gh life in safety. You are an immortal being, but I am competent
to defend you and make you happy. However bright and comfortable a
home you have now, and though in one of the rooms is the arm-chair in
which you rocked, and in the garret is the cradle in which you were
hushed and the trundle-bed in which you slept, and in the sitting-room
are the father and mother who have got wrinkle-faced, and
stoop-shouldered, and dim-eyesighted in taking care of you, yet you
will do better to come with me." I am amazed that any of us ever had
the sublimity of impudence to ask such a transfer from a home assured
to a home conjectured and unbuilt.

A RISKY VOYAGE.

You would think me a very daring and hazardous adventurer if I should
go down to one of the piers on the North River, and at a time when
there was a great lack of ship captains, and I should, with no
knowledge of navigation, propose to take a steamer across to Glasgow
or Havre, and say: "All aboard! Haul in the planks and swing out,"
and, passing out into the sea, plunge through darkness and storm. If I
succeeded in getting charge of a ship, it would be one that would
never be heard of again. But that is the boldness of every man that
proffers marriage. He says: "I will navigate you through the storms,
the cyclones, the fogs of a lifetime. I will run clear of rocks and
icebergs. I have no experience and I have no seaport, but all aboard
for the voyage of a lifetime! I admit that there have been ten
thousand shipwrecks on this very route, but don't hesitate! Tut! Tut!
There now! Don't cry! Brides must not cry at the wedding."

THE WIFE'S TEMERITY.

In response to this the woman, by her action, practically says: "I
have but one life to live, and I entrust it all to you. My arm is
weak, but I will depend on the strength of yours. I don't know much of
the world, but I rely on your wisdom. I put my body, my mind, my soul,
my time, my eternity, in your keeping. I make no reserve. Even my name
I resign and take yours, though mine is a name that suggests all that
was honorable in my father, and all that was good in my mother, and
all that was pleasant in my brothers and sisters. I start with you on
a journey which shall not part except at the edge of your grave or
mine. Ruth, the Moabitess, made no more thorough self-abnegation than
I make, when I take her tremendous words, the pathos of which many
centuries have not cooled:

Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return fro