Year: 1866

III young ianleb Wouiu ohiy spciSuaue
tn emselves that, In solemn truth, engage
ments to be married are only second in
solemnity and Importance to marriage
itself, then they would be more careful in
forming them, and there would be far less
broken enescements. No young lady,
without grief and modification to herself,
would be engaged more than once; and q
man. when engaged, might think that he
had some slight chance of being married.
Another grave question is that IN rela-
tion to early marriages. Young people
nova DAYS expect too much. They look
at their luxurious homes, see that they
live in luxury, that they toll not, neither
do thcv spin, nor do anything usrFu. and
they come to the conclusion that when
they marry they must find all these
things ready to their hands. They forget
that their fathers and mothers, when they
married were in comparatively straitened
circumstances, and that by years of labor
and toll alone their fathers achieved the
position which enabled them to spoil and
indulge their children. They think no.
thing of all of this; forget that every one
cannot be rich; want to begin the world
where their parents left of, and either
wait ten years for the coming rich lover,
or else engage themselves to poor one,
and do not marry at all.


No two persons can love each other as
intensely and unselfshly as those who
have had difficulties to contend with in
their earlier years of welded life. The
wife will become true partner, a true
helpmeet, ever ready with her sympathy
and comfort, ever cheering her husband
when his mind is overcome with business
cares, and both at last enjoying success
ten thousand times more because it has
been won by his labor and her constancy
and devotion.


For the young man an early marriage is
of the greatest consequence. 1t Will draw
him away from idle companions and wean
him from the bar.room and billiard saloon.
1t will teach him that he has an object in
life, some one to strive for, some one to pro-
tect, some one to share his distinctions, and
glory in his fortunes. Few Of our young
men or young women are fitted for mar
red life. Most of them are better adapted
to parlors and drawing rooms; and if they
could only be placed under glass shades
and wound up so that they would speak so
many words to the minute for given
number of hours per diem, the apparent
business Of their lives would be happily
accomplished. False education and the
fault Of over-kindness and indulgence are
the cause of all this; and if we expect to
retain our position as honorable Virginia
men and women, we must change our
selves and so change the children upon
whom our future depends.


Let our young men and young women be
not afraid to marry as soon as they have
sufficient to support them in decency, and
hey will find this far better than waiting
for dead mems shoes, or trusting to care
less young man making for himself alone
name and handsome competency.


Let our young ladies look upon an en-
gagement not as an engagement for a qua
drills or waltz, but as the commencement
of marriage, only to be broken for the
gravest reasons, and never to be lightly
made; let them not he daunted by the
thought that in the first years of their mar
ried life they must wear muslin instead OF
silk, have one new bonnet season instead
of half-a.dozen, and wear coral rather than
gold aud then in tho South there will be
less scandal and less gossip, less heart
burnings and less sorrow, more marriages
and more true affection, more unobtrusivc
virtue and more lasting, enduring happi-
ness.