stantly and stupidly they use their influence exactly in the opposite direction, we can only sigh for the pity of it.

Sad though it makes us, this is the point of view from which we must regard it. If an analysis were made of the quarrels of lovers and married people, we should see that a large percentage of them arise entirely from the woman, who, with her own hands, destroys the fabric upon which all her happiness depends.

If a long engagement is not inevitable it is to be greatly deplored as a trial time, a furnace in which hearts are tried and constantly found wanting.

It is during the engagement days that a foolish woman builds the structure which will presently stand between her husband and herself. Weary of her own love affairs, she interests herself in those of her friends, and her fiancé learns from her confidences how low a standard of honour prevails among those sweet low-voiced angels of the other sex. He finds that some girls think nothing of intriguing for another woman's lover, and he hears his darling, his "Pearl of pearls," talking calmly of "So-and-so, who was engaged to a stupid, plain, dowdy girl."

"Loved him?" "Oh, I dare say she did; he was rich, and she ought to have been glad to get a husband at all." "Was she engaged to him for long?" "Why, of course, they were engaged for years, and he left her for Maggie O'Brien, and quite rightly; she was pretty enough to turn a man's head, and they are married now."

"And the dowdy girl?"

"Why, fool that she was ! she went out of her mind; she ought not have expected to marry a handsome man like that." And then there was someone else. Clara Pounceney engaged to Arthur Wollett.

"She gave him up, and no wonder, when the eldest son of a baronet proposed. Arthur had only a thousand a year, and he must have been a most unsatisfactory young fellow, for though Clara's people had thought very well of him, and there had never been a word against him, they say now that he has gone to the dogs."

And here his Pearl laughs as if there is something very funny in the thought of a young heart, crushed and defeated, with its illusions dead, turning away into the darkness.

At first the man listens to these stories with a little throb of pain; he knows in his honest heart that there is another side to them, he longs to kick the fellow who sent that poor girl mad, and if only his "She" willed it, he feels that possibly he, with infinite trouble and self-denial, might go out to the desert and bring back that wretched Arthur from the company of the dogs.

This phase of feeling lasts while the foundation is being made, but soon, when the first few bricks are in, he laughs as she does at these histories.

The mortar his fiancée uses for her work is flattery, and she lays it on very thick; he knows now for certain what he has long suspected, he is the best fellow in the world! Not best, you know, in the way of goodness, for his Pearl thinks good people slow and terrible bores, but best in the way of being a splendid all-round

man.

The best dancer of his day, though he gravitates persistently to the centre of the room; a splendid rider when his horses are firstrate, and a wonderful shot, though he has been unfortunate in his spoil. The best looking and most popular man out; "never," as his Pearl repeatedly tells him, "was such a perfect-tempered creature let loose on the earth," words to be remembered in future days and brought out for her edification.

Another brick in the building that divides these lovers is the unreasonable dislike that the girl takes to her fiancée's bachelor friends; while all the rest of the world are fondling her for being engaged, she thinks, very truly, that these are critical; they have yet to see if she is good enough for their friend, and she feels that they are weighing her and finding her wanting.

Then, in her foolishness, she tries to show them her power over her lover, and gets him, by fair means or foul, to say he will drop them. She will not listen to his indignant protest, to the incoherent explanation of how some of them have stood by him in dark days when he sorely needed help, how he has been saved by one of them from worse than death, how, if only she knew all, she would want to go down on her knees and say "Thank you."

She does not know all nor does she want to, and if she was told she could not understand; far above her comprehension is that close fellowship of communion between man and man, which King David, to whom love was no closed book, describes as "passing the love of woman."

She laughs at the ties of gratitude and old friendship, and puts in some little bricks of unfaithfulness, while he, pretending for fear of a scene to do her bidding, begins to watch his words and to be reserved about his doings.

Presently the tête-à-tête want more exciting material. Caresses, soft speeches, and beautiful presents must be supplemented. She requires something else, his confidence. The doors of his heart are to be thrown open and the past brought to light. If he tells

her of old flirtations (of course with reservations, for few men will talk of a real past love), she immediately falls foul of the girl whom she designates as "a designing creature." If he has justly been censured in a former affair she will not allow him to take the blame; no feeling that a dishonourable past may mean a dishonoured future disturbs her mind. "He has been unfaithful to others, he will be faithful to me; I am clever while they were fools." And so, wrapped in her self-assurance, she flatters and panders to the worst side of his character and, sowing the wind, protests with indignant and bitter outcry when she reaps the whirlwind.

While we are talking of this subject, I must say how strange it seems that while women are constantly good and true to men, they appear to have no feeling for one another. They are invariably ready to help a man disentangle himself, no matter how, from another woman's bonds; where another of their race is concerned, how rarely you hear them counsel honourable or right dealing. In this, nearly all women are alike; a man's sisters or cousins, and even distant friends, will be only too ready to mark out a path on ground too full of pitfalls for even an angel to dare tread.

To follow the fortune of our lovers, at length, mid storm and shine, the last hour of the engagement passes, and the sun rises and sets upon the day in which these two begin their life together, and then it is that the effect of the last few months begins to be felt.

