the nearest route. So with other evil tendencies.
By legislation or by some other means, measures should be speedily
adopted for the prevention of this rapid increase of criminals, if there
is any feasible plan which can be adopted. We offer no suggestion on
this point, but it is one well worthy of the consideration of
philanthropic statesmen.

_6. Persons who are greatly disproportionate in size should not marry._

While good taste would suggest the propriety of this rule, there are
important physiological reasons for its observance. While the lack of
physical adaptitude may be the occasion of much suffering and
unhappiness in such unions, especially on the part of the wife, being
even productive of most serious local disease, and sometimes of
sterility, it is in childbirth that the greatest risk and suffering
is incurred. More might be said on this point, but this is sufficient
for those who are willing to profit by a useful hint.

_7. Persons between whom there is great disparity of age should not
marry._

The reasons for this have already been given at length, and we will
not repeat. In general, the husband should be older than the wife, from
two to five years. The husband may often be ten or twelve years the
senior of the wife; but when more than that, the union is not likely
to be a profitable or happy one, if it is not absolutely productive
of suffering and unhappiness. The ancient Greeks required that the
husband should be twenty years older than the wife; but this custom
was no more reasonable than that of another nation which required that
only old and young should marry, so that the sobriety of the old might
restrain the frivolity of the young.

_8. Persons who are extremely unlike in temperament should not marry._

Persons who are so unlike in temperament and tastes as to have no mutual
enjoyments, no congeniality of feeling, will be incompatible as husband
and wife, and the union of such persons will be anything but felicitous.
No definite rule can be laid down; but those seeking a companion for
life would do well to bear this caution in mind, at the same time
remembering that too great similarity of character, especially when
there are prominent defects, is equally undesirable.

_9. Marriage between widely different races is unadvisable._

While there is no moral precept directly involved in marriage between
widely different nations, as between whites and blacks or Indians,
experience shows that