It has always required—­but never more than now—­no small amount of moral courage on the part of newly married couples, whose incomes are moderate, to resist the temptations of extravagant living.  As the heads of young men are often turned by the reports of great fortunes suddenly acquired, so the ambition seizes upon many a young wife to cut a figure in “society.”  Instead of “the household—­motions light and free” that Wordsworth describes, the handmaid of fashion leads the hollow life of “keeping up appearances.”  If nothing worse than the slavery of debt is incurred, home life becomes a counterfeit of happiness; but any one who watches the daily papers will sometimes see obituaries there more saddening than those which appear under the head of “Deaths,” it is the list of detected defaulters or peculators or swindlers of some description—­often belonging to the most respectable families.  While the ruin of those evil-doers is sometimes caused by club life or dissipated habits, yet, in a large number of cases, the temptation to fraud has been the snare of extravagant living.

In my long experience as a city pastor I have watched the careers of thousands of married pairs.  One class have begun modestly in an unfashionable locality with plain dress and frugal expenditure They have eaten the wholesome bread of independence.  I wish that every young woman would display the good sense of a friend of mine, who received an offer of marriage from a very intelligent and very industrious, but poor young man who said to her:  “I hear that you have offers of marriage from young men of wealth; all that I can offer you is a good name, sincere love and plain lodgings at first in a boarding house.”  She was wise enough to discover the “jewel in the leaden casket” and accept his hand.  He became a prosperous business man and an officer of my church.  As for the other class, who begin their domestic career by a pitiable craze to “get into society” and to keep up with their “set” in the vain show, is their fate not written in the chronicles of haggard and jaded wives, and of husbands drowned in debt or driven perhaps to stock-gambling or some other refuge of desperation?

In another portion of this autobiography I have uttered a prayer for the revival of soul-kindling eloquence in the pulpit.  In this age of dizzy ballooning in finance and social extravagance, my prayer is:  “Oh, for the revival of old fashioned, sturdy, courageous frugality that ’hath clean hands and a clean heart, and hath not lifted up its soul to vanity!’”

“Do you not discover a great advance in educational facilities and in the enlargement of means to popular knowledge?” To this question I am happy to give an affirmative reply.  Schools and universities are more richly endowed and our public schools have been greatly improved in many directions.  Among the educated classes, reading clubs and societies for discussing sociological questions are more numerous,