If coldness and listlessness threaten your married life, set the matter right before it is too late.

For a building to stand firm against earthquakes and thunderbolts and violent, sweeping currents, it needs solid foundations on whose cornerstones it can rest — and that is the inert, outward building; how much more, then, the living building, the building of nations and peoples? ..

True marriage is the one that lifts the two spouses toward the highest ideal, toward a goal from which one may hope for the raising of the nation's level and its advancement, in addition to preserving happiness — its appointed task — within the atmosphere of the marital home. Yes! Marriage is the building of society upon which the nation's coming life depends. How, then, shall a nation rise if it does not prepare for its ascent foundations sound against every flaw?

When I speak of the difficulties facing marriage in these days of ours, many people think that I mean divorce, which in my view is only a symptom. The anxiety over the present state of things runs deeper than some suppose, and divorce cannot rightly be counted the sole measure of the failure of marriage, for many couples live in constant misery, and in a state of complete estrangement, without any feeling for the sanctity of this lofty union.

A faction of the adherents of the sensualist school has threatened us with terrible visions of what will happen in the future if the divorce rate is not checked, and certain prophets who look at the future through dark glasses have insisted that a day may come when the contracting of the lawful bond of marriage among human beings will cease altogether, and that if it is contracted, it will be with levity and recklessness. This conclusion has filtered down to us from the latest statistics; and yet our sight is too short to see the pain lurking behind the maimed

marriage whose end is divorce.

A lady visited me some days ago, in bewilderment and dismay. She sat sending forth one sigh after another, then said: "No, I cannot believe it... Only a week ago I was at the height of happiness with my husband, and just as fog melts away, he melted away from the path of my life without my feeling it or knowing it.

Yes! He has set off on a new life with a girl who works with him at the office. It is dreadful.. I do not understand him.. Can such a thing happen, and so quickly? .."

The woman was sincere when she explained to me that the news fell like a thunderbolt upon her head; but I did not believe that she had been happy up to that moment, had she looked at the matter inwardly. So I asked her tactfully to make the story clear to me, and she went on recounting it until she brought me to the very point I was after...