to go into a parlor of one of your finest homes at midnight with
all the lights out, I would see nothing, but let me strike a match and
beautifully decorated walls, fine paintings, and furniture will meet
and greet my vision.

You cannot be very long in the company of anyone until a match will be
struck. Of one you will say, "that's good; I'm glad to find such a
trait in that person," but directly another match will flare up and
you will find another trait as disappointing as the other was
commendable, and you are at a loss to know what "manner of man" you
are with.

It's a wonder to me when so many characters are so difficult to solve
that many young people rush headlong into matrimony without striking a
match, except the match they strike at the marriage altar. A girl sees
a young man today; he's handsome, talks well, and she falls in love
with him, dreams about him tonight, sighs about him tomorrow and
thinks she'll surely die if he doesn't ask her to marry him. Yet she
knows nothing about his parentage or his character. No wonder we have
so many unhappy marriages, so many homes like the one where a stranger
knocked at the front door and receiving no response went around to the
rear where he found a very small husband and a very large wife in a
fight, with the wife getting the better of the battle.

The stranger said: "Hello! who runs this house?"

"That's what we are trying to settle now," shouted the little husband.

My young friends, I will admit love is a kind of spontaneous,
impulsive, natural affinity, something after the order of molecular
attraction or chemical affinity, but while by the natural law of love,
a young woman may see in the object of her affection her ideal of
perfection in humanity, she owes volitional conformity to a higher law
than natural affinity. She owes to herself, to posterity and to her
country a careful study of the character of the young man to whom she
should link her life and love.

I believe two dark clouds hanging upon the horizon of this republic to
be the recklessness with which life is linked with life at the
marriage altar, and the recklessness with which we elect men to
offices of public trust. While we have many public men, schooled in
the science of government, whom the spoils of office cannot corrupt,
we have an army of demagogues who rely upon saloon politics for
promotion, and on all moral questions reason with their stomachs
instead of their brains. This is espe