Marriage Securities.

1. Seek Each Other's Happiness.—A selfish marriage that seeks only its own happiness defeats itself. Happiness is a fire that will not burn long on one stick.

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2. Do Not Marry Suddenly.—It can always be done till it is done, if it is a proper thing to do.

3. Marry in Your Own Grade in Society.—It is painful to be always apologizing for any one. It is more painful to be apologized for.

4. Do Not Marry Downward.—It is hard enough to advance in the quality of life without being loaded with clay heavier than your own. It will be sufficiently difficult to keep your children up to your best level without having to correct a bias in their blood.

5. Do Not Sell Yourself.—It matters not whether the price be money or position.

6. Do Not Throw Yourself Away.—You will not receive too much, even if you are paid full price.

Sensible Hints in Choosing a Partner

1. There are many fatal errors and many love-making failures in courtship. Natural laws govern all nature and reduce all they govern to eternal right; therefore love naturally, not artificially. Don't love a somebody or a nobody simply because they have money.

2. Court Scientifically.—If you court at all, court scientifically. Bungle whatever else you will, but do no bungle courtship. A failure in this may mean more than a loss of wealth or public honors; it may mean ruin, or a life often worse than death. The world is full of wretched and mismated people.

Begin right and all will be right; begin wrong and all will end wrong. When you court, make a business of it and study your interest the same as you would study any other business proposition.

Womens and Broken Heart

Wounded Love.—'Tis true that love wields a magic, sovereign, absolute, and tyrannical power over both the body and the mind when it is given control. It often, in case of dissapointment, works havoc and deals death blows to its victims, and leaves many in that morbid mental condition which no life-tonics simply can restore. Wounded love may be the result of hasty and indiscreet conduct of young people; or the outgrowth of lust, or the result of domestic infidelity and discord.

2. Fatal Effects.—Our cemeteries receive within the cold shadows of the grave thousands and thousands of victims that annually die from the results of "broken hearts." It is no doubt a fact that love troubles cause more disorders of the heart than everything else combined.

3. Disrupted Love.—It has long been known that dogs, birds, and even horses, when separated from their companions or friends, have pined away and died; so it is not strange that man with his higher intuitive ideas of affection should suffer from love when suddenly disrupted.

How to get marred to the right person?

5. Whom to Choose for a Husband.—The choice of a husband requires the coolest judgment and the most vigilant sagacity. A true union based on organic law is happiness, but let all remember that oil and water will not mix: the lion will not lie down with the lamb, nor can ill-assorted marriages be productive of aught but discord.

"Let the woman take

An elder than herself, so wears she to him—

So sways she, rules in her husband's heart."

Look carefully at the disposition.—See that your intended Spouse is kind-hearted, generous, and willing to respect the opinions of others, though not in sympathy with them. Don't marry a selfish tyrant who thinks only of himself.

6. Be Careful.—Don't marry an intemperate man with a view of reforming him. Thousands have tried it and failed. Misery, sorrow and a very hell on earth have been the consequences of too many such generous undertakings.

When and Whom to Marry

1. Early Marriages.—Women too early married always remain small in stature, weak, pale, emaciated, and more or less miserable. We have no natural nor moral right to perpetuate unhealthy constitutions, therefore women should not marry too young and take upon themselves the responsibility, by producing a weak and feeble generation of children. It is better not to consummate a marriage until a full development of body and mind has taken place. A young woman of twenty-one to twenty-five, and a young man of twenty-three to twenty-eight, are considered the right age in order to produce an intelligent and healthy offspring. "First make the tree good, then shall the fruit be good also."

2. If marriage is delayed too long in either sex, say from thirty to forty-five, the offspring will often be puny and more liable to insanity, idiocy, and other maladies.

The Advantages of Wedlock

1. Marriage is the natural state of man and woman. Matrimony greatly contributes to the wealth and health of man.

2. Circumstances may compel a man not to select a companion until late in life. Many may have parents or relatives, dependent brothers and sisters to care for, yet family ties are cultivated; notwithstanding the home is without a wife.

