out one in every four.]

Broadly speaking, no woman should wed until she understands something of
life, has met a good many men, has acquired a certain knowledge of
physiology and eugenics and a clear understanding of what marriage
really means. No woman should marry until she has learnt the value of
money, and how to manage a household--until she has had plenty of
girlish fun and gaiety, and is thus ready for the more serious things of
life. Not until then is she likely to be happy in the monotony of
wedlock or capable of attuning her mind to the necessity of being
faithful to one man only, in thought as well as in deed. Broadly
speaking, also, no man is likely to marry happily until he has seen life
and plenty of it, has hammered out for himself something of a philosophy
and obtained considerable knowledge of women and a consequent
understanding of how to make one happy.

This is not so easily done as men suppose, and it takes time to learn.
Few men under thirty are fit to have the care of a wife, and Heaven
preserve a girl from a young husband who is still a cub! No doubt she
will have glorious moments, for there is something intoxicating about
the ardour of a very young heart, and that is why we find boy and girl
marriages so charming--in theory. Sometimes in the case of an
exceptional couple, well suited to each other, they really are charming,
and then it is the most beautiful marriage conceivable--two young
things, starting off hand in hand on life's journey, brave-hearted,
loving, full of high hopes. But as a rule the glory is limited to
moments only; young girls are mostly shallow and frivolous; very young
men are often madly selfish and reckless. They are so proud of being the
sole possessor of an attractive woman that their conceit, always
immense, swells into monstrous proportions and they grow wholly
unbearable. If dark days should come to the young couple, the
boy-husband has no philosophy to support him, no knowledge of women to
enable him to understand his wife and live happily with her, and little
self-control for his help; she has the same defects of youth, and the
result is failure. Stevenson puts it perfectly thus: 'You may safely go
to school with hope, but before you marry you should have learned the
mingled lesson of the world.' On the other hand, Grant Allen says that
'the best of men are, so to speak, born married,' and that it is only
the selfish, mean, and calculating man who waits till he ca