cannot be compared with her. She will be a faithful friend and wise
counsellor, and will smooth the rugged pathway of life. However the
world and its affairs may go without, he who has such a wife, will
ever have a home, where neatness and comfort, peace and love, and
all that can yield contentment and enjoyment, will smile upon him!

All the care, discrimination, and judgment urged on young men in
selecting wives, I would commend to young ladies, in accepting
husbands. If to the former, marriage is an important event, fraught
with consequences lasting as life, it is peculiarly so to the
latter. It surely is no trivial event for a daughter to leave the
home of her childhood, the tender care and watchful guardianship of
kind parents, the society of affectionate brothers and sisters, to
confide herself, with all her interests and her happiness, to
another with whom she has hitherto associated only as a friend. Is
it not necessary to exercise prudence, forethought, discretion, in
taking a step so momentous?

A young woman should not marry because the youthful are expected
to enter matrimonial bonds at a certain age, nor merely because they
have had an offer of marriage. Such an admonition may seem to be
unnecessary; but I think it called for. It is true, beyond question,
that young women sometimes receive the addresses, and finally
become the wives, of men for whom they have formed no very strong
attachment, and, indeed, in whom they see many characteristics and
habits, which they cannot approbate. This is done on the principle,
that it is the first offer of marriage they have had, and may be the
only opportunity of settlement for life that will ever present
itself. Not a few parents have urged their daughters to such a
course--totally blinded to the evils which often flow from it.

Such a procedure is fraught with danger. It perils the happiness of
all coming days. How many have, under such circumstances, left the
abode of their childhood, where every comfort surrounded them, to
spend a life of wrangling, bitterness, and, sometimes, abject
poverty. Better, a thousand times, to remain at home, better live
in "single blessedness" all your days, than to become connected
with a man whose disposition, habits, or character, you cannot
fully approve. Though he may be as rich as Cresus--though he may
lead you to a palace for an abode, and deck you with jewels--yet,
if you cannot give him your entire approbation, if your heart