age in any personal
relation and in the old sense. Wise older people do not wish that.
What is happening, and will be accelerated in action when the first
flush of youthful consciousness of power is a bit balanced by
knowledge of life's difficulties, is this; the wisdom of the ages, not
the wisdom of their own parents and family alone, will be available to
youth and used by youth in ever-increasing reverence. Not that some
one who has lived longer shall of right determine a young life, but
that young life shall learn more than in any past time it could do
what the experience of the race has to teach. Happy the child whose
parent can interpret this wisdom of life and happy the parent whose
child can even now see that there is wisdom from the past to
interpret.

Meanwhile, the fact that so many people marry and so many marriages
turn out happily speaks well for the wisdom of youth or else gives
testimony of the kindness of the fate that watches over lovers. We are
told that at the ages of twenty to twenty-five half of the women and
one-fourth of the men in the United States are married, and at the
period of life between thirty-five and forty-five years only seventeen
per cent. of the men are single and only eleven per cent. of the
women; while at sixty-five years and over only six per cent. of either
sex are listed as having never married. If out of this large
proportion who dare matrimony on their own motion, and often without
even the parental approbation, only one marriage out of ten to twelve
turns out so badly that the parties ask to be released from their
marriage vows, surely it argues well for independence in choosing
one's partner for one's self even if there are mishaps and disasters
for the few.

=Personal Choice in Marriage Has Now the Widest Range.=--One fact
which many overlook when making estimates of the mistakes in marriage
(and drawing therefrom dire prognostication for the future of the
family in our country) is that personal choice among a circle of
friends was not only never so free for young people but also never
able to cover so wide a range of divergent national and racial
backgrounds as in the United States. Marriages in this country often
bridge or try to bridge a chasm between centuries of social
development and continents of educational influence. It is estimated
that of the 3,424 languages and dialects spoken in the world, about
one-third, or 1,624, are spoken in some part of the American