The direst result of ignorance or of distorted ideas of this tremendous matter of carrying on human life is that it leaves the girl unconscious of the supreme importance of her mate.  So heedlessly and ignorantly is our mating done to-day that the huge machinery of Church and State and the tremendous power of public opinion combined have been insufficient to preserve to the institution of marriage anything like the stability it once had, or that it is desirable that it should have, if its full possibilities are to be realized.  The immorality and inhumanity of compelling the obviously mismated to live together, grow on society.  Divorce and separation are more and more tolerated.  Yet little is done to prevent the hasty and ill-considered mating which is at the source of the trouble.

Rarely has a girl a sound and informed sense to guide her in accepting her companion.  The corollary of this bad proposition is that she has no sufficient idea of the seriousness of her undertaking.  She starts out as if on a lifelong joyous holiday, primarily devised for her personal happiness.  And what is happiness in her mind?  Certainly it is not a good to be conquered—­a state of mind wrested from life by tackling and mastering its varied experiences, the end, not the beginning, of a great journey.  Too often it is that of the modern Uneasy Woman—­the attainment of something outside of herself.  She visualizes it, as possessions, as ease, a “good time,” opportunities for self-culture, the exclusive devotion of the mate to her.  Rarely does she understand that happiness in her undertaking depends upon the wisdom and sense with which she conquers a succession of hard places—­calling for readjustment of her ideas and sacrifice of her desires.  All this she must discover for herself.  She is like a voyager who starts out on a great sea with no other chart than a sailor’s yarns, no other compass than curiosity.

The budget of axioms she brings to her guidance she has picked up helter-skelter.  They are the crumbs gathered from the table of the Uneasy Woman, or worse, of the pharisaical and satisfied woman, from good and bad books, from newspaper exploitations of divorce and scandal, from sly gossip with girls whose budget of marital wisdom is as higgledy-piggledy as her own.

And a pathetically trivial budget it is:—­

“He must tell her everything.”  “He must always pick up what she drops.”  “He must dress for dinner.”  “He must remember her birthday.”  That is, she begins her adventure with a set of hard-and-fast rules,—­and nothing in this life causes more mischief than the effort to force upon another one’s own rules!