Young people do not realize how much economics has to do with every-day living until they are face to face with every-day life. Earning money, the drudgery in housework, the personal habits of the individuals, intimate tastes and prejudices, are all foreign to the awakening of ideals in the soul. The beloved, who was once an angel, becomes a wife, a weaver, a worker, a plain human being, subject to the shortcomings and ignorance that other human beings have. And the lover, who is also beloved, becomes a husband, an earner of money, in competition with other workers, subject to irritation, weariness, discouragements, human failings. The human qualities, the frailties and shortcomings, do not inspire the soul to high ideals. And each looks across the impassable gulf of the breakfast-table and wonders why they "introduced into their lives a spy." "Where is the ideal I was to dwell with?" "Where is the ideal that was to abide with me?" Their souls are wrenched in anguish. FACTS _You must stand up straight and put a name upon your actions.--Stevenson._ The business in marriage requires commonsense about ninety-nine per cent. There is usually less romance in marriage than in any other relationship of life. But the general idea concerning marriage is that it is all or nearly all romance. There is no other business partnership so intimate and complex as that in marriage. And this partnership is entered into, the legal papers are drawn, witnesses to the transaction are called, and a life agreement is made without thought, discussion or an agreement concerning the business part of this partnership. Emphasis has been placed only upon the love, the part of the contract which mortals can not control. The business part of this contract holds the destinies of the contracting parties as no other partnership can. Husband and wife can ruin each other's fortunes utterly. No outsider can do this. We would consider two men ridiculous who entered into a business partnership, discussing with each other only the pleasure they anticipated in seeing each other so constantly as they would, working side by side each day. Imagine one partner saying to the other, "With all my worldly goods I thee endow," and slipping upon his finger a little gold ring. Then for the duration of this partnership, the privileged partner giving to him who wears the ring what he is inclined, varying as the joy in each other's presence waxes or wanes. The idea is silly. And yet a man and a woman may contract to live together, giving little serious thought to the business part of such living, until they find that mortals can not live on romance, and that the joy of their lives has flown away. Ecstacy continued, burns up life, and is not intended except for inspiration. Love may continue with marriage, and it may not. Civilization has drifted us into conditions where it is difficult for romance to continue after the lovers enter into the business of life together.