man and wife has another influence, and quite a
curious one. It influences the sex of the children. But this point we
reserve for discussion on a later page.

The folly of joining a young girl to an old man is happily not so common
in America as in Europe. It would be hard to devise any step more
certain to bring the laws of nature and morality into conflict.

'What can a young lassie do wi' an auld man?'

What advice can we give to a woman who barters her youthful charms for
the fortune of an aged husband? Shall we be cynical enough to agree with
'auld Auntie Katie?'

'My auld Auntie Katie upon me takes pity;
I'll do my endeavor to follow her plan:
I'll cross him, and rack him, until I heart-break him,
And then his auld brass will buy me a new pan.'

No! She has willingly accepted a responsibility. It is her duty to bear
it loyally, faithfully, uncomplainingly to the end.

Let us sum up with the maxim, that the husband should be the senior, but
that the difference of age should not be more than ten years.

WHAT SHOULD BE HIS TEMPERAMENT?

It is often hard to make out what doctors mean by _temperaments_. It is
supposed that our mental and physical characters depend somehow on the
predominance of some organ or system which controls the rest. Thus a
person who is nervous, quick, sensitive to impressions, is said to have
a _nervous_ temperament; one who is stout, full-blooded, red-faced, has
a _sanguine_ temperament; a thin, dark-featured, reticent person, is of
a _bilious_ temperament; while a pale, fat, sluggish nature, is called
_phlegmatic_, or _lymphatic._

In a general way these distinctions are valuable, but they will not bear
very exact applications. They reveal in outline the constitution of mind
and body; and what is to our present purpose, they are of more than
usual importance in the question of selecting a husband.

Nature, hating incongruity, yet loves variety. She preserves the limits
of species, but within those limits she seeks fidelity to one type.
Therefore it is that in marriage a person inclines strongly to one of a
different temperament--to a person quite unlike himself.

So true is this, that a Frenchman of genius, Bernardin de St. Pierre,
vouches for this anecdote of himself. He was in a strange city, visiting
a friend whom he had not seen for years. The friend's sister was of that
age when women are most susceptible. She was tall, a blonde, deliberate
in moti