How different when love smooths the way, and finds excuse for every trifling inconsistency; when sorrows are shared, not doubled, when rights are respected, when home means wife, husband, children, happiness, with God over all. But we will put aside all the sad pictures and think of marriage as it should be, and then measure its responsibilities. Hitherto you have, since your majority, in large measure sought your own pleasure; now you have the pleasure of another to seek; and you do it gladly. Not what is best for you alone, but what is best for you two united in making a home, in adding to the strength of both in the united life. Much has been said, in these later days, derogatory to the clause in our older marriage ceremonies which promises obedience. In true marriages there is no thought of obedience or disobedience. Each seeks willingly the opinions and wishes of the other, and, so far as possible and best, follows them; but there must be no arbitrary wilfulness on the part of either, and each must acknowledge the individuality of the other and respect the differences of opinion. A ready yielding of trifling differences is a small price to pay for conjugal harmony, and every time it is done it adds loveliness to the one who yields. In a late number of _The Ladies’ Home Journal_, Mrs. Burton Kingsland says, “A readiness to give up in little things is the most tactful appeal possible for a return of courtesy, at other times when the matter may be of importance to us. It is a high attainment in politeness to allow others to be mistaken. Let a trifling misstatement pass unnoticed where no principle is involved, and when a mistake is past remedy, it is best to let the subject drop. The argument of the ‘I told you so’ character is always quite superfluous.” In no relation of life is self-control so needed, in no relation can it be so subservient to our higher nature. In the aggressive part of the human family,—aggressive in these relations,—there is great danger of allowing the lower nature to dominate the higher. Passion, when master, overrides all other considerations, and the selfishness, which is so dangerous a part of human nature, sees but one thing,—the accomplishment of desire. No thought of the possible results hinders him, and while nothing is hazarded on his part, everything on hers—even this for the moment is forgotten; and afterward he may well wonder how his better self was so lost to the tender sympathetic love and consideration in which he should always hold her. Be guarded, O husband! It is woman’s nature to forgive, and when she loves, this impetuosity of passion uncontrolled, can be many times forgiven. Aye, even when too frequent maternity is thrust upon her; but there comes a time when love and forgiveness have reached their limit, and love struggles vainly to rise above disgust and loathing, but it can never again attain to anything but tolerance.