromise.’ ‘Goodness in marriage is a more intricate problem than mere single virtue, for in marriage there are two ideals to be realised.’ --R. L. STEVENSON. I A FEW SUGGESTIONS FOR REFORM