that you are
persecuted. {185}

17. DISINHERITANCE.--Never disinherit, or threaten to disinherit, a child
for marrying against your will. If you wish a daughter not to marry a
certain man, oppose her, and she will be sure to marry him; so also in
reference to a son.

18. PROPER TRAINING.--The secret is, however, all in a nutshell. Let the
father properly train his daughter, and she will bring her first
love-letter to him, and give him an opportunity to cherish a suitable
affection, and to nip an improper one in the germ, before it has time to do
any harm.

19. THE FATAL MISTAKES OF PARENTS.--_There is, however, one way of
effectually preventing an improper match, and that is, not to allow your
children to associate with any whom you are unwilling they should marry.
How cruel as well as unjust, to allow a daughter to associate with a young
man till the affections of both are riveted, and then forbid her marrying
him. Forbid all association or consent cheerfully to the marriage._

20. AN INTEMPERATE LOVER.--Do not flatter yourselves, young women, that you
can wean even an occasional wine drinker from his cups by love and
persuasion. Ardent spirit at first, kindles up the fires of love into the
fierce flames at burning licentiousness, which burn out every element of
love and destroy every vestige of pure affection. It over-excites the
passions, and thereby finally destroys it,--producing at first, unbridled
libertinism, and then an utter barrenness of love; besides reversing the
other faculties of the drinker against his own consort, and those of the
wife against her drinking husband.

* * * * *

FIRST LOVE, DESERTION AND DIVORCE.

1. FIRST LOVE.--This is the most important direction of all. The first love
experiences a tenderness, a purity and unreservedness, an exquisiteness, a
devotedness, and a poetry belonging to no subsequent attachment. "Love,
like life, has no second spring." Though a second attachment may be
accompanied by high moral feeling, and to a devotedness to the object
loved; yet, let love be checked or blighted in its first pure emotion, and
the beauty of its spring is irrecoverably withered and lost. This does not
mean the simple love of children in the first attachment they call love,
but rather the mature intelligent love of those of suitable age.

[Illustration: CONSIDERING THE QUESTION.]

{187}

2. FREE FROM TEMPTATIONS.--As long as his heart is bound up i