Page:The Truth about Marriage.djvu/56

 women, but it is not always easy to find the right woman. Far from it.

Now let me state here with all the emphasis possible,—single-blessedness is better for both men and women alike than the hells into which some marriages plunge one. A wrong choice in marriage is not easily rectified, not even by divorce.

Marriage is ideally the happiest relationship in the world, in every way the most satisfying, enchantingly beautiful. It is heaven on earth when it is ideal. It is supreme over all others in the sense that it is the fountain from which all other relationships proceed. There is nothing else like it. In going out of the single life into a true marriage one goes out of earth into heaven.

The change from the single life to the married life is so complete that no one can realize it who has not had the experience of it. It makes no difference how keen one's imagination may be, however much of married life one may have witnessed from without, however well instructed one may be in all the elements that enter into marriage, one knows nothing about it in any real way until he or she has been married.

This statement applies to those who have tried to get the enjoyment of marriage without paying its