In matrimony it is not 'All is well that ends well'; it is 'All is well that begins well, but not too well.' Starting from this principle, I have often advised young husbands to control themselves, and to be careful to avoid putting all their smartest dialogue and strongest situations in the first act of the comedy of matrimony, for fear lest the interest should go on flagging steadily to the end.

I have advised them to see that their wives do not get their own way in everything at once, and not to make themselves their abject slaves, because, just as no government has ever been known to successfully suppress, or even reduce, any liberty or privilege previously granted to the people, just so will no husband be able to recover one inch of the ground he has surrendered if he capitulates on the threshold of matrimony.

In fact, let young husbands and young wives behave toward each other in such a way that their friends will not smile and say: 'Lovely, but too good to last, I'm afraid.'

The dangers against which I have attempted to warn men exist for women—devoted, loving women who wish to start matrimony by trying to do the impossible in order to please their husbands, or, if not the impossible, at all events, what it may not be in their power to do for ever, or even for a long time.

One of these dangers is that of economy.

'My dear,' remarked a shrewd friend to a bride of a few weeks' standing, 'you will make a terrible mistake if you let your husband think that you can keep house on nothing.'

Young wives are sometimes pitifully anxious to be credited with remarkable cleverness as house-mistresses. The more they love their husbands, the less they like the idea of their toiling and moiling. Hence they are keenly anxious to prove themselves helpmeets in the literal sense of the word.

Not only will they name a far smaller sum as housekeeping money than their husbands can well afford to give them, but they will actually save out of that sum enough for their own clothes and petty cash expenses.

All this self-sacrifice is not only charming, but beautiful, when there is necessity for rigid economy. Young couples who wisely marry on small incomes, instead of wasting the sweetness of their youth over an endless engagement, must make a study of ways and means, and the wife who will cajole a shilling into doing duty for a five-shilling piece is a jewel beyond price.

Again, when times are bad, when the bread-winner falls ill, and the treasury runs dry, there is no more pathetic and lovely sight than the brave little wife who struggles and succeeds in keeping the wolf out of the house.

But in instances where no serious demand of this kind need be made upon a wife's ingenuity, she is a very short-sighted woman indeed who does not see the dangers and realize the evils of overzealous economy.

There would be fewer complaints of marriages that result in the wife being merely an unpaid servant or housekeeper, who cannot give notice to leave, if brides began as they meant to go on, for no one save those who have lived through the process knows how difficult it is to introduce a new rÉgime when once its opposite had been inaugurated and accepted.

'You said you would find £3 10s. a week ample a month ago. Why in the world do you want £5 now?' asks the husband, whose wife has been foolishly anxious to impress him with her cleverness as an economist, and finds she cannot keep up the farce beyond the limit of a few weeks.

Economy may be carried too far from choice. There are women who simply love saving. They neglect their intellectual life, and abandon all attempts to keep in the movement, all in order to grind down the weekly bills. No reward awaits them.

The women who believe themselves perfect because they are economical, and consider the spring-cleaning of their house the greatest event of the year, grow old before their time, and are never the companions modern wives should be to their husbands.

Be good, but never overdo it, I will say to any woman who has the sense of humour.