Year: 1869

There is one very singular cause of quarreling


tnat arises from peculiarly sensitive and affec-


tionate temperament. 1t is common to nearly
all lovers, but i: is frequently found among
friends also There are some people who can
not get on without a constantly reiterated as
surance of the love with which they are regarded
They begin to doubt the existence of affection il
it does not manifest itself from time to time in
some marked manner; aud their common
method Of proving Its existence is to get ND
some sort of quarrel, afording opportunities for
a dramatic "making-up." They age like chill.
dren who are continually pulling up the flowers
they have planted to see if they have taken root.
They are not content with recalling to mind GER
tain undeniable proof of the friendship or love
which unites them to their friends; they must
needs have some palpable testimony. They are
anxious, apprehensive their faith is so inde-
pendent OF ordinary reason that they are never
satisfied with such proofs as would be q perfect
guarantee to other peoples good sense. Yet it
is not SO much that they distrust the perma-
nence of the affection which they have inspired
As that they hunger for the pleasure of hearing
it find utterance. Hence the astonishing repe-
titions of love-etters-the unwearying iteration
of few tender phrases in lovers talk


1t is all very we'll for an outsider to ask what
is the use of repeating thirty times in letter
what both the writer and receiver accepts as an
undeniable fact but both of them have keen
pleasure in this persistent writing of the old q,
old phrases, which are so remarkably common
place, and often ludicrous, to uninterested per-
sons. By-and-bye, however, marriage forms the
climax of this interchange of assurances, and
constitutes in itself sort of assurance which
ought to render them henceforth unnecessary
Now, if the young creature who has been trans
formed into wife should happen to possess one
OF those restless, sensitive anxious natures, it is
only too likely that she will take alarm at the
undemonstratiye and commonplace way in which
her husband accepts his happiness. She will
begin to suspect that marriage has cooled his
affection for her, and she will render herself
wretched with the doubt. Some quiet evening
she becomes rather pensive, and to her husband
who is reading the newspaper, she says:


ooh, Tom, I'm beginning to think you don't
love me nearly as much as you used to do"


Stuff and nonsense ~ he says, continuing
the reading of our special correspondents glow
ing account of the performances of Flying Rein.


In few moments he looks round, and finds
her gone. Recolecting vaguely that she bad
said something to him in very peculiar tone,
he goes after her, finds her in another room
alone, and dreadfully distant in manner. He is
very repentant; she bursts into tears and then
he makes all these protestatons of affections
that she has been dying to hear. This is a very
pretty lesson. Whenever the monotony of mar
rled existence tires her, and she longs for one of
the lover-like bursts of eEdearments of the pre-
cOnjugal days, all she has to do is to get up a
nice little quarrel, and terrify her remorseful
husband into heroics. Nor would it be fair to
say that she does so out of mere intention to
afford herself pleasure. 1t is probably one of
the radical characteristics of her nature to hun
ger for these emotional crises and once she has
found out the way to procure them, it is very
likely that, Inadvertently, she will have recourse
to it pretty Often TelaDIe Bar