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.

Marriage is of universal interest. The weal or woe of the race is involved in it.

It is a natural incident in the lives of lovers; but the marriage of lovers, although an incident in love, becomes an event in their lives because of the business partnership, which phase they did not contemplate.

The primal purpose in the marriage of lovers is that they may be perpetually purified, that they may live constantly their best. To do this they must have the Ideal forever before them.

When the business part of marriage shows another “side” of their natures, the Ideal may take wings. Then they naturally feel they are cheated. Their first impulse is to run away from this “trouble,” to get back to the Ideal before it has been effaced.