ch the groom puts upon the third finger of the left
hand. One on earth, may they be one in heaven!

But there are so many exceptions to the general rule of natural
affinity that only those are safe who pray for a heavenly hand to lead
them. Because they depended on themselves and not on God there are
thousands of women every year going to the slaughter. In India women
leap on the funeral pyre of a dead husband. We have a worse spectacle
than that in America--women innumerable leaping on the funeral pyre of
a living husband.

THE ADVERTISING BRUTE.

Avoid all proposed alliances through newspaper advertisements. Many
women, just for fun, have answered such advertisements, and have been
led on from step to step to catastrophe infinite. All the men who
write such advertisements are villains and lepers--all, without a
single exception. All! All! Do you answer them just for fun? I will
tell you a safer and healthier fun. Thrust your hand through the cage
at a menagerie, and stroke the back of a cobra from the East Indies.
Put your head in the mouth of a Numidian lion, to see if he will bite.
Take a glassful of Paris green mixed with some delightful henbane.
These are safer and healthier fun than answering newspaper
advertisements for a wife.

MARRY INDEPENDENT MEN.

My advice is: Marry a man who is a fortune in himself. Houses, lands,
and large inheritance are well enough, but the wheel of fortune turns
so rapidly that through some investment all these in a few years may
be gone. There are some things, however, that are a perpetual
fortune--good manners, geniality of soul, kindness, intelligence,
sympathy, courage, perseverance, industry, and whole-heartedness.
Marry such a one and you have married a fortune, whether he have an
income now of $50,000 a year or an income of $1000. A bank is secure
according to its capital stock, and not to be judged by the deposits
for a day or a week. A man is rich according to his sterling
qualities, and not according to the mutability of circumstances, which
may leave with him a large amount of resources to-day and withdraw
them to-morrow. If a man is worth nothing but money he is poor indeed.
If a man have upright character he is rich. Property may come and go,
he is independent of the markets. Nothing can buy him out, nothing can
sell him out. He may have more money one year than another, but his
better fortunes never vacillate.

AVOID PERFECT MEN.

Yet do not expect to fin