anish into nothing.
Look not to external beauty alone; but also to the ornaments of an inward
spirit, of a noble mind, and an amiable and pious heart. "If," says the
Rev. H. Harbaugh, "you will be foolish, follow the gilded butterfly of
beauty, drive it a long chase; it will land you at last at some stagnant
mud-pond of the highway."

Neither is impulsive passion a true basis of marriage. This is falling in
love at first sight, which often proves to be a very dangerous and
degrading fall,--a fall from the clouds to the clods, producing both
humiliation and misery. It is indeed a fearful leap,--a leap without
judgment or forethought; and, therefore, a leap in the dark. It is too
precipitate, and shows the infatuation of the victim. Falling in love is
not always falling in the embraces of domestic felicity. Such leaping is an
act of intoxication. The drunkard, falling in the mire, often thinks that
he is embracing his best friend, whereas it is but descending to fellowship
with the swine. It is blind love, which is no love, but passion without
reason. It is crazy, fitful, stormy, raising the feelings up to boiling
point, and bringing the affections under the influence of the high-pressure
system. Consequently it is raving, frothy, of a mushroom growth, making
mere bubbles, and completing its work in an evaporation of all that it
operated upon, passing away like the morning cloud and the early dew.

True love is very different. It is substantial, reasonable, moral, acting
according to law, temperate in all things, keeping the heart from extremes,
permanent, and based upon principle. Passion, without love, may keep you in
a state of pleasurable intoxication until the knot is tied, when you will
soon get sober again, only to see, however, your folly and to contemplate
the height from which you have fallen, and then, with the recklessness of
sullen despair, to pass over into the opposite extreme of stoical
indifference and misery. All emotions are transient, and hence no proper
standard of judgment in the serious matter of a marriage choice. The heart,
unguided by the head, is, in its emotions, like the flaming meteor that
passes in its rapid, fiery train across the heavens. It flames only for a
time, and soon passes away, leaving the heavens in greater darkness than
before.

Neither is wealth a true basis for the marriage choice. "The love of money
is the root of all evil;" and when it is the primary desideratum in
marriag