e
was still being educated in school or as an apprentice, and was hardly
ready to undertake the responsibility of a family at an age when the
girl's scanty education was long since completed and it was considered
high time that her support was laid upon a husband's shoulders.

It used to be said, "Men keep their youth better than women," so that
any disparity in age at the time of marriage was soon lost. This is no
longer true as it was once. The early marriage, with early and
excessive childbearing, overwork, and the numerous restrictions that
custom laid upon her, were responsible for woman's loss of youth.
These conditions no longer exist. The woman of forty or fifty can now
usually hold her own with the man of her own age in point of youth.

[Illustration: LOUISE HOMER AND HER FAMILY
Madame Homer's great success in the difficult art of operatic singing
has by no means interfered with her career as a homemaker.]

Another consideration in favor of more nearly equal age lies in the
fact that formerly men did not look for wives who were their mental
equals. They did not really desire mental equals as wives. To-day they
do, or, if there still lingers in the minds of some of them the old
notion that wives must be clinging vines, the lingering notion will
soon be gone. The marriage of equality possesses too many advantages
for both parties to be thrown aside. The wife who can think, who is
mature enough to be capable of real partnership, is the wife surely of
to-morrow, if not of to-day.

Among the forces that control marriage may be mentioned (1) physical
attraction, (2) continued social relationships, (3) dissimilarity, (4)
affection, (5) barter.

It is usually difficult to say of any marriage that any one of these
forces alone caused the mating. It may have been physical attraction
together with everyday companionship; or physical attraction and
dissimilarity or strangeness, resulting in what we know as love at
first sight. Or it may have been affection of slow growth, or
affection with an element of appreciation of worldly advantage, or it
may have been a little physical attraction with a great deal of desire
for social position or wealth, or, ugliest of all, it may have been
pure barter, without personal attraction of any sort. For these worldy
advantages you offer, I will sell you my body and my soul.

To secure the finest marriages for girls we must insure three
conditions: (1) high ideals of marriage among o