I have often heard people say that the first year of their married life, and indeed that the honeymoon itself, was the very dullest and most difficult period of their whole lives; but I have always listened to these statements with astonishment, for I have come to the conclusion that if what they say is true it must be that, like the despised family parties, it is because they did not manage their affairs properly. Why, the honeymoon should be the most amusing journey one ever makes--I know mine was--for one sets out together with an entertaining feeling that the absence of the chaperon for the first time gives just a _soupçon_ of delightful impropriety to the journey; that for absolutely the first time in one’s life one can go where one likes and do as one likes; that if one liked to put on one’s Sunday frock on a week-day one would only be admired and not scolded, and that one’s shopping becomes actually important and not frivolous, because it is for the house and not for oneself merely. Besides, there is the amusement of seeing new places with a congenial spirit, and with one who does not consider it his duty to insist on learning all he can about a place; in fact, the honeymooners are no longer children to be educated, but people bent on amusing themselves together, with no _arrière-pensées_; these come afterwards. Then business has become dreadfully imperative in its demands on the husband, while the wife leaves home for a holiday, her mind distracted between pleasure and a melancholy foreboding of what may happen during her absence to children and household, neither of which can naturally trouble her during that first delightful jaunt, which should always be to some amusing, bright place where theatres can be fallen back on should it be wet, or where picture galleries could be visited under similar adverse circumstances. One can visit the dullest of places safely together after one has been married years; there are then mutual interests which will always occupy husband and wife: but at first this is actual suicide; there are then not very many things to discuss, and the unfortunate young people fall back on endearments and use up in a month that which should last them comfortably for all their lives. But we are arriving at the honeymoon before we have allowed the engagement, and must therefore retrace our steps, or else we shall omit the most important item of all--viz. how to act when we see an engagement is imminent and we are not sure if we like it or not. We should soon make up our minds on the subject though, for if we do not approve we can easily manage that the young people shall not meet any more. It only requires tact and common sense, two qualities which seem to me often strangely lacking in the ordinary British household.