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3. In Christian countries the laws of marriage have greatly added to the health of man. Marriage in barbarous countries, where little or no marriage ceremonies are required, benefits man but little. There can be no true domestic blessedness without loyalty and love for the select and married companion. All the licentiousness and lust of a libertine, whether civilized or uncivilized, bring him only unrest and premature decay.

4. A man, however, may be married and not mated, and consequently reap trouble and unhappiness. A young couple should first carefully learn each other by making the courtship a matter of business, and sufficiently long that the disposition and temper of each may be thoroughly exposed and understood.

The History of Marriage In History

1. "It is not good for man to be alone," was the Divine judgment, and so God created for him an helpmate; therefore sex is as Divine as the soul.

3. The Garden of Eden.—The Garden of Eden was no harem. Primeval nature knew no community of love; there was only the union of two souls, and the twain were made one flesh. If God had intended man to be a polygamist he would have created for him two or more wives; but he only created one wife for the first man. He also directed Noah to take into the ark two of each sort—a male and female—another evidence that God believed in pairs only.

2. Polygamy.—Polygamy has existed in all age is and always has been the result of moral degradation and wantonness.

4. Abraham no doubt was a polygamist, and the general history of patriarchal life shows that the plurality of wives and concubinage were national customs, and not the institutions authorized by God.

What Women Love in Men

1. Women naturally love courage, force and firmness in men. The ideal man in a woman's eye must be heroic and brave. Woman naturally despises a coward, and she has little or no respect for a bashful man.

2. Woman naturally loves her lord and master. Women who desperately object to be overruled, nevertheless admire men who overrule them, and few women would have any respect for a man whom they could completely rule and control.

3. Man is naturally the protector of woman; as the male wild animal of the forest protects the female, so it is natural for man to protect his wife and children, and therefore woman admires those qualities in a man which make him a protector.

4. Large Men.—Women naturally love men of strength, size and fine physique, a tall, large and strong man rather than a short, small and weak man. A woman always pities a weakly man, but rarely ever has any love for him.

5. Small and Weakly Men.—All men would be of good size in frame and flesh, were it not for the infirmities visited upon them by the indiscretion of parents and ancestors of generations before.

Love and Common-Sense

1. Do not love her because she goes to the altar with her head full of book learning, her hands of no earthly use, save for the piano and brush; because she has no conception of the duties and responsibilities of a wife; because she hates housework, hates its everlasting routine and ever recurring duties; because she hates children and will adopt every means to evade motherhood; because she loves her ease, loves to have her will supreme, loves, oh how well, to be free to go and come, to let the days slip idly by, to be absolved from all responsibility, to live without labor, without care? Will you love her selfish, shirking, calculating nature after twenty years of close companionship?

2. Do you love him because he is a man, and therefore, no matter how weak mentally, morally or physically he may be, he has vested in him the power to save you from the ignominy of an old maid's existence? Because you would rather be Mrs. Nobody, than make the effort to be Miss Somebody? because you have a great empty place in your head and heart that nothing but a man can fill? because you feel you cannot live without him? God grant the time may never come when you cannot live with him.

The Power and Peculiarities of Love

LOVE IS A TONIC AND A REMEDY FOR DISEASE, MAKES PEOPLE LOOK YOUNGER, CREATES INDUSTRY, ETC.

"All thoughts, all passions, all desires.

Whatever stirs this mortal frame,

Are ministers of Love,

And feed his sacred flame."

1. It is a physiological fact long demonstrated that persons possessing a loving disposition borrow less of the cares of life, and also live much longer than persons with a strong, narrow and selfish nature. Persons who love scenery, love domestic animals, show great attachment for all friends; love their home dearly and find interest and enchantment in almost everything have qualities of mind and heart which indicate good health and a happy disposition.

2. Persons who love music and are constantly humming or whistling a tune, are persons that need not be feared, they are kind-hearted and with few exceptions possess a loving disposition. Very few good musicians become criminals.

