nor
to believe they are from what personal friends have said.

They are not to rely upon common report, nor the opinion of friends, nor
a fashionable acquaintance, but upon a personal knowledge of the
individual's life and character. How can another know what you want in a
companion? You alone know your own heart. If you do not know it you are
not fit to be married. No one else can tell what fills you with pleasing
and grateful emotions. You only know when the spring of true affection
is touched by the hand of a congenial spirit. It is for you to _know_
who asks your hand, who has your heart, who links his life with yours.
If you _know_ the man who can make true answer to your soul's true love,
whose soul is all kindred with yours, whose life answers to your ideal
of manly demeanor, you know who would make you a good husband. But if
you only fancy that he is right, or guess, or believe, or hope, from a
little social interchange of words and looks, you have but a poor
foundation on which to build hopes of future happiness. A young man and
a dear friend once said to me, "I am going to take her for better or for
worse." The remark ran over me like a chill breath of winter. I
shuddered at the thought. "For better or for worse." All in doubt. Going
to marry, yet not _sure_ he was right. The lady he spoke of was a noble
young woman, intellectual, cultivated, pious, accustomed to his sphere
of life. They were going to marry in uncertainty. Both were of fine
families; both excellent young people. To the world it looked like a
desirable match. To them it was going to be "for better or for worse."
They married. The woman stayed in his home one year and left it,
declaring he was a good man and a faultless husband, but not after her
heart. She stayed away one year and came back; lived with him one year
more and died. Sad tale. It proved for the worse, and all because they
did not _know_ each other; if they had they would not have married. I
once heard of a woman who married a man to get rid of him. It is a
dangerous riddance. Equally dangerous is it to marry a man to find him
out. "_Know_ whom thou _marriest_," is the voice of wisdom. Yes, the
question of Marriage is one of solemn import. It is a life-question. It
is a final settlement of a great demand of our nature. It is the
decision of the heart's earthly weal or woe. It is our social life or
death. It is planting the seeds for the moral harvest of life. It is the
adjustment of