order into the land where troubles
just begin. She won't know how to sew, or bake, or make good coffee,
for such arts are liable to be overlooked when a girl makes a career
for herself, and so love will gallop away over the hills like a
riderless steed, and happiness will flare like a light in a windy
night. Oh, no, my little country maid, stay where you are, if you have
a home and friends. Be content with fishing for trout in the brook
rather than cruising a stormy sea for whales. A great city is a cruel
place for young lives. It takes them as the cider press takes juicy
apples, sun-kissed and flavored with the breath of the hills, and
crushes them into pulp. There is a spoonful of juice for each apple,
but cider is cheap!

III.

A COWARDLY MATE.

I know a wife who is waiting, safe and sound in her father's home, for
her young husband to earn the money single handed to make a home worthy
of her acceptance. She makes me think of the first mate of a ship who
should stay on shore until the captain tested the ability of his vessel
to weather the storm. Back to your ship, you cowardly one! If the
boat goes down, go down with it, but do not count yourself worthy of
any fair weather you did not help to gain! A woman who will do all she
can to win a man's love merely for the profit his purse is going to be
to her, and will desert him when the cash runs low, is a bad woman and
carries a bad heart in her bosom. Why, you are never really wedded
until you have had dark days together. What earthly purpose would a
cable serve that never was tested by a weight? Of what use is the tie
that binds wedded hearts together if like a filament of floss it parts
when the strain is brought to bear upon it? It is not when you are
young, my dear, when the skies are blue and every wayside weed flaunts
a summer blossom, that the story of your life is recorded. It is when
"Darby and Joan" are faded and wasted and old, when poverty has nipped
the roses, when trouble and want and care have flown like uncanny birds
over their heads (but never yet nested in their hearts, thank God),
that the completed chronicle of their lives furnishes the record over
which heaven smiles or weeps.

IV.

THEY CARRY NO BANNER.

There never yet was a grand procession that was not accompanied, or,
rather, in great measure made up of, followers and onlookers. So in
this life parade of ours, with its ever varying pageant and brilliant
dis