s their future
relations, the possibility and responsibilities of parenthood, etc.?"

I answer, that depends on the young people. If they have false ideas,
if they have little or no scientific knowledge, if their thoughts are
filled with wrong mental pictures, they will not know how to talk
wisely and beneficially. But these two young people are intelligent,
are scientifically educated, are Christians. Their hearts are pure,
their standards high, their motives praiseworthy. It would seem that
they might talk as freely as their inclination would prompt. In fact
there seems to me more indelicacy and more danger from long evenings
spent in murmuring ardent protestations of love and indulging in
embraces and endearments than in a frank, serious conversation on the
realities and responsibilities of marriage, an exchange of earnest
thoughts, voiced in chaste, well-chosen language--a conversation which
by its very solemnity is lifted out of the realm of sense-pleasure
into the dignified domain of science and morality.

CHAPTER XXXII.

ENGAGEMENTS.

There now sparkles on your finger a ring that symbolizes the promise
you have given to become a wife. You are engaged, and there now arises
in your mind the query as to the conduct of yourselves during this
period of engagement: How much of privilege shall you grant your
lover? As you are promised to each other for life, are you not
warranted in assuming towards each other greater personal familiarity?
May you not with perfect modesty allow endearments and caresses that
hitherto have not been permissible?

I take it for granted that you are not one of those unwise young women
who permit themselves to become engaged for fun; who consider an
engagement as of so little seriousness that it may be made and broken
without regret. I have known girls who even enter into engagements
just in order to feel justified in greater freedom of conduct without
compunction of conscience. If such engagements do not violate the code
of conventionalities they certainly infringe upon the moral code.

It is not strange that girls should fail to see all the dangers of
such conduct--that they should not comprehend that thus they become
sources of temptation to their lovers, and may even imperil their own
safety.

But your engagement is an honest one, your love is true, based upon
thorough acquaintance; you have mutual respect and entire confidence
in each other. May you not now throw aside m