Courtship and Marriage, and the Gentle Art of Home-Making

ikely to beset our young couple, on

o doubt that we need to go back in some degree to the simpler way of life in vogue in the days of our grandmothers; that pretentiousness and extravagance have reached a point which is almost unendurable. We are constantly being inform

e and enduring, that they shrink from the added responsibility, care, and self-denial involved in the double life? My own view is that this pretentiousness and desire for display is at the

at there are many girls who would shrink from the ordeal, and who prefer the indolent ease of single blessedness to the cares of matrimony on limited means, yet have I been tempted sometimes, looking at these young men, t

ispensable; and he asks himself, Is the game worth the candle? His answer is, No. And so he drifts out of young manhood into bachelor middle age, passing unscathed through many flirtations, becoming encr

e. Then the invasions of women into almost every domain of man's work is somewhat serious in its consequences to men. A woman can be got to do a certain thing as quickly, correctly, and efficiently as a man; therefore the man goes to the wall. While we are gla

ngth of mind to perform, is a very independent being, and in contrast with many of her married sisters a person to be envied. She has her hours, for one thing; there is no prospect of an eight hours' day for the married woman with a family to superintend. Then she, having earned her own money, can spend it

ddle-class, which is the backbone of society. There is no fear of a serious reduction in other quarters: where there is no responsibility felt, there is none to shirk; and so, among the very poor, children are multiplied, and obligations increased, without any thought for the morrow, or concern for future provision. There is a very supreme kind of selfis

nd surely love is yet strong enough to take its chance of falling on evil days, and when they come of making the best of them. Our girls must exhibit less frivolity, less devotion to

ke the greatest show on inadequate means, to outshine our neighbours in house and dress and everything else, is really a

ocritical, because it is pure pretence to a station which has no means to support it; and immoral, because you cannot afford to pay for it, and thereby suffering is entailed somewhere and somehow. How many of us numbe

arity. And they look back with a painful longing, never expressed, however, to the days when they lived at peace in a little house, and had enough and to spare for man and beast, and a penny for the beggar at the gate. The big house is but one thing; the struggle to keep up appearances is observed in many other ways-in expensive and not always efficient education o

e of mind, without which the out

end to be what we are not. In a word, let us no