ur adolescents, (2)
better knowledge of men, and (3) wise companionships during the years
from fourteen to twenty-five.

[Illustration: MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON
The South is justly proud of this poet of no mean rank who gave
herself unstintedly to her home duties and responsibilities]

Physical attraction on one or both sides is undoubtedly the greatest
force in marriage selection. It is only when physical attraction
exerts its influence upon a girl whose ideal of a husband is low or
vague or incorrect that the danger is great. Physical attraction is
not love, but it may be--often it is--the basis of love when it exists
between two who are suited to a life together.

Generally speaking, girls will find married life easier, and their
husbands will find life more satisfactory, when the two have been
reared with approximately the same ideals. The girl who falls in love
with a man largely because he is "different" from the boys among whom
she has grown up often finds that very difference a stumbling block to
domestic happiness. Marriages across such chasms where there should be
common ground are more hazardous than between those whose education,
social training, friends, and beliefs are of the same type. When they
do succeed, they undoubtedly are the richer for the variety of
experience husband and wife have to give each other; and, too, they
show an adaptability on the part of one or both which argues well for
continued happiness. Commonly, however, they do not succeed.

There are, also, deeper matters than these to be considered. Is this
man or this woman worthy of lifelong devotion? Is the love he offers
or she offers in return for the love you offer, the love that gives or
the love that merely takes? Has he been a success at something,
anything, that counts? Has he a sense of responsibility in marriage
and the burdens it brings? Does he desire a home? Do his views as to
children reflect man's natural desire to found a family or merely the
selfish desire for the freedom and luxury which the absence of
children may make possible? Has he a right to approach fatherhood--is
his body physically and morally clean?

[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood
COLONEL AND MRS. ROOSEVELT WITH MEMBERS OF THEIR FAMILY
Colonel Roosevelt's own family was preeminently one in which the
father shared with the mother a keen sense of the responsibilities of
marriage and the highest ideals of home life]

These are serious ques