3. Parents that cultivate a love among their children will find that the same feeling will soon be manifested in their children's disposition. Sunshine in the hearts of the parents will blossom in the lives of the children. The parent who continually cherishes a feeling of dislike and rebellion in his soul,

Women and Love

5. Radical Differences.—Men and women should not be judged by the same rules. There are many radical differences in their affectional natures. Man is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature leads him forth into the struggle and bustle of the world. Love is but the embellishment of his early life, or a song piped in the intervals of the acts. He seeks for fame, for fortune, for space in the world's thoughts, and dominion over his fellow-men. But a woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her ambition seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul in the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked her case is hopeless, for it is bankruptcy of the heart.

6. Woman's Love.—Woman's love is stronger than death; it rises superior to adversity, and towers in sublime beauty above the niggardly selfishness of the world. Misfortune cannot suppress it; enmity cannot alienate it; temptation cannot enslave it. It is the guardian angel of the nursery and the sick bed; it gives an affectionate concord to the partnership

Love on the life of women

But there's nothing half so sweet in life

As love's young dream.—MOORE.

All love is sweet,

Given or returned. Common as light is love,

And its familiar voice wearies not ever.—SHELLEY.

Doubt thou the stars are fire,

Doubt that the sun doth move;

Doubt truth to be a liar,

But never doubt I love.—SHAKESPEARE.

Let those love now who never loved before,

Let those that always loved now love the more.

1. Love Blends Young Hearts.—Love blends young hearts in blissful unity, and, for the time, so ignores past ties and affections, as to make willing separation of the son from his father's house, and the daughter from all the sweet endearments of her childhood's home, to go out together and rear for themselves an altar, around which shall cluster all the cares and delights, the anxieties and sympathies, of the family relationship; this love, if pure, unselfish, and discreet, constitutes the chief usefulness and happiness of human life.

THE FIRST MARRIAGE IN THE FAMILY

"HOME!" How that little word strikes upon the heart strings, awakening all the sweet memories that had slept in memory's chamber! Our home was a "pearl of price" among homes; not for its architectural elegance—for it was only a four gabled, brown country house, shaded by two antediluvian oak trees; nor was its interior crowded with luxuries that charm every sense and come from every clime. Its furniture had grown old with us, for we remembered no other; and though polished as highly as furniture could be, by daily scrubbing, was somewhat the worse for wear, it must be confessed.

But neither the house nor its furnishing makes the home; and the charm of ours lay in the sympathy that linked the nine that called it "home" to one another. Father, mother, and seven children—five of them gay-hearted girls, and two boys, petted just enough to be spoiled—not one link had ever dropped from the chain of love, or one corroding drop fallen, upon its brightness.

"One star differeth from another in glory," even in the firmament of home. Thus—though we could not have told a stranger which sister or brother was dearest—from our gentlest "eldest," an invalid herself, but the comforter and counsellor of all beside, to the curly-haired boy, who romped and rejoiced in the appellation of "baby," given five years before—still an observing eye would soon have singled out sister Ellen as the sunbeam of our heaven, the "morning star" of our constellation. She was the second in age, but the first in the inheritance of that load of responsibility, which in such a household falls naturally upon the eldest daughter. Eliza, as I have said, was ill from early girlhood; and Ellen had shouldered all her burden of care and kindness, with a light heart and a lighter step. Up stairs and down cellar, in the parlour, nursery, or

A WORD FOR WIVES

WHAT is it? A little pencil note, crumpled and worn, as if carried for a long time in one's pocket. I found it in a box of precious things that Fanny's mother had hoarded so choicely, because Fanny had been choice of them. I must read it, for everything of Fanny's is dear to us now. Ah! 'tis a note from a gentleman who was at school with us at F—, whom Fanny esteemed so much, whom we both esteemed for his sterling integrity and his gentleness. It is precious, too, as a reminder of him. I love the remembrance of old schoolfellows,—of frolicsome, foolish, frivolous, loving schooldays. But let me read. 'Tis mostly rubbed out, but here is a place.

"You know full well that long since, 'that dear cousin' permitted me to call her by the endearing name of sister; and may I not, when far away, thinking of bygones, add your name to hers in the sisterly list? You asked me when I had heard from the dear one: she was down here a short hour last week, but what was that among so many who wished to see her?"

Ah! that means me! If I had only known it then! And just now I was wondering if he really loved me, and perhaps felt almost in my secret heart to grieve a bit—to murmur at him. I fear I spoke as he little dreamed then the "dear one" would ever do. What shall I do? I remember him now, in all his young loveliness, in all the excitability of a first love, and my heart kindles too warmly to write what I wished.

