view she cannot afford to laugh
at the teetotaler; and if she can stop her lover's drinking, whether he
drinks much or little, she will do well for him and herself. She should
know what the effect of alcohol is upon a man, and she should have
imagination enough to realize that his hot breath, coming unwelcome,
will not be more palatable in the future for its flavouring of whisky.
It may be admitted that in saying all this the interests of the future
are perhaps paramount in my mind. I am trying to do a service to the
principle, "Protect parenthood from alcohol," which I advocate as the
first and most urgent motto for the real temperance reformer. Yet the
question of parenthood may be entirely left out of consideration, and
even so the advice here given to the girl about to choose a
husband--alas, that only a small proportion of maidenhood can be in that
fortunate state, which is yet the right and natural one!--is warranted
and more than warranted. We may go so far as to declare that it is a
great duty, laid upon the young womanhood of civilization, to protect
itself and the future, and to serve its own contemporary manhood, by
taking up this attitude towards alcohol. Would that this great
missionary enterprise were now unanimously undertaken by these most
effective and cogent of missionaries, whose own happiness so largely
depends upon its success!

Of course it should not be necessary for any man to set forth, for the
instruction of girlhood, the qualities which it should value in men. All
who train and teach girlhood and form its ideals should devote
themselves scarcely less to this than to the inculcation of high ideals
for girlhood itself; yet it is not done. We do not yet recognize the
supreme importance of the marriage choice for the present and for the
future.

Fortunately, if Nature alone gets a fair chance, she teaches the girl
that a man should "play the game," and should not be afraid of "having a
go," that of the two classes into which, as one used to tell a little
girl, people are divided--those who "stick to it," and those who do
not--the former are the worthy for her. But Nature is specially
handicapped by stupid convention, not least in Anglo-Saxon countries, as
regards a woman's estimation of _tenderness_ in a man. The parental
instinct with its correlate emotion of tenderness, is the highest of
existing things, and though it is less characteristic of men than of
women, it is none the less supreme wh