HE STUDY OF LIFE is as endless as are the activities of life. We come now to a different line of practice, which may be summed up in a few words. Always retain some margin in everything. There are other meanings for the same word, but in our study we refer solely to progress or distance in what we do. There are other ways of stating it, that do not convey all that is intended. Thus we might say, never reach the limit. Or, keep back some power. Or, display a reserved and repressed energy. There are still other ways of saying some part of the same thing. But the fact is that no person remains magnetic who does not leave some margin in everything. Examples are very numerous, and only a few can be given. If you rise from the table with your appetite fully satisfied, you are weaker than if you had risen slightly hungry. In any physical effort, if you use the last ounce of your strength, you weaken yourself. In making an address, as where the inexperienced lawyer speaks to the jury, if he throws into it all his vitality, he soon tires those who hear him. We once had the pleasure of studying the methods of a great advocate who was struggling to win a case in which his client was entitled to victory, but which was combated by almost in insurmountable opposition aided by a combination of influences that seemed too great to be overcome. This lawyer in his final address seemed to have reached his limit of power, but a reserved force was apparent; this he drew upon, and again seemed to have reached his limit, when a new degree of energy was apparent, and so on step by step until he reached heights of magnetism that towered above all opposition; and he won. He afterwards told us that at no time did he reach a limit; and that accounted for his constant increase of power.

Satiety in any form is not only not magnetic, but it is destructive of what magnetism has already been acquired. In a life of ambition there is always the zest of striving for victory; but let one's ambitions be fully realized, then the zest is gone Wealth won after a struggle is stale. A life of ease is wholly devoid of magnetism. The greatest form of happiness is the striving after something not yet attained.

In courtship and marriage this law runs true at all times and in many ways. A margin is always magnetic here; and marriage is the greatest and most extensive institution in the world. Courtship is supposed to consist of the effort of the man to win the consent of the woman to marry him. When this phase of it is true, as long as the prize has not been attained, it is highly valued; but when attained and a sense of ownership follows, the Value is lessened. On the other hand, the general fact is that the man is sought by the woman where he is above the average of his sex; but it is not always the case that he knows it. She may lead him on by an appeal to his appetite of one kind or another. If no margin is left in the winning of him, then as soon as he realizes that satiation has been reached, he loses his interest.

It is an old philosophy that teaches women to keep suitors far enough away to prevent reaching the limit. A courtship that reaches the climax before marriage generally falls to pieces. It is the lure of the unattainable that draws a man toward a Woman; never the satiety of the attainable. By following this rule, many a woman has exerted a substitute for magnetism that has won a good husband; whereas had she given herself unreservedly to the man, he would have tired of her; and if he tired of her before marriage he would have done so most decidedly afterwards. There is a great fascination which a man has for a woman whom he cannot approach to the limit, which is wholly lost when she permits him to approach her prior to wedlock.

In displays of affection whether before or after marriage, satiety kills the desire or lessens it. Too much personal handling of a woman by a man leads her to ask either orally or silently if he will not please stop pawing her over. She thinks it, if she does not speak it. Too much kissing or embracing may reach satiety and cease to be desired keenly. It is better to leave a margin. After marriage, satiety in the sexual appetite which is reached by the man more readily than by the woman, kills the magnetism of love more quickly than any other influence in life. The man at once becomes unattractive, seems selfish, sluggish, irritable, exhausted, and not the same being who once told her that she was the most adorable woman in the world and he could not exist without her. In his state of satiety he seems to bristle all over with the thought of don't touch me, I'm tired of the sight of you. This satiety is the cause of nearly all the quarrels of marriage; for it opens the way to ill-natured discussions in which the man thinks himself free to say what he pleases to hurt his wife's feelings, since now he owns her and can let loose his natural self, which he concealed in the glare of courtship.

The wife is always attractive to the husband as long as he desires her companionship; and he can keep her attractive for a lifetime by learning the simple lesson of so mastering himself as never to reach the point of satiation. He then becomes a different being; and to him she is far different. It is a self-apparent fact that sexual satiety completely expels magnetism from the individual. If it preceded any great effort as where a public speaker sought to sway a vast audience, failure of the most dismal kind would be the result. By the same process, the keen edge of love and the joy of companionship are lost in. married life.

Desire is magnetic when there are true values to exchange.

The unmagnetic people of the world always seek to reach every limit in matters in which they engage. If they enjoy dancing, they must overdo it and carry it into the early hours of the morning. Many a woman who is seeking her living by employment, instead of trying to improve herself for higher stations in life, runs her vitality to shreds by late hours at night, and gapes away the following days in a mental condition unfit for genuine work. Married couples waste too many night hours in excess of card playing, stopping only when the limit of time is reached; not knowing that a reasonable attention to any pleasure is better than such excess.

Margins may become very magnetic by reason of their fascinating power of arousing the keenest interest in life. Take for instance the argument made by a man and his wife that all money that comes in shall be subjected to a regular budget, by which the expenses shall be kept less than the receipts. Both know at the end of every month how much has come in, how much has gone out, what remains, and the plan of saving this margin between the receipts and the expenditures. Then things that he would otherwise have bought will be found not needed; and the same with her. Where such margins have been secured in married life, if reports that have come to us may be said to indicate the general facts, there have been none of the misunderstandings and consequent ill feelings that occur when husband and wife are not fully cognizant of the financial conditions that prevail in their home.

We have in mind a cottage built twenty-five years ago, planned by husband and wife the year before they were married, a little six-room house, with a small garden in front and a good-sized garden in the rear, in which both took part when the land needed to be cultivated; and six neat little rooms inside the house, bright and attractive; being gradually paid for as the husband's business prospered, until all debts were paid, and a goodly sum now is invested in bonds and mortgages; the result of severe struggles and self-denial in their first years of wedlock, in which the wife made as many sacrifices as the husband, all the while seeking firmly to preserve the margin that made this success possible. They have a married daughter who with her husband is following this same law of margin; not flippantly wasting all they receive, but building for the happiness of the future.

These cases are not rare. Thanks to the study of magnetism they are becoming more and more numerous. There is a solidity and permanency to all marriages that are brought under the influence of the margins to which we have referred.

The result is the solidity of the home institution, and the permanency of home life and happiness. By consultation with the Truth-Teller which is described a few lessons prior to this, the countless mistakes that make all living wretched are avoided; for all future possibilities and certainties are made clear.