stian before marriage, she must have regard for the Christian
religion or she is a bad woman and unworthy of being your companion in
a life charged with such stupendous solemnity and vicissitudes.

TWO ESSENTIAL QUALITIES.

What you want, O man! in a wife, is not a butterfly of the sunshine,
not a giggling nonentity, not a painted doll, not a gossiping
gadabout, not a mixture of artificialities which leave you in doubt as
to where the humbug ends and the woman begins, but an earnest soul,
one that cannot only laugh when you laugh, but weep when you weep.
There will be wide, deep graves in your path of life, and you will
both want steadying when you come to the verge of them, I tell you!
When your fortune fails you will want some one to talk of treasures in
heaven, and not charge upon you with a bitter, "I told you so." As
far as I can analyze it, _sincerity and earnestness_ are the
foundation of all worthy wifehood. Get that, and you get all. Fail to
get that, and you get nothing but what you will wish you never had
got.

BEAUTY A BENEDICTION.

Don't make the mistake that the man of the text made in letting his
eye settle the question in which coolest judgment directed by divine
wisdom are all-important. He who has no reason for his wifely choice
except a pretty face is like a man who should buy a farm because of
the dahlias in the front dooryard. Beauty is a talent, and when God
gives it He intends it as a benediction upon a woman's face. When the
good _Princess of Wales_ dismounted from the railtrain last summer,
and I saw her radiant face, I could understand what they told me the
day before, that, when at the great military hospital where are now
the wounded and the sick from the Egyptian and other wars, the
Princess passed through, all the sick were cheered at her coming, and
those who could be roused neither by doctor nor nurse from their
stupor, would get up on their elbows to look at her, and wan and
wasted lips prayed an audible prayer: "God bless the Princess of
Wales! Doesn't she look beautiful?"

But how uncertain is the tarrying of beauty in a human countenance!
Explosion of a kerosene lamp turns it into scarification, and a
scoundrel with one dash of vitriol may dispel it, or Time will drive
his chariot wheels across that bright face, cutting it up in deep ruts
and gullies. But there is an eternal beauty on the face of some women,
whom a rough and ungallant world may criticise as homely; and thoug