could endure even her loss, since I had gone out of the paradise wherein she dwelt.

Contact with wholesome, many-sided people restored me to my proper mental and moral equilibrium; and I found that life was much more piquant and enjoyable when its mingled elements were tasted in various ways. I had not the least desire to return to the phalanstery at San Rafael. It seemed to me like the home of the lotos-eaters, where everything swam in delicious languor, but where dullness reigned with a mild sort of

trance.

Some time after my escape (or ejection ?) from the phalanstery, I met Charlie on the street. His face clouded as he saw me, but his hand was as cordial as ever. Of course I asked how the commune flourished. "Played out," was his brief reply. I was shocked, and desired to know the cause which led to the disaster.

"Well, you see," said Charlie, wearily, "after you left, we got on famously with our experiment; for, although you may not like to hear it, old fellow, you did take all the badness with you."

I agreed with him, and told him that Society had found that out. He went on : "But life in the phalanstery grew very insipid when you were gone. We missed your sharp tongue and bitter jokes. They accused me of pining for you, and said I had no right to cherish any affection for an outcast. But they all found it rather dull.

Somehow we were all too much alike. There was no elastic rebound in contact with each other. We stared at each other like ghosts who had lost their way back to the graveyard. We were all so fearfully good that each seemed to see the image of himself in the other. In short, Ben, Society is a failure."

"I find it tolerable enough. But it isn't very jolly to have all the people alike."

Charlie brightened up. "I guess that's it, after all. We grew inexpressibly weary of each other; were nearly dying of ennui; so we agreed to disband-for a while. Ma'am Clifford is keeping a boarding-house; Boyd has lost his grip somehow and has gone to Arizona; Miss Grey and Miss Snatchkin have a private boarding-school on Rincon Hill; as for poor Summerly, he's clean gone; he's a wreck."

"And Una?"

"Well, she's taking care of the baby just now. She has no time to write poetry; but she says she shall join the female suffragists when the baby is grown."

That was the end of our famous experiment. I have told the whole truth; all other accounts are unfair and fraudulent. A great many people are still trying in various ways the puzzle which we left unread. I dare say that when all the reformers have accomplished their perfect work, and woman has ceased to be undeveloped man, we shall have a little millennium like that at San Ra fael.

ONE PHASE OF THE

Letter to a young gentleman of intellectual tastes, who, without having as yet any particular lady in view, had expressed, in a general way, his determination to get married.

THE subject of marriage is one concerning which neither I nor anybody else can have more than an infinitesimally small atom of knowledge. Each of us knows how his or her own marriage has turned out; but that, in comparison with a knowledge of marriage generally, is like a single plant in comparison with the flora of the globe. The utmost experience on this subject to be found in this country extends to about three trials or ex periments. A man may become twice a widower, and then marry a third time, but it may be easily shown that the variety of his experience is more than counterbalanced by

MARRIAGE QUESTION.

its incompleteness in each instance. For the experiment to be conclusive, even as to the wisdom of one decision, it must extend over half a lifetime. A true marriage is not a mere temporary arrangement, and although a young couple are said to be married as soon as the lady has changed her name, the truth is that the real marriage is a long, slow intergrowth, like that of two trees planted quite close together in the forest.

The subject of marriage generally is one of which men know less than they know of any other subject of universal interest. People are almost always wrong in their estimates of the marriages of others, and the best proof how little we know the real tastes and needs of those with whom we have been most intimate is our unfailing surprise at the

marriages they make. Very old and experienced people fancy they know a great deal about younger couples, but their guesses, there is good reason to believe, never exactly hit the mark.

Ever since this idea that marriage is a subject we are all very ignorant about had taken root in my own mind, many little incidents were perpetually occurring to confirm it; they proved to me, on the one hand, how often I had been mistaken about other people, and, on the other hand, how mistaken other people were concerning the only marriage I profess to know anything about, namely, my own.

Our ignorance is the darker that few men tell us the little tha. they know, that little being too closely bound up with that innermost privacy of life which every man of right feeling respects in his own case as in the case of another. The only instances which are laid bare to the public view are the unhappy marriages, which are really not marriages at all. An unhappy alliance bears exactly the same relation to a true marriage that disease does to health, and the quarrels and misery of it are the crises by which nature tries to bring about either the recovery of happiness or the endurable peace of a settled separation.

