from clear soul-starvation.  “Up to twenty-one I hold the father to have power over his children as to marriage,” says Coleridge; “after that age he has authority and influence only.  Show me one couple unhappy merely on account of their limited circumstances, and I will show you ten who are wretched from other causes.”  “He that takes a wife takes care,” says Ben Franklin.  “I chose my wife,” says Goldsmith, “as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would wear well.”  “Before marriage,” says Addison,

“WE CANNOT BE TOO INQUISITIVE

and discerning in the faults of the person beloved, nor after it too dimsighted and superficial.  Marriage enlarges the scene of our happiness and miseries.

A MARRIAGE OF LOVE

is pleasant; a marriage of interest easy; and a marriage where both meet, happy.  A happy marriage has in it all the pleasures of friendship, all the enjoyments of sense and reason, and, indeed, all the sweets of life.”  “It is the policy of the Londoners,” says Thomas Fuller, “when they send a ship into the Mediterranean Sea, to make every mariner therein a merchant, each seaman venturing somewhat of his own, which will make him more wary to avoid, and more valiant to undergo dangers.  Thus married men, especially if having posterity, are

THE DEEPER SHARERS IN THAT NATION

wherein they live, which engageth their affections to the greater loyalty.”  “Matrimony hath something in it of nature, something of civility, something of divinity,” says Bishop Hall.  “Though matrimony may have some pains, celibacy has few pleasures,” says old Dr. Johnson, a bachelor.  Again says he:  “Marriage is the best state for man in general; and every man is a worse man in proportion as he is unfit for the married state.”  “Marriage is an institution,” says Sir Richard Steele “celebrated for a constant scene of as much delight as our being is capable of.”

ONE THING KEEP IN MIND!

When the sages, the critics, and the people who love to say smart things, paint the infelicities of marriage, they as often paint simply the general troubles of life, which are common to all people.  The bachelor is more apt to be kept awake by the crying child in the next chamber than is the father in the same room with the child.  The young man quarrels with his landlady as often as the young husband quarrels with his wife.  The young man notoriously finds his wants as lightly resting on the memories of those he hires to attend to them as does the husband of the most careless wife.  He cannot escape the sickness of life with even the good fortune of a married man, according to the statistics of the Government.  The married woman is also healthier than the maid.  So, then, get the critics of the married state to specify