may seem a slight thing
To take this young girl as your bride;
To place on her finger the plain golden ring,
Around her these bright flower-festoons to fling,
But have you e'er thought what the future will bring
To you in this life so untried?

Have you thought how your temper may often be tried?
That you may grow gouty and old,
That the fair smiling face of your bonnie young bride
May grow pale and haggard, and wrinkled, beside,
Or she prove a sloven and scold?

And you, bonnie bride, on this glad wedding day,
In the midst of the curious crowd,
Do you fancy that life will be always so gay?
Can you work, can you wait, do you know how to pray,
Can you suffer, and not cry aloud?

Can you watch out the hours by sad beds of pain?
Can you bear and forbear and forgive?
Can you cheerfully hope e'en when hoping is vain,
And when hope is dead, and to die you would fain,
Can you still feel it right you should live?

O, touchingly solemn and tender the hour,
So full of deep meaning the vow
You have uttered. And sorely you need Divine power
To guide you and guard you in sunshine and shower,
For trouble will come and love's delicate flower
Be crushed, you can scarcely tell how.

And yet, dear heart, there is nothing that has such unconquerable
vitality as love; but it must be true love, not self-love, not
sentimentality, not passion, not any of the spurious emotions that
masquerade under the name of love, and which wither with the slightest
adverse wind.

Love is not an exotic, growing only in the conservatories of wealth.
It is a hardy plant, covering desolate places with verdure, glowing
amid the snows of mountain peaks, blossoming by night as well as by
day, hiding defects, clinging to ruins, enduring drouth and heat and
cold.

I know a woman who says that there should never be marriage where
there are unpleasant peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, or even
mannerisms; but should we act on that principle, few would marry. Love
is sometimes said to be blind in the days of wooing, but wearing
magnifying glasses after wedlock. True love is never blind, but he is
capable of judging of true relative values, and will count as naught
the slight defect when measured by the overwhelming perfection. Who
has not seen men devoted to wives who were homely or peculiar, but who
were genuinely pure and true?

"I don't care," said o