principles, from known laws. It cannot grow of itself. There is nothing about it to make it inevitably a success. It is a work of time and care and art, as much as a picture or a statue is. It is to begin, and grow slowly into shape and finish. It is to have the earnest and hearty coöperation of each and every member, of each in all variety and complication of membership. And this from the very outset. A young man and woman have been attracted to each other by those secret affinities which it often baffles the keenest perception to detect. The why and the wherefore of their affection they could not themselves say. They have, probably, some undefined and undefinable idea that they were created for each other. After a few months of the falsest, most unsatisfactory acquaintance and intercourse, during which each so far as the other is concerned has been acting in masque, the law binds them in one and solemnly forbids any man to sever what God has joined. This ill-prepared couple, henceforth, are to live together, their separate wills, purposes, hopes, actions, thus far free, thus far utterly unlike by nature and by education, are expected now blend as to make a complete, a beautiful, a perpetual harmony. The fact of marriage is to do this. Every thing has the rose-color of their own imaginations. As all has been between them, so always it will be, and you run some risk of losing their regard, or your own credit for sanity by hazarding a doubt of the con

so to

tinuance of such a condition. But what is the uni- · versal testimony of experience? Let the tears of wives and the moods of husbands answer. A short

time has served to wear off the lover. That is inevitable. There is a necessity for the assumption of their proper character as man and woman, as human beings. Is it possible there should be no jarring, no clashing? Has wedded love no revealings to try husband and wife, things either cunningly concealed from, or impossible to be revealed to unwedded love? Is there nothing in lives running their separate course through all these years, to stand in the way of an immediate and perfect blending? Can hearts that are wedded be at once welded, made actually into that one which the law assumes they are? The experience of the happiest and the best is against it. There is a grand season of trial, before all newly-married pairs, of which they are not enough forewarned, which takes them unawares, casts a deep shade over early married life, and sometimes makes an utter wreck of hope and love.

It ought to be understood, that between the somewhat unnatural life of lovers and the true married life, there stretches a broad intermediate ground, which all must enter and traverse on their way to that felicity which is not the dream of youth alone, but a possible attainment. Circumstances may postpone the time of entrance upon this middle ground; they may accel

erate or retard our passage through it, but never did man and woman come together with any purpose at all of making a united and happy life, without finding that it lay before them, most to their amazement, many to their despair. I trace much of the mistake and misery of married life to the ignorance of this great fact that there is inevitably a season during which the process of assimilation between two dissimilar spirits is going on, during which they are learning to respect each others' views, to make allowance for each others' weaknesses, to mutually accommodate and adjust mutual wishes and rights - which must be a the season of more or less unhappiness and trial east wind and the cloud, out of which are to be born all the beauty and promise of a true life. Once pass safely through it, and all is well. It is the "narrow " of their intercourse through which they must go before they can stand firm on the "broad" solidity and confidence of love. It argues nothing against the reality of the love between two hearts, nothing against their adaptation to each other, or the future progress and harmony of their lives. Only let them know beforehand, that this is to be; only let meddling and injudicious friends stand aside as the process goes on; only let those concerned most nearly in it, work the great result out by themselves, and if they are in earnest, by God's help, they shall issue out of the shade into the light that shall grow brighter and

brighter with every new year, and every fresh experience. The grand, enduring harmony shall come out of all this seeming discord. You cannot bring any two foreign substances into contact not those which have the closest chemical affinity—but it takes some moment of time, to adjust themselves to each other, to throw off that which is foreign to union, and draw out the latent properties of relationship. They have to learn "the art of living together," these things which henceforth are to exist in an inseparable unity. So must these hearts which may yet exist as twin spirits through the long ages and experiences of eternity.

The fact about that condition prior to marriage, called an engagement, is, that it is the very worst preparation for marriage that can be conceived. The first work for married people to do, is to get acquainted. They come together really as strangers, in some respects greater strangers than in the first days of their intercourse, and they must not be surprised, nor should they be alarmed, if even the honeymoon be shaded by clouds. I remember to have heard of a bride who desired a friend to go with her on her bridal journey, as" she really was not acquainted with her husband." No bride is. No bridegroom knows his wife. That is a thing to come. The process may be long and trying. It might be prevented largely if the previous intercourse of the parties were upon a more

rational footing. That we seem to decide cannot be. Custom, convention are against it. Only when they meet beneath the same roof do the man and woman begin to know each other. Amid all other new relations and duties they find rising and imperative this, and many an one will confess to you that the most unhappy year of their lives was the first year after marriage, the time of the process of getting acquainted, — that they then thought it was all failure and mistake, but that gradually out of it grew broad and substantial happiness, the result of acquaintance, mutual accommodation, and respect. Let it be set down as the first fact for those who go to make a home, that their first necessity will be to get acquainted.

I well remember the shock that I, as a young and inexperienced enthusiast, received from one whom I then considered cold and hard of heart, whose words of real wisdom- had I but then understood themwould have saved me many a mistake, many a useless regret. Anticipating only joy, seeing nothing of the perils before me, a friend said "only upon conditions is married life a life of happiness." I did not understand it then, perhaps I could not have understood it then, but I understand it now, and few things have taken a firmer hold upon my memory as my act, than those words only upon conditions. That I think is the great secret of the happiness of home. And I

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