“I am, Father.”

“Why, my child, he has no trade, no money, and very little education; what are you going to do for a living?”

She replied:  “Aunt is going to give me a hen for a wedding present.  You know, Father, it is said one hen will raise twenty chickens in a season.  The second season, twenty each, you see, will be four hundred; the third season, eight thousand; the fourth season, one hundred and sixty thousand; and the fifth season, only five years, twenty each will be three million, two hundred thousand chickens.  At twenty-five cents each they will bring eight hundred thousand dollars.  We will then let you have money enough to pay off the mortgage on the farm and we will move to the city.”

To a girl in love, every hen egg will hatch; not a chicken will ever die with the gapes; they will all live on love, like herself, and everything will be profit.

The college girl cannot marry at this impulsive, air-castle age.  She must wait until she gets through college.  By that time she is old enough for her heart to consult her head, and her head inquires into the character and capacity of the young man.  Beside this, it has been the custom for women to look up to man, and when the college woman looks up, quite often she doesn’t see anybody.  Young man, if you want the college girl you must “get up” in good qualities to where she will see you without looking down.

I believe this higher education for women will tend to arrest the recklessness by which life is linked with life at the marriage altar.  There is a legend among the Jews that man and woman were once one being; an angel was sent down from Heaven to cleave them into two.  Ever since, each half has been running around looking for the other, and the misfits have been many at the marriage altar.

These misfits remind me of an experience when I lectured for the Colfax, Iowa, Chautauqua, some years ago.  Frank Beard, the famous chalk talker, was there and on Grand Army day he was on the program for a short talk.  I was seated by Mr. Beard while the speaker who preceded him was telling war stories of his regiment and himself.  Frank Beard said to me:  “Well!  I guess I can exaggerate a little myself.”  It was evident he intended to measure up to the occasion.  After getting his audience into proper spirit for the manufactured war story, he said: 

“I was in the war myself and had a few experiences.  At the battle of Shiloh, I was lying behind a log, when I saw about forty Confederates come dashing down toward me.  My first impulse was to rise, make a charge and capture the whole forty.  But I knew that would not be strategy; generals did not manage a battle that way with such odds against them, so I determined to make a detour.  Perhaps some of you young people do not know what a detour means.  It means, when in such a position as I was, to get up and go the other way.  So I detoured.  The chaplain of our regiment detoured also; he could detour