such stigma in the circle in which Shelley moved, but misery brought about by the facts themselves, and producing state of things which Matthew Arnold could only characterize by the untranslatable French word “sale.”  But nearer home, one of your most brilliant writers, Mr. Henry James, has given us an equally profitable study in his novelette, What Maisie Knew, which I presume is intended as a satire on freedom of divorce, but which again can only be characterized by the French word “sale.”

I confess it does fill me with sardonic laughter to find this oldest and stalest of all experiments, this oldest and flattest of failures, paraded as a brand new and original panacea for all the woes of our family life,—­woes which, if nobly borne, at least make “perfect through suffering.”

There is but one great rock-hewn dam successfully reared against the lawless passions of men and women, and that is Christian marriage.  It has at least given us the Christian home, and pure family life.  And sometimes it fills me with despair to see enlightened nations, like America and Australia, whittling away and slowly undermining this great bulwark against the devastating sea of human passion.  If only I could feel that any poor words of mine could in any faint measure rouse American women to set themselves against what must in the end affect the depth and steadfastness of those family affections on which the beauty and solidity of the national character mainly rest, I should feel indeed I had not lived in vain.

At least I can claim that one of your greatest women, Frances Willard, was heart and soul with me on this point.

And now to descend to lower levels.  Could we not do a little more to save our young girls from sacrificing their happiness to false ideals by opportunely obtruding a little mature common-sense into their day visions and their inexperienced way of looking at things?  It is all very well in the heyday of life, when existence is full of delight and home affection, to refuse a man who could make them happy, because they don’t quite like the shape of his nose, or because he is a little untidy in his dress, or simply because they are waiting for some impossible demigod to whom alone they could surrender their independence.  But could we not mildly point out that darker days must come, when life will not be all enjoyment, and that a lonely old age, with only too possible penury to be encountered, must be taken into consideration?

God knows I am no advocate for loveless, and least of all for mercenary marriages, but I think we want some via media between the French mariage de convenance and our English and American method of leaving so grave a question as marriage entirely to the whimsies and romantic fancies of young girls.  We need not go back to the old fallacy that marriage is the aim and end of a woman’s existence, and absolutely necessary for her happiness.  Some