love. It is not a bundle of clothes, nor a wig, nor padding they adore; it is the actual man and the actual woman such as nature has made them, undisguised by any clothes-maker's art. Our marriages are merely engagements we enter into, to live with one another just as long as we find it agreeable to do so. We would all scout the idea of being obliged to live together for ever, even though we should make one another's lives wretched by reason of incompatablity of temper, of incongruous tastes, or some new inclination. Marriage with you, being a life-long contract, is accompanied by solemn ceremonies, much fuss, and the giving of handsome presents, by way of gilding the bitter pill. But with us marriage is an affair that only concerns the parties married. We would no more think of making it an occasion for festivities and rejoicings, public or private, than we would the purchase of a new book or the introduction to a new friend. And yet, I'll be bound, there are more happy and contented couples among us than there are among you. The very knowledge that their contract can be dissolved at any minute, keeps those who really love one another on better behaviour towards one another, and makes them mutually forbearing and tolerant of one another's little peculiarities. A brutal husband and a nagging wife are characters quite unknown here. No man will be cruel to a woman who can leave him when she chooses, nor would any woman submit to brutality when she can so easily avoid it. No woman who loves a man would alienate his affection by nagging, unless she had the assurance that no amount of nagging would justify him in leaving her. Marriage is such a purely individual affair here, that, in the case of some of our friends who are hard to please, we scarcely know
