would advise no man to marry who is not likely to propagate understanding." This was a wise answer, for people should not marry if they are likely to have children who will be diseased in soul, mind or body. It is said that money is a root of evil, but it is not a bad thing to have a little bit of this root with us when we go shopping, and some of it is also required when we go marrying, unless we are to think that mortality is one of the effects of matrimony as a certain servant girl seems to have thought. The mistress with whom she last lived meeting her one day asked, "Well, Mary, where are you living now?" "Please, m'am, I'm not living anywhere now I'm married." Some of us who are married find that we have survived the operation and also that we require a certain amount of money to live upon, and therefore we can sympathise with the sensible girl who, having tried a rigorous love-in-a-cottage dietary gave it as her experience that a kiss and a cup of cold water make a poor breakfast.

At the same time it is quite possible to exaggerate the amount of money necessary for marriage. Show me a couple who are miserable on account of straitened circumstances, and I will show you a dozen couples who are unhappy on account of other circumstances. I suppose we all know old bachelors who have plenty of money for marriage but they have not enough courage, and they make, "I can't afford it" a mere excuse. This was the case with Pitt. When he was Prime Minister of England and had from all sources an income of about £30,000 a year he used to say that he could not afford to marry, and then some one calculated that in his household about sixty pounds of meat was allowed for each man and woman. For the more economical arrangement of his domestic affairs, if for no other reason, he ought to have married. I sometimes say to young officers who are inclined to be extravagant, "I wonder how you can afford not to be married, I could not." Certainly if a young man will smoke the best cigars and will give expensive drinks to every one who claps him upon the back and calls him "Old Man" he cannot afford to marry—why? Because he will not deny himself small and not very elevating luxuries for the sake of obtaining the great luxury of a good wife. Then if a man has a small income he must choose for a wife a girl with a slender waste, not one, that is to say, who has made her waist small by health-destroying corsets, but one who can manage her husband's income with the least amount of waste.

"Why don't the men propose?" is a question which is often asked. One reason why some of them do not do so is because they are afraid of the possible extravagance of wives. I gather this from a question which was lately overheard in a ball-room. A lady of a not very retiring disposition asked a middle-aged gentleman with whom she was dancing, "Why don't you marry, can't you afford to support a wife?" "My innocent young thing," was the reply, "I can afford to keep ten wives, but I can't afford to pay the milliner's bills of one." This matter is more in the hands of the ladies than they seem to think, and things would be greatly helped if mothers, instead of seeking only to marry their daughters to rich men, would educate these young ladies in such a way that men who are not wealthy could afford the luxury of marrying them. I know a mother who got a large family of daughters off her hands by telling prudent young men in confidence that the puddings they tasted at her house were all concocted by her daughters, and that the dear girls made their own dresses and hats.

At what age should men marry? I have heard of them doing so as young as twenty, but it is useless to argue with people like this who may be said not to have come to years of discretion. A man who lived to a very advanced age accounted for his doing so by saying that he had never stood when he might have sat, that he married late, and was soon left a widower.

When two very young people marry, it is as if one sweet pea should be put as a prop to another. Of course much depends upon the young man. Some men are better fitted to take upon themselves the duties of marriage at twenty-five than are others at thirty-five. Between these two ages is the usual time, and if men put off much after the last-mentioned age they are likely to get into the habit of celibacy which, like all other bad habits, is difficult to break away from. In this habit they will continue till they are about sixty years of age, when a terrible desire to know for themselves what matrimony is like will seize them and they will propose right and left to every eligible lady, until at last they are picked up, not for themselves but for their money or their position, or because some one is tired of being a Miss and wants the novel sensation of putting "Mrs." before her name. It is not natural for a young woman to wish to marry an old man. "When it is time for you to marry," said a father to his daughter, "I shall not allow you to throw yourself away upon one of the frivolous young fellows I see about. I shall select for you a staid, sensible, middle-aged person; what do you say of one about fifty years of age?" "Well, father," was the reply, "if it is just the same to you, I would prefer two of twenty-five."

As to the age women should marry—I don't like to burn my fingers with that question. All I shall say is that if there are some of them—as it is said there are—not worth looking at after thirty years of age, there are quite as many not worth speaking to before that. Please yourself then, young man, only do not choose one who is either a child or an old woman.