of life.  Whenever your attention is attracted by a young lady, study her in the family circle—­learn her domestic qualifications.  Is she a respectful, dutiful, loving daughter?  Is she a kind and affectionate sister?  Does she manifest a noble, generous, friendly spirit?  Does she exhibit delicacy, refinement, and purity in her tastes and manners?  Is she industrious, economical, and frugal in her habits?  Will she be likely to assist you in husbanding your income, and taking care of your earnings?  Is she thoroughly versed in all domestic affairs, so that she herself could do all things connected with household matters, should necessity require it?  These, I acknowledge, are very ordinary, very homely inquiries; but nevertheless they are of the highest importance.  A young man who will marry, without having thoroughly made all such investigations, and becoming satisfied that his intended is not deficient, to any great extent, in these qualifications, is blind to his own highest good, and will in long after-years, amid domestic inquietude, and family troubles, indulge unavailing regrets at his blindness and folly.  But whenever a young woman can be found, possessing these invaluable characteristics, I would advise the youth seeking for a companion, to win her for a wife if possible.  Although she may be plain in person, and poor in property, yet she will be of more worth than rubies; and all riches cannot be compared with her.  She will be a faithful friend and wise counsellor, and will smooth the rugged pathway of life.  However the world and its affairs may go without, he who has such a wife, will ever have a home, where neatness and comfort, peace and love, and all that can yield contentment and enjoyment, will smile upon him!

All the care, discrimination, and judgment urged on young men in selecting wives, I would commend to young ladies, in accepting husbands.  If to the former, marriage is an important event, fraught with consequences lasting as life, it is peculiarly so to the latter.  It surely is no trivial event for a daughter to leave the home of her childhood, the tender care and watchful guardianship of kind parents, the society of affectionate brothers and sisters, to confide herself, with all her interests and her happiness, to another with whom she has hitherto associated only as a friend.  Is it not necessary to exercise prudence, forethought, discretion, in taking a step so momentous?

A young woman should not marry because the youthful are expected to enter matrimonial bonds at a certain age, nor merely because they have had an offer of marriage.  Such an admonition may seem to be unnecessary; but I think it called for.  It is true, beyond question, that young women sometimes receive the addresses, and finally become the wives, of men for whom they have formed no very strong attachment, and, indeed, in whom they see many characteristics and habits, which they cannot approbate.  This is done on the principle, that it is the first offer of marriage they have had, and may be the only opportunity of settlement for life that will ever present itself.  Not a few parents have urged their daughters to such a course—­totally blinded to the evils which often flow from it.