as a married man.  It seems to me that a virtuous, sober, christian, unmarried man should have twice the credit of a married man, for he is certainly exposed to thousands of extra temptations.  Everything is natural in marriage.  The builder has “builded wiser than he knew.”  At thirty-five he finds himself well along on the successful journey of life.  His bachelor friend who has lived a selfish existence is poorer, has lost the charm of youth, and is skurrying around to get a wife who will be a queen and slave at the same time.  His bachelor friend is

A LAUGHING-STOCK

among the last crop of young girls, who can recollect how he went with their married sisters, and he will be satisfied with nothing above eighteen, though his hair is dropping out, or frosting like a cold night in September.  If he had not been so selfish he would have been married eight or ten years ago.  Now

NATURE BEGINS TO ASSERT HERSELF.

The friends of his youth have formed the new ties that have come with the march of the years.  The trees have their leaves, and cast a grateful shadow, cool and sweet.  The bachelor is bare, and under his branches the hot and withering sun pours down unpleasantly.  You are lucky to have escaped such a lot, for it is O, so lonesome and unsatisfactory to man!  It is not good for him to be alone.  Now,

IN TALKING TO YOUR SWEETHEART,

there is one bearing alone which will bring forth good fruit.  Be honest and sincere.  Remember that the philosophers and sages of the centuries have been studying and marveling over the thing called Truth—­why it is that it always asserts itself—­why it is that its parts always coincide with each other, as though they had first been put together!  When you see cut stones unloading before the site of a building, you know by the marks on them that, when they are put together, they will make a fine-looking front, for the architect has copied them from the front of some building which has, sometime or other, been erected just as this projected structure will be.  But here is

THIS QUARRY OF TRUTH;

you enter it without a human architect, hew out a stone, hew out another, and another, and soon a beautiful edifice arises, in the walls of which there is not a single peep-hole or blemish.  Everything fits.  So bear yourself toward your future partner for life that when you enter the quarry of your brain for her information, you also enter this quarry of Truth.  The stones you now cut out will stand as the buttresses of the walls!

HOW SHOCKING IF THEY ARE LIES!

Tell her, when you tell her anything at all, the exact truth.  Be very careful about this.  Tell her particularly about your money affairs.  Your happiness depends more on food and clothes than you are now able to understand.  But if you put in solid blocks of truth for the basement, the finer developments of your life will join on with precision and effect.  I know a young man who went in debt for a fine span of horses and wagon.  His bride supposed they were his own, and he “let her suppose.”