All that we really know about marriage is that it is based upon the most powerful of all our instincts, and that it shows its own justification in its fruits, especially in the prolonged and watchful care of children. But marriage But marriage is very complex in its effects, and there is one set of effects resulting from it to which remarkably little attention has been paid hitherto I mean its effects upon the intellectual life. Surely they deserve consideration by all who value culture.

I believe that for an intellectual man, only two courses are open; either he ought to marry some simple, dutiful woman who will bear him children, and see to the household matters, and love him in a trustful spirit without jealousy of his occupations, or else, on the other hand, he ought to marry some highly intelligent lady, able to carry her education far beyond school experiences, and willing to become his companion in the arduous paths of intellectual labor. The danger in the first of the two cases is that pointed out by Wordsworth, in some verses addressed to lake-tourists who might feel inclined to buy a peasant's cottage in Westmoreland. The tourist would spoil the little romantic spot if he bought it; the charm of it is subtly dependent upon the poetry of a simple life, and would be brushed away by the influence of

It

the things that are necessary to people in the middle class. I remember dining in a country inn with an English officer whose ideas were singularly unconventional. We were waited upon by our host's daughter, a beautiful girl, whose manners were remarkable for their natural elegance and distinction. seemed to us both that no lady of rank could be more distinguished than she was, and my companion said that he thought a gentleman might do worse than ask that girl to marry him, and settle down quietly in that quiet mountain village, far from the cares and vanities of the world. That is a sort of dream which has occurred, no doubt, to many an honorable inan. Some men have gone so far as to try to make the dream a reality, and have married the beautiful peasant. But the difficulty is that she does not remain what she was; she becomes a sort of make-belief lady, and then her ignorance, which in her natural condition was a charming naïveté, becomes an irritating defect. irritating defect. If, however, it were possible for an intellectual man to marry some simple-hearted peasant-girl, and keep her carefully in her original condition, I seriously believe that the venture would be less perilous to his culture than an alliance with some woman of our Philistine classes, equally incapable of comprehending his pursuits, but much more likely to interfere with them. I once had a conversation on this subject with a distinguished artist who is now a widower, and who is certainly not likely to be prejudiced against marriage by his own experience, which had been an unusually happy one. His view was that a man devoted to art might marry either a plain-minded woman, who would occupy herself exclusively with household matters and shield his peace by taking these cares upon herself, or else a woman quite capable of entering into his artistic life; but he was convinced that a marriage which exposed him to unintelligent criticism and interference would be dangerous in the highest degree. And of the two kinds of marriage which he considered possible he preferred the former, that with the entirely ignorant and simple person from whom no interference was to be apprehended. He considered the first Madame Ingres the true model of an artist's wife, because she did all in her power to guard her husband's peace against the daily cares of life and never herself disturbed it, acting the part of a break-water which protects a space of calm, and never destroys the peace that it has made. This may be true for artists, whose occupation is rather æsthetic than in

tellectual, and does not get much help or benefit from talk; but the ideal marriage for a man of great literary culture would be one permitting some equality of companionship, or, if not equality, at least interest. That this ideal is not a mere dream, but may consolidate into a happy reality, several examples prove; yet these examples are not so numerous as to relieve me from anxiety about your chances of finding such companionship. The different education of the two sexes separates them widely at the beginning, and to meet on any common ground of culture a second education has to be gone through. It rarely happens that there is resolution enough for this.

The want of thoroughness and reality in the education of both sexes, but especially in that of women, may be attributed to a sort of policy which is not very favorable to companionship in married life. It appears to be thought wise to teach boys things which women do not learn, in order to give women a degree of respect for men's attainments

which they would not be so likely to feel if they were prepared to estimate them critically, whilst girls are taught arts and languages which until recently were all but excluded from our public schools, and won no rank at our universities. Men and women had consequently scarcely any common ground o meet upon, and the absence of serious mental discipline in the training of women made them indisposed to submit to the irksomeness of that earnest intellectual labor which might have remedied the deficiency. The total lack of accuracy in their mental habits was then, and is still for the immense majority of women, the least easily surmountable im pediment to culture. The history of many marriages which have failed to realize intellectual companionship is comprised in a sentence which was actually uttered by one of the most accomplished of my friends"She knew nothing when I married her; I tried to teach her something,-it made her angry, and I gave it up,"

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