The woman, who has been worshipped by her fiancé and foolishly adulated by her friends, has begun to believe that she is really entitled to all the flattery which has been lavished upon her, and which she has imbibed like wine of the gods. She is not so pleased to return to commonplace life as is her husband, who has filled a very inferior place in the pageant, and is thankful to settle down. She does not understand that she is no longer on a pedestal—has she not been constantly assured of her undoubted superiority to all women? Did not her lover obey her slightest wish or whim, and why, therefore, should her husband not do the same? There is no question of the why; she is determined that he shall. Go where you will, marry whom you like, you will find this idea predominates; take a loud, horsey woman, or a meek-eyed girl who has been afraid to call her soul her own in her family circle, they all have the same ambition to become our rulers, an ambition in which they very constantly succeed.

The clever ones are secret, they have sense enough to keep quiet, they understand their business, and hold the rein loose, but they

have a tight gr.p of it all the same. They laugh as they see their man with a great deal of swagger and bluster about being master in his own house, obeying, unconsciously to himself, every turn of their hand. He may be a kind indulgent husband, and an easy fellow to live with, but he will get no credit for it; it is the wives who require to be congratulated upon their good driving.

The fools show their hands and often come to grief; they try to manage their husbands in public; the poor creature is bullied and nagged at if he shows any individual will, simply that the wife may prove her power. Of course it is only the fools who do this, but, as the world is largely composed of fools, such wives are not

uncommon.

Another arch enemy to the happiness of women is the hero or ideal of their dreams. They think more of marriage than men do, and it is natural that they should; their future is uncertain and greatly depends upon the Prince who comes to seek them, and whose advent often opens a way of escape from a rough road to one of flowers and sunshine. We cannot blame a woman for having her dreams, but we do regret the creature she sets up and worships, a kind of heathen god, a monster who will hereafter snatch away with his brutal hands her chance of happiness and content.

The girl thinks much of this creation of her brain, to whom, paragon as he is, she plans with a modest ambition to act as second self or helpmate. Then she becomes engaged to an ordinary mortal, by whom I mean an honourable gentleman and not a cad, and for the time being this paragon is forgotten.

But he does not die, he only rests, to return with renewed vigour after marriage. He has been christened during the interval, and the name he bears is "most husbands."

When the household books become a worry, when the husband says that his coffee is not as he likes it, and wishes his Pearl would ask his mother to show her how to make tea, then up rises this hooting enemy, this wolf in sheep's clothing. The young wife thinks of him tenderly as of a dear, dead friend. "Other husbands never complain, most husbands kiss their wives' hands as they pour their coffee; and as for praising their mothers, what men in their senses would be so foolish? Fancy an old woman knowing more than a young one! Most husbands would understand."

And so she rages inwardly against the brute she has married, comparing him, always to his disadvantage, with this creature of her imagination, who has never existed, who, in fact, is not a man at all but an idealised woman or a foolish angel.

I call it unfair in the extreme, for while we can look round on our neighbours' lives, and by the superiority of our own conduct point a moral and adorn a tale, what living man could compete with this prodigy? And yet, in ninety cases out of a hundred our wives require it of us.

A man, however hard he may try, and that they do try is the truth, cannot come up to his wife's ideal because, as all men could tell her, it is totally against his nature. He will do all he can to make her happy, he will be her best and most loving friend, but it is impossible to talk sentiment all day for this very reason, he is a man.

And as to his will? He may have knocked under during his engagement, but he cannot go on for ever wearing the yoke, especially when the reins are pulled so tight and the yoke is heavy. It is unkind to the woman to let her have the mastery, for women are hard taskmasters, and were never intended to rule. In her heart of hearts a woman despises the man who obeys her, and reverences in spite of her complaints and wailing, the wise husband, who, seeing how nearly their love is being jeopardised, strikes for the preeminence.

Passion may be dead-it is short-lived, but the love that lives for ever is alive. Poets weep because passion has passed, let them weep rather for the women who have inspired it; women with natures unable to grasp the signification of love. Weep, if you will, for the men who marry such women, and live in daily contact with a petty, mean mind, till their whole tone is lowered by the association. If they make bad husbands and heartless fathers, is it wonderful? They have already been shown the way in their engagement days, and know how little their wife expects from them, what low motives she imputed to every great or disinterested action, how she wooed passion and laughed at truth.

Weep for the men who ruin their lives by marrying their own echo, the modern equivalent for a squaw; a woman to whom her husband's yea is yea, and nay, nay, be it right or wrong. This class are like poison to the minds of the men they marry, they are without ideas, and people with no sense of responsibility. They probably make a touching ending, and after their death their bereaved husbands erect wonderful tombstones to their memory, upon which they record in loving words their sterling virtues.

Another inch of stone would be amply sufficient for a category of their good deeds, but as for the evil they have wrought it is still rampant, and beyond doubt will follow them into the silent land.

Yes, if in this hard, dry-eyed age, tears are to be shed, let them