MAN AND WOMAN

AN eloquent, true, and beautiful article from the pen of a woman and a wife (and no woman not a wife, do we believe fully competent to write on this subject), recently met our eyes in the pages of a periodical. Its title was "Conjugial Love." The Latin word conjugial was used by the writer to indicate the true spiritual union of man and wife in contradistinction to the mere natural union as expressed in the word conjugal. From this article let us make an extract—

"Man is an angular mathematical form, exactly true, but not beautiful. Woman seizes this form, and from the crucible of her warm love she moulds the truth into grace and beauty. For man's understanding deals in outermost truths. But the Lord has blessed woman with perceptive faculties above the sphere of man's reason, and while he looks to the outermost relations of things she at a glance perceives the inmost. Hence she becomes, as it were, the soul of his thought; she is the will and he the intellectual principle; she is governed and guided by him, while he in all things is modified by her will, and scarce recognises his own crude thought in her plastic feminine representation of it; hence he thinks oftentimes that he acts from her wisdom, forgetting that she has no wisdom except through him.

LETTERS TO A YOUNG WIFE

MY DEAR LIZZIE,

I have just received the pleasing intelligence of your marriage with one so worthy of your trust and affection. Of course, you are very happy; for there is no more perfect happiness for a young and loving woman than to centre her heart's best feelings upon one being—to feel her destiny bound up in his—to become, as it were, a very part of his life. Perhaps, at such a time, my dear girl, it may seem unkind to throw the least shadow over the bright sky of your happiness; but I cannot refrain from giving you some little advice now, at the outset of your new life.

You are looking forward—are you not?—with perfect confidence to the future. You think that the sea upon which you are launched, will ever remain calm and untroubled as now; that you will go on for ever thus, joyous and happy—thus, free from care and sorrow; but, Oh, remember, there is no sunshine that is not clouded over sometimes; no stream so smooth as to be always undisturbed. Then, make up your mind to have cares, perplexities, and trials, such as have never troubled you before; and be prepared to meet them.

As yet, you are to your husband the same perfect being that you were before marriage, free from all that is wrong—your follies even regarded as delightful. You are now placed upon a pedestal—a very goddess; but, believe me, you must soon descend to take your place among mortals, and well for you if you can do it

Woman and Marriage

Woman and Marriage

IN the truest sense of the word, woman was created to be man's comforter, a joyous helpmate in hours of sunshine, a soother, when the clouds darken and the tempests howl around his head; then, indeed, we perceive the divinely beautiful arrangement which marriage enforces. Man in his wisdom, his rare mental endowments, is little fitted to bear adversity. He bows before the blast, like the sturdy pine which the wintry storm, sweeping past, cracks to its very centre; while woman, as the frail reed, sways to and fro with the fierce gust, then rises again triumphant towards the blackening sky. Her affection, pure and steadfast, her unswerving faith and devotion, sustain man in the hour of darkness, even as the trailing weed supports and binds together the mighty walls of some mouldering ruin.

 

Would you know why so many unhappy marriages seem to falsify the truth that they are made in Heaven? Why we see daily diversity of interests, and terrible contentions, eating the very life away, like the ghoul in the Arabian tales, that prayed on human flesh? It is that women are wrongly educated. Instructed, trained, to consider matrimony the sole aim, the end of their existence, it matters not to whom the Gordian knot is tied, so that the trousseau, wedding, and eclat of bridehood follow. Soon the brightness of this false aurora borealis fades from the conjugal horizon; and the truths of life, divested of all romance, in bitterness and pain rise before them. Unfitted for duties which must be fulfilled, physically incapacitated for the responsibilities of life—mere school-girls in many instances—the chains they have assumed become cables of iron, whose heavy weight crushes into the heart, erasing for ever the footprints of affection, and leaving instead the black marks of deadly hate. Then comes the struggle for supremacy. Man in his might and power asserts his will, while woman, unknowing her sin, unguided by the divine light of love, neglects, abandons her home; then come ruin, despair, and death. God help those mistaken ones, who have thus hurried into union, ignorant of each other's prejudices, opinions, and dispositions, when too late they discover there is not, nor ever can be, affinity between souls wide as the poles asunder.

