s often from the homes of the rich, where there is a
want of loving and cheerful hearts. This little home might have been
snug enough; with no appearance of want about it; rooms well furnished;
cleanliness pervading it; the table well supplied; the fire burning
bright; and yet without cheerfulness. There wanted the happy faces,
radiant with contentment and good humour. Physical comfort, after all,
forms but a small part of the blessings of a happy home. As in all other
concerns of life, it is the moral state which determines the weal or woe
of the human condition.

Most young men think very little of what has to follow courtship and
marriage. They think little of the seriousness of the step. They forget
that when the pledge has once been given, there is no turning back, The
knot cannot be untied. If a thoughtless mistake has been made, the
inevitable results will nevertheless follow. The maxim is current, that
"marriage is a lottery." It may be so if we abjure the teachings of
prudence--if we refuse to examine, inquire, and think--if we are content
to choose a husband or a wife, with less reflection than we bestow upon
the hiring of a servant, whom we can discharge any day--if we merely
regard attractions of face, of form, or of purse, and give way to
temporary impulse or to greedy avarice--then, in such cases, marriage
does resemble a lottery, in which you _may_ draw a prize, though there
are a hundred chances to one that you will only draw a blank.

But we deny that marriage has any necessary resemblance to a lottery.
When girls are taught wisely how to love, and what qualities to esteem
in a companion for life, instead of being left to gather their stock of
information on the subject from the fictitious and generally false
personations given to them in novels; and when young men accustom
themselves to think of the virtues, graces, and solid acquirements
requisite in a wife, with whom they are to spend their days, and on
whose temper and good sense the whole happiness of their home is to
depend, then it will be found that there is very little of the "lottery
" in marriage; and that, like any concern of business or of life, the
man or woman who judges and acts wisely, with proper foresight and
discrimination, will reap the almost certain consequences in a happy and
prosperous future. True, mistakes may be made, and will be made, as in
all things human; but nothing like the grievous mistake of those who
stake their hap