TOUCHSTONES OF PROSE

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14854, 20 December 1913, Page 9

TOUCHSTONES OF PROSE

STEVENSON ON MARRIED LIFE. A certain sort of talent is almost indispensable for people who would spend years together, and not bore themselves to death. But the talent must bo for and about life. To dwed happily together, they shall be versed in the niceties of the heart, and come with a faculty for willing compromise. The woman must be talented as a woman, and it wifl not much matter although she is talented in nothing else. Sho must know her metier de femme, and have a fine touch for her affections. And it is more important that a person should be a good gossip, and talk pleasantly and smartly- of common friends, and the thousand and one nothings of the day and hour, than that she should speak with the tongues of men and angels; for a while together by the fire happens more frequently in marriage than the presence of a distinguished foreigner to dinner. That people should laugh over the same sort of jests, and have many a story of "grouse and the gun-room," many an old joke between them, which time cannot wither nor custom stale, is a better preparation for life, by your leave, than many other things "of'higher and better standing in the- world's years. xou could read Kant by yourself if you wanted ; but you must share jokes with someone eke. —R. L. Stevenson.