re fact of sex has a right to
hamper her growth or restrict her activity, and that no one shall have
the right to say what is best for her or what she ought to wish for
herself, in matters where she alone can have the means for understanding
the situation.

These principles intimately concern the question of marriage. George
Meredith said that to a woman marriage should be a platform from which
her soul may take a new flight. How wonderful! A platform from which the
soul may take flight!--not a black cage in which the soul of woman must
crouch, to which her soul must fit itself, moving cramped, and slowly,
and at war with itself; not a cage in which a caught and imprisoned
canary bird must sing for the amusement of its owner. No! a platform
from which to take flight, with sunlighted realms to investigate and new
skies to discover, with wings growing ever stronger for more daring
ascensions into still clearer light.

Let every girl make sure that that is the kind of platform that is being
built for her in the character and in the attitude of mind of the
destined lover. And let her make certain that she also is building and
developing in herself a character that shall be worthy of her high
mission, that shall be sufficient for all its needs, and that shall
merit the deep reverence that all hearts give to the mother and
homemaker.

In order that the founding of a successful home may be the Country
Girl's happy lot, is it too much to ask that she should cherish for
herself the ideal of a nature clean and pure, with so high a reverence
for purity that she shall demand it in her lover as in herself? And that
she shall recognize no difference in her standard for the morality of
both the young man and the young woman? Should not her ideal include the
fact of established health, both physical and mental, with a physician's
certificate for both young man and young woman as to this, and include
also a good inheritance of health in both families together with
absolute freedom from alcoholism or other death-dealing diseases?
Moreover, no marriage can be quite happy and successful that is not
based upon the principle that each shall respect the personal rights of
the other; and this should include, not only matters of income and
property, but of tastes and opinions, and of all personal
relationships. Both should have a good common school education and as
much more as circumstances will permit. If he is a college graduate, she
sho