een as all that; if he marries at all, it
must be an heiress, or, at any rate, one well dowered. The last thing
your modern well-bred beauty does, is to unite her fate with that of a
man in the good old-fashioned way. She has learnt to set her heart upon
the accidents of life,--the fine house, the establishment; and if these
she cannot have, she will even die an old maid. The real is sacrificed
to the imaginary; the substance, to the shadow; the present, to the
morrow that never comes. A man says he will become rich; he will
sacrifice everything to that; and the chances are he becomes poor in
heart and purse. The maiden--

With the meek brown eyes,
In whose orb a shadow lies,
Like the dusk in evening skies--

loses all her divinity, and pines away, and becomes what I care not to
name; and the world--whose wisdom is folly--sanctions all this. It calls
it prudence, foresight. A man has no business to marry till he can keep
a wife, is the cuckoo cry; which would have some meaning if a wife was a
horse or a dog, and not an answer to a human need, and an essential to
success in life. The world forgets that man is not an automaton, but a
being fearfully and wonderfully framed. No machine, but a lyre
responsive to the breath of every passing passion: now fevered with
pleasure; now toiling for gold; anon seeking to build up a lofty fame;
and that the more eager and passionate and daring he is--the more eagle
is his eye, and the loftier his aim, the more he needs woman--the
comforter and the helpmeet--by his side. Our fathers did not ignore
this, and they succeeded. Because the wife preserved them from the
temptations of life; because she, with her words and looks of love,
assisted them to bear the burdens and fight the battles of life; because
she stood by her husband's side as his helpmeet; bone of his bone, flesh
of his flesh; soothing each sorrow; aiding each upward aim: it was thus
they became great; and it is because we do not thus, we pale before them.
It is not good for man to be alone. Man has tried to disobey the divine
law, and lived alone; and what has been the result?--even when tried by
men of superior sanctity, as in the case of the Romish Church, has the
world gained in happiness or morality? I trow not. Take the limited
experience of our own age, and fathers and mothers know, to their bitter
cost, I am right. The manhood, brave and generous, much of it wrecked in
our great cities, wi