asting consequence to the race, alone will be of lasting consequence to
her during her married life. Veneers, acquirements, technical
facilities, knowledge of languages, encyclopaedic information, elegance
of speech and even of conventional manners--all the things which, in our
rough classification, we may call acquired, may attract or please or
impress her for a time, but when the ultimate reckoning is made she will
find that they are less than the dust in the balance. I do not know how
and where to find for my words the emphasis with which it would be so
easy to endow them if, instead of addressing an unseen and strange
audience, one were counselling one's own daughter. I should say to her,
for instance, "My dear, be not deceived. He dresses elegantly, I know,
and makes himself quite nice to look at. Yet it is not his clothes that
you will have to live with, but himself; and the question is what do his
clothes mean? It is his nature that you will have to live with. What
fact of his nature do they stand for? Is it that he is vain and
selfish, preferring to spend his money upon himself and upon the
exterior of his person rather than upon others and upon the adornment of
his mind; or is it that he has fine natural taste, a sense of beauty and
harmony and quiet dignity in external things?" The answer to these
questions involves his wife's happiness. How strange that though no girl
will marry a man because she is attracted by the elegance of his false
teeth, yet she will often be deceived into admiring other things which
are just as much acquired and just as little likely to afford her
permanent satisfaction as the products of his dentist's work-room! If
only she realized that these other things, though nice to look at, are
no more himself than a well-fitting dental plate.

Or again: "You like his talk; he strikes you as well versed in human
affairs; his knowledge of men and things impresses you; he has travelled
and can talk easily of what he has seen, and his voice is elegant and
can be heard in many tongues. But if he is going to say bitter things to
you, will the facility of his diction make them less bitter? If he is a
fool in his heart--and indeed the heart alone is the residence of folly
or wisdom--do you think that he will be a fool the less for venting his
folly in seven languages rather than in one? I quite understand your
admiring his cleverness; people who study the subject tell us, you know,
that a woman admire