Page:Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son.djvu/330

Rh just about right. If she isn't, it doesn't make any special difference how you start out, you're going to end up all wrong.

Money ought never to be the consideration in marriage, but it always ought to be a consideration. When a boy and a girl don't think enough about money before the ceremony, they're going to have to think altogether too much about it after; and when a man's doing sums at home evenings, it comes kind of awkward for him to try to hold his wife on his lap.

There's nothing in this talk that two can live cheaper than one. A good wife doubles a man's expenses and doubles his happiness, and that's a pretty good investment if a fellow's got the money to invest. I have met women who had cut their husband's expenses in half, but they needed the money because they had doubled their own. I might add, too, that I've met a good many husbands who had cut their wives' expenses in half, and they fit naturally into any