I have often thought how much less occupation there would be for the divorce courts and how many more “indefinitely postponed” announcements of engagements would result from an established custom of a pre-betrothal trip!

If a young man and woman who were enamoured could travel for two or three months, with a chaperon (in the shape of a mother-in-law or two), the lawyers would lose much profit; but I fear race suicide might ensue.  Nothing, unless it is the sick-room or the card-table, brings out the real characteristics of human beings like travel.

The irritating delays of boats and trains, and the still more irritating unresponsiveness of officials, when asked the cause, will test the temper and the patience of even a pair of lovers.  It is not surprising if the traveller does lose both at times, but it is admirable if he does not.  I remember how adorable you were, while I was a bundle of dynamite, ready to explode and send the stolid, uncommunicative conductor and brakemen into a journey through space, when we suffered that long delay coming from California.  It is due the travelling public to explain such delays, but the railroads of America have grown to feel that they owe no explanation to any one, even to God, for what they do or do not.  While I lost vitality and composure by such idle reflections, you were amusing the nervous travellers by your bright bits of narrative and ready repartee.  That fortunate fellow you have promised to marry at the end of two years has no idea what a charming companion he will find in you for travel.

It is interesting to have you say you feel that you need two more years as a teacher, before you are fully developed enough to take up the responsibilities of marriage.  You will be twenty-seven then:—­that is the age at which the average American girl begins to be most interesting, and the age when she is first physically mature.

And your children will be more fully endowed mentally than if you had become a mother in your teens.

As a rule the brainy people of the world are not born of very youthful parents; you will find youth gives physique, maturity gives brains to offspring.

I did not quite finish my train of reasoning about your self-esteem.

It was because you had always believed yourself to be capable of doing anything you undertook to do, that you were roused by my assertion that you could not make a good school-teacher, to attempt it.  I hurt your pride a bit, and you were determined to prove me wrong.  Had you been self-depreciating and oversensitive, what I said would have turned you from that field of effort.  And that would have been a desirable result, since one who can be turned from any undertaking ought to be.

I still think the world has lost a wonderful artist by your not entering the lists of designers and dressmakers.  But since my recital of the faults which would prevent your success as a teacher led you to overcome them, I am proud and glad, that you have gone on in the work you contemplated.  Good teachers are more needed than good dressmakers.