before your divinity.  She would love you if she thought you were just a common man, like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln; so, if you tell her you are poverty-stricken and prodigal, and it be true, then she will think that she had rather have a demi-god, poor as Job’s turkey, than a common young man, like your brother or your friend, with all the gold of King Plutus!  Bring to her an honest heart, and you will, indeed, bring treasures before her, and she would have no right to complain, even were she so inclined.  Love does not seem to be a matter of volition—­

OF “WANT TO, OR DON’T WANT TO.”

“No man or woman,” says Arthur Helps, “was ever cured of love by discovering the falseness of his or her lover.  The living together for three long rainy days in the country, has done more to dispel love than all the perfidies in love that have ever been committed.”  Just think of that during all the time of your courtship.  Dread the “living together,” and when you come to stand the test, the test will not be too great for you.  A young man, truly, doesn’t need to be married, as a full-grown one does.  But

IN ORDER TO REAP WE MUST SOW.

Our bachelor friend of forty wants to reap just as badly as you, but his fields will be waste while yours will be growing.  When you get your life insured at twenty-one they charge you about ten times what the risk really is.  Why?  Because, although they have not the least idea that you are going to die now, they know the mortgage is on your life, and the dues, when you pass fifty, would, in justice, be higher than mortal man would pay.  Therefore they even it up.

YOU LAY ASIDE A SURPLUS

for your old age, and, until lately, the courts held you could collect that surplus, if your contract were not completed to the end of your existence.  Thus, in marrying, you are following the wise ordinance of God.  You are choosing a blooming, healthy young woman while you are yourself fresh enough to attract her love and hold it.  You are living as a married man while you might, probably, live with more strictly selfish personal comfort up to thirty-five as a single man; but you are,

AFTER THIRTY-FIVE,

immensely better off than the single man, and you will, besides, always be given a better place in society than he, because society likes to see every member in its ranks doing his duty like a man and helping to bear the burdens as well as reap the benefits which our system of living deals out to those who participate in it.

IF YOU HAVE THE CONSUMPTION