Women and Love

"To love!—love with our every power of being—is the only eternal reality. From love springs thought; and thought and affection are the flesh and blood of the spirit. The spirit grows upon what it feeds, as does the body upon its material food; and to stint the spirit of its food is a sad detriment to our after-life.

"A perception of the heavenly life should arouse us to a power of loving every human being that we come in contact with, and make us realize that to love and serve is the happiness of angels, and the principle which conjoins men and angels to God."

When the last word was breathed, as it were, in a soft, holy brightness, from Rosa's lips, Paul sealed them with a kiss. How much he had learned from the perception of a mind that was so wholly gentle and feminine, that its substance seemed all of love; of a love that received the impression only of heavenly things!—while he, with all of his brilliant talents and masculine understanding, felt that his contact was with this hard outer world of material facts and realities; and that oftentimes the very density of the atmosphere in which his mind dwelt obscured and clouded the delicate moral perceptions of his being.

But Rosa saw above him, and revealed to him those beautiful inner truths that were to give form and character to his outer life. Yes; Paul had uncongenial brothers and sisters, and his more refined tastes and pursuits would have led him away from them. But Rosa, with her womanly tact, and grace, and lovingness, led him out from the mists of selfishness into the halo of a more genial and beautiful light, and he felt his heart grow warm with an inexpressible love.

Women and Wedding

ROSA LEE was dressed in her bridal garments, and as she knelt in all the bloom of her maidenly beauty, angels must have rejoiced over her; for the spirit of the maiden was in a heaven of love, and she knelt in the fulness of her joy, to pour out her gratitude to the Heavenly Father, that "seeth in secret." Yes, alone in her chamber, the young girl bowed herself for the last time, and as the thought flashed over her mind, that when next she should kneel in that consecrated place, it would not be alone, but that manly arms would bear up her drooping form, and two voices would mingle as one in the holy prayer, a gushing tenderness flooded the heart of the beautiful bride, and light as from Heaven pervaded her whole being, and she could only murmur, "Oh, how beautiful it is to love!"

But bustling steps and voices approach; and Rosa hears one step that sends at thrill to her heart. In the next moment, the maiden, with the rosy glow of love upon her cheek, and the heaven-light yet beaming in her eyes, stood face to face with her lover. Her eyes met his, in that calm, confiding look of an unbounded affection, and, as her hand rested on his arm, strength seemed to flow into her from him, and she looked serene and placid as pure water, that reflects the moonbeams of heaven; and yet, her smiles came and went like these same waters when the ripples sparkle in the glad sunshine.

The bridal party moved forward to the festive hall, where sympathizing friends were gathered to greet them, as a married pair, and the heart of Rosa opened to the holy marriage ceremony with a sense of heavenly rapture.

The Woman and Wedding

The Woman and Wedding

"WE shall certainly be very happy together!" said Louise to her aunt on the evening before her marriage, and her cheeks glowed with a deeper red, and her eyes shone with delight. When a bride says we, it may easily be guessed whom of all persons in the world she means thereby.

"I do not doubt it, dear Louise," replied her aunt. "See only that you continue happy together."

"Oh, who can doubt that we shall continue so! I know myself. I have faults, indeed, but my love for him will correct them. And so long as we love each other, we cannot be unhappy. Our love will never grow old."

"Alas!" sighed her aunt, "thou dost speak like a maiden of nineteen, on the day before her marriage, in the intoxication of wishes fulfilled, of fair hopes and happy omens. Dear child, remember this—even the heart in time grows cold. Days will come when the magic of the senses shall fade. And when this enchantment has fled, then it first becomes evident whether we are truly worthy of love. When custom has made familiar the charms that are most attractive, when youthful freshness has died away, and with the brightness of domestic life, more and more shadows have mingled, then, Louise, and not till then, can the wife say of the husband, 'He is worthy of love;' then, first, the husband say of the wife, 'She blooms in imperishable beauty.' But, truly, on the day before marriage, such assertions sound laughable to me."