all these scenes of disquietude and domestic calamity, we implore you
to be cautious and prayerful before you enter upon the connubial
state, which decides whether a man shall have two heavens or two
hells, a heaven here and heaven forever, or a hell now and a hell
hereafter.

NOBLE WIVES.

By the bliss of Pliny, whose wife, when her husband was pleading in
court, had messengers coming and going to inform her what impression
he was making; by the joy of Grotius, whose wife delivered him from
prison under the pretence of having books carried out lest they be
injurious to his health, she sending out her husband unobserved in one
of the bookcases; by the good fortune of Roland, in Louis' time,
whose wife translated and composed for her husband, while Secretary of
the Interior--talented, heroic, wonderful Madame Roland; by the
happiness of many a man who has made intelligent choice of one capable
of being prime counsellor and companion in brightness and in
grief--pray to Almighty God, morning, noon, and night that at the
right time and in the right way He will send you a good, honest,
loving, sympathetic wife; or if she is not sent to you, that you may
be sent to her.

AVOID MATCHMAKERS.

At this point let me warn you not to let a question of this importance
be settled by the celebrated matchmakers flourishing in almost every
community. Depend upon your own judgment divinely illumined. These
brokers in matrimony are ever planning how they can unite impecunious
innocence to an heiress, or celibate woman to millionaire or marquis,
and that in many cases makes life an unhappiness. How can any human
being, who knows neither of the two parties as God knows them, and who
is ignorant of the future, give such direction as you require at such
a crisis?

Take the advice of the earthly matchmaker instead of the divine
guidance, and you may some day be led to use the words of Solomon,
whose experience in home life was as melancholy as it was
multitudinous. One day his palace with its great wide rooms and great
wide doors and great wide hall was too small for him and the loud
tongue of a woman belaboring him about some of his neglects, and he
retreated to the housetop to get relief from the lingual bombardment.
And while there he saw a poor man on one corner of the roof with a
mattress for his only furniture, and the open sky his only covering.
And Solomon envies him and cries out: "It is better to dwell in the
corner of the