women are doubtless called to be mothers of the race, and to do the social work which is so necessary to our complex civilization.  Some women may feel themselves called to some literary or artistic pursuit, or some other profession, for which they require the freedom of unmarried life.  But I think I shall carry most women with me in saying that for the ordinary woman marriage is the happiest state, and that she rarely realizes the deepest and highest in her nature except in wifehood and motherhood.  Rarely, indeed, can any public work that she can do for the world equal the value of that priceless work of building up, stone by stone, the temple of a good man’s character which falls to the lot of his mother.  Truly is she called the wife, the weaver, since day and night, without hasting and without resting, she is weaving the temple hangings, wrought about with pomegranates and lilies, of the very shrine of his being.  And if our girls could be led to see this, at least it would overcome that adverseness to marriage which many are now so curiously showing, and which inevitably makes them more fastidious and fanciful in their choice, And, on the other hand, without falling back into the old match-making mamma, exposing her wares in the marriage market to be knocked down to the highest bidder, might not parents recognize a little more than they do how incumbent on them it is to make every effort to give their daughters that free and healthy intercourse with young men which would yield them a wider choice, and which forms the best method for insuring a happy marriage?

At least, let us open our eyes to the fact that we are face to face with some terrible problems with regard to the future of our girls.  With safe investments yielding less and less interest, it must become more and more difficult to make a provision for the unmarried daughters; and if the money is spent instead on training them to earn their own bread, we are still met by the problem of the early superannuation of women’s labor, which rests on physical causes, and cannot therefore be removed.  This at least is no time to despise marriage, or for women of strong and independent character to adopt an attitude which deprives the nation of many of its noblest mothers.

But if we are to facilitate marriage, which must form, at any rate, the main solution of the problems of the near future to which I have alluded, if we are to prevent, or even lessen, the degradation of women, if we are to extinguish this pit of destruction in our midst, into which so many a fair and promising young life disappears, and which perpetually threatens the moral and physical welfare of our own sons, if we are to stay the seeds of moral decay in our own nation, we must be content to revolutionize much in the order of our own life, and adopt a lower and simpler standard of living.  It is we, and not men, who set the standard; it is we who have been guilty of the vulgar ambition of following the last social fashion,