“Talk to them of elevating the intellect or improving the heart, and they admit it is true; but they go their way and pursue their accustomed round of folly again.  The probability is, that though they assent to your views, they do not understand you.  It requires a stretch of charity to which I am wholly unequal, to believe that beings who ever conceived, for one short moment, of the height to which their natures may be elevated, should sink back” without a single struggle, to a mere selfish, unsocial, animal life;—­to lying in bed ten or twelve hours daily, rising three or four hours later than the sun, spending the morning in preparation at the glass, the remainder of the time till dinner in unmeaning calls, the afternoon in yawning over a novel, and the evening in the excitement of the tea-table and the party, and the ball-room, to retire, perhaps at midnight, with the mind and body and soul in a feverish state, to toss away the night in vapid or distressing dreams.

“How beings endowed with immortal souls can be contented to while away precious hours in a manner so useless, and withal so displeasing to the God who gave them their time for the improvement of themselves and others, is to me absolutely inconceivable!  Yet it is certainly done; and that not merely by a few solitary individuals scattered up and down the land; but in some of our most populous cities, by considerable numbers.

“Should the young man who is seeking an ‘help meet,’ chance to fall in with such beings as these—­and some we fear there are in almost every part of our land,—­let him shun them as he would the ’choke damp’ of the cavern.

“Their society would extinguish, rather than fan the flame of every generous or benevolent-feeling that might be kindling in his bosom. With the fond, the ardent, the never-failing desire to improve, physically, intellectually, and morally, there are few females who may not make tolerable companions for a man of sense;—­without it, though a young lady were beautiful and otherwise lovely beyond comparison, wealthy as the Indies, surrounded by thousands of the most worthy friends, and even talented, let him beware!  Better remain in celibacy a thousand years (could life last so long) great as the evil may be, than form a union with such an object.  He should pity, and seek her reformation, if not beyond the bounds of possibility; but love her he should not!  The penalty will be absolutely insupportable.

“One point ought to be settled,—­I think unalterably settled—­before matrimony.  It ought indeed to be settled in early life, but it is better late, perhaps, than never.  Each of the parties should consider themselves as sacredly pledged, in all cases, to yield to conviction.  I have no good opinion of the man who expects his wife to yield her opinion to his, on every occasion, unless she is convinced.  I say on every occasion; for that she sometimes ought to do so, seems to be