Parents, especially mothers, should also watch with a jealous care the tendencies of their daughter’s affections; and if they see them turning toward unworthy or undesirable objects, influence of some sort should be brought to bear to counteract this.  Great delicacy and tact are required to manage matters rightly.  A more suitable person may, if available, be brought forward, in the hope of attracting the young girl’s attention.  The objectionable traits of the undesirable suitor should be made apparent to her without the act seeming to be intentional; and if all this fails, let change of scene and surroundings by travel or visiting accomplish the desired result.  The latter course will generally do it, if matters have not been allowed to progress too far and the young girl is not informed why she is temporarily banished from home.

AN ACCEPTABLE SUITOR.

Parents should always be able to tell from observation and instinct just how matters stand with their daughter; and if the suitor is an acceptable one and everything satisfactory, then the most scrupulous rules of etiquette will not prevent their letting the young couple alone.  If the lover chooses to propose directly to the lady and consult her father afterward, consider that he has a perfect right to do so.  If her parents have sanctioned his visits and attentions by a silent consent, he has a right to believe that his addresses will be favorably received by them.

REQUIREMENTS FOR A HAPPY MARRIAGE.

Respect for each other is as necessary to a happy marriage as that the husband and wife should have an affection for one another.  Social equality, intellectual sympathy, and sufficient means are very important matters to be considered by those who contemplate matrimony.

It must be remembered that husband and wife, after marriage, have social relations to sustain, and perhaps it will be discovered, before many months of wedded life have passed, when there is a social inequality, that one of the two have made a sacrifice for which no adequate compensation has been or ever will be received.  And so both lives become soured and spoiled, because neither receives nor can receive the sympathy which their efforts deserve, and because their cares are multiplied from a want of congeniality.  One or the other may find that the noble qualities seen by the impulse of early love, were but the creation of an infatuated fancy, existing only in the mind where it originated.

Another condition of domestic happiness is intellectual sympathy.  Man requires a woman who can make his home a place of rest for him, and woman requires a man of domestic tastes.  While a woman who seeks to find happiness in a married life will never consent to be wedded to an idler or a pleasure-seeker, so a man of intelligence will wed none but a woman of intelligence and good sense.  Neither beauty, physical