intellectual and spiritual interest, which at their best would separately make of marriage a high venture in good fortune."
Coventry Patmore sings: "Why, having won her, do I woo?" To the ordinary individual we would say: "Because you have only bought your violin; you have now to learn how to draw music from it." The way of the ordinary man with a woman, as Balzac says, is the way of an ourang outang with a fiddle. A marriage ceremony, the uttering of certain words, or the payment of certain fees, associated with the imposition of a ring as a sort of duty stamp, gives a man a conventional right (some people think a legal, a religious, or a moral right) to do with a woman as he pleases, regardless of her wishes or feelings, or the physical or moral injury that may result. He knows no difference between a woman and a female. Such is the method of upbringing, and such is our system of education at present, that a refined woman, newly legalized as a wife, may at the outset feel scandalized or morally outraged. For days, weeks, months, and even years, she may resist, fearing she knows not what, but something certainly that was not in the bond so far as her knowledge was concerned. Her lord reminds her of her vows to love, honour, and obey. Sooner or later she obeys. But love rakes together the scattered rags of his belongings and leaves the moral shambles in disgust, blinded with scalding tears; and honour, his twin-brother, goes with him to seek lodging elsewhere; and they may never return. This is the condition of many a pair living, so far as is known to society and to their intimate friends, as a well-assorted and happy couple.
Sometimes one hears a sort of a protest—"Men don't understand woman," thrown out in such a
