Once rooted it is as hard to eradicate as plantain and red sorrel.
I brand it as "irrational," because common sense shows the extreme improbability that two people--born of different stocks, and brought up in different households--the man, sometimes, in no household at all--should each be the exact counterpart of the other; should come together provided respectively, with the very qualities, likes and dislikes, that the partner needs and prefers.
Add to the improbability aforesaid the inevitable variance of views upon divers important subjects consequent upon the standpoint masculine and the standpoint feminine, and the wonder grows--not that some marriages are unhappy, but that a large percentage of wedded couples jog on comfortably, and, if not without jar, without open scandal.

That they do speaks volumes for the wisdom of Him who ordained marriage as man's best estate--and something--not volumes--perhaps, but a pamphlet or two--in behalf of human powers of philosophical endurance.
Before going farther it would be well to look our subject in the face--inspect it fairly and without prejudice pro or con.
Stand forth, honest John! and let us behold you, as God made and your mother--in blood, or in heart--trained you.

Let the imagination of my readers survey him, as he plants himself before us.

Albeit a trifle more conscious than a woman would be in like circumstances, of the leading fact that he has the full complement of hands and feet usually prescribed by Nature, he bears scrutiny bravely.

He is what he would denominate in another, "a white man;" square in his dealings with his fellow-men and with a soft place, on the sunny side of his heart, for the women.