on, with blue eyes and fair hair. In a jesting way, St. Pierre,
who had never seen her before, and knew nothing of her personal life,
said,--

'Mademoiselle, you have many admirers. Shall I describe him on whom you
look with most favor?'

The lady challenged him to do so.

'He is short in stature, of dark complexion, dark hair and eyes, slight
in figure, active and nervous in all his movements.'

The lady blushed to her eyes, and cast a glance of anger at her brother,
who, she thought, had betrayed her secret. But no! St. Pierre's only
informant was his deep knowledge of the human heart.

This instinct is founded upon the truth that the perfect temperament is
that happily balanced one which holds all the organs in equilibrium,--in
which no one rules, where all are developed in proportion. Nature ever
strives to realize this ideal. She instills in the nervous temperament a
preference for the lymphatic; in the sanguine, a liking for the bilious
constitution. The offspring should combine the excellencies of both, the
defects of neither. We do well to heed her admonitions here, and to bear
in mind that those matches which combine opposite temperaments, are, as
a rule, the most fortunate.

THE MORAL AND MENTAL CHARACTER.

Very few words are necessary here. We have already said we speak as
physicians, not as moralists. But there are some false and dangerous
ideas abroad, which it is our duty as physicians to combat.

None is more false, none more dangerous, than that embodied in the
proverb, 'A reformed rake makes the best husband.' What is a rake? A man
who has deceived and destroyed trusting virtue,--a man who has entered
the service of the devil to undermine and poison that happiness in
marriage, which all religion and science are at such pains to cultivate.
We know him well in our capacity as physicians. He comes to us
constantly the prey to loathsome diseases, the results of his vicious
life; which diseases he will communicate to his wife, for they are
contagious, and to his children, for they are hereditary; and which no
reform can purge from his system, for they are ineradicable.

Is this the man a pure woman should take to her arms? Here repentance
avails nothing. We have witnessed the agony unspeakable which
overwhelmed a father when he saw his children suffering under horrible
and disgusting diseases, the penalty of his early sins.

Very few men of profligate lives escape these diseases. They are
alarm