I am opposed to divorce on this ground (incompatibility of temper) for two reasons: first, because if people’s tempers are really so incompatible as to make their lifelong companionship intolerable, they can, and therefore ought to, know this in time to prevent their union. And, secondly, because such incompatibility as can remain entirely concealed before marriage cannot possibly be so great but that it may be overcome and harmonized after marriage by means of proper self-discipline and true grasp of the idea of duty. No soldier would be pardoned for deserting from the army on the ground that he found his temper hopelessly incompatible with that of his comrades and his officers. No party to a business contract would be absolved from observing its terms upon any such consideration. The right to renounce marriage because of unhappiness would logically involve the right to commit suicide for the same reason.... Who are we that we should repudiate the universe because it will not devote itself to securing our petty pleasures and happinesses?... Marriage, like every other great social ordinance, is instituted not primarily to secure our happiness, but to enable us to discharge our duty, in the matter of the perpetuation and spiritual development of the human species. I am confident that the reader will appreciate the reviewer’s gallantry in not taking issue with the quoted statements: it would be too easy a task to exercise one’s humor over such threadbare niceties. My only apology for devoting so much space to Mr. Bridges’s book is the fact that Mr. Bridges is one of the moulders of public opinion in Chicago, hence ... I shall owe one more apology for my unrestrainable desire to quote the closing lines of the author’s sermon on the War: May she (this country) preserve her unity, and that nobly disinterested foreign policy manifested, to the admiration of all Europe (indeed!!) in Cuba and Mexico: so that, when the vials of apocalyptic wrath beyond the seas are spent, she may enter to motion peace—the welcome arbitress of Europe’s dissensions, the trusted daughter, first of England, but in lesser degree of all the nations now at strife, called in to cover their shame and to mediate the purgation of their sins. Hm—but I promised to refrain from comments. K. SOPHOMORIC MAETERLINCK _Poems, by Maurice Maeterlinck._ [_Dodd, Mead and Company, New York._]