5.  THE ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIAN employed low cunning and heartless cruelty in obtaining his wife.  Laying in ambush, with club in hand, he would watch for the coveted woman, and, unawares, spring upon her.  If simply disabled he carried her off as his possession, but if the blow had been hard enough to kill, he abandoned her to watch for another victim.  There is here no effort to attract or please, no contest of strength; his courtship, if courtship it can be called, would compare very unfavorably with any among the brute creation.

6.  THE KALMUCK TARTAR races for his bride on horseback, she having a certain start previously agreed upon.  The nuptial knot consists in catching her, but we are told that the result of the race all depends upon whether the girl wants to be caught or not.

7.  HAWAIIAN ISLANDERS.—­Marriage among the early natives of these islands was merely a matter of mutual inclination.  There was no ceremony at all, the men and women united and separated as they felt disposed.

8.  THE FEUDAL LORD, in various parts of Europe, when any of his dependents or followers married, exercised the right of assuming the bridegroom’s proper place in the marriage couch for the first night.  Seldom was there any escape from this abominable practice.  Sometimes the husband, if wealthy, succeeded in buying off the petty sovereign from exercising his privilege.

9.  THE SPARTANS had the custom of encouraging intercourse between their best men and women for the sake of a superior progeny, without any reference to a marriage ceremony.  Records show that the ancient Roman husband has been known to invite a friend, in whom he may have admired some physical or mental trait, to share the favors of his wife; that the peculiar qualities that he admired might be repeated in the offspring.

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[Illustration:  PROPOSING.]

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Hasty marriage seldom proveth well.—­Shakespeare, Henry VI.

The reason why so few marriages are happy is, because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.—­Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects.

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SENSIBLE HINTS IN CHOOSING A PARTNER.

1.  There are many fatal errors and many love-making failures in courtship.  Natural laws govern all nature and reduce all they govern to eternal right; therefore love naturally, not artificially.  Don’t love a somebody or a nobody simply because they have money.

2.  COURT SCIENTIFICALLY.—­If you court at all, court scientifically.  Bungle whatever else you will, but do no bungle courtship.  A failure in this may mean more than a loss of wealth or public honors; it may mean ruin, or a life often worse than death.  The world is full of wretched and mismated people.

BEGIN RIGHT and all will be right; begin wrong and all will end wrong.  When you court, make a business of it and study your interest the same as you would study any other business proposition.