1. NO YOUNG LADY who is not willing to assume the responsibility of a
true wife, and be crowned with the sacred diadem of motherhood, should
ever think of getting married. We have too many young ladies to-day
who despise maternity, who openly vow that they will never be burdened
with children, and yet enter matrimony at the first opportunity. What
is the result? Let echo answer, What? Unless a young lady believes
that motherhood is noble, is honorable, is divine, and she is willing
to carry out that sacred function of her nature, she had a thousand
times better refuse every proposal, and enter some honorable
occupation and wisely die an old maid by choice.
2. ON THE OTHER HAND, YOUNG LADY, never enter into the physical
relations of marriage with a man until you have conversed with him
freely and fully on these relations. Learn distinctly his views and
feelings and expectations in regard to that purest and most ennobling
of all the functions of your nature, and the most sacred of all
intimacies of conjugal love. Your self-respect, your beauty, your
glory, your heaven, as a wife, will be more directly involved in his
feelings and views and practices, in regard to that relation, than in
all other things. As you would not become a weak, miserable, imbecile,
unlovable and degraded wife and mother, in the very prime of your
life, come to a perfect understanding with your chosen one, ere you
commit your person to his keeping in the sacred intimacies of home.
Beware of that man who, under pretence of delicacy, modesty, and
propriety, shuns conversation with you on this relation, and on the
hallowed function of maternity.
3. TALK WITH YOUR INTENDED frankly and openly. Remember, concealment
and mystery in him, towards you, on all other subjects pertaining to
conjugal union might be overlooked, but if he conceals his views here,
rest assured it bodes no good to your purity and happiness as a wife
and mother. You can have no more certain assurance that you are to be
victimized, your soul and body offered up, _slain_ on the altar of his
sensualism, than his unwillingness to converse with you on subjects so
vital to your happiness. Unless he is willing to hold his manhood
in abeyance to the calls of your nature and to your conditions, and
consecrate its passions and its powers to the elevation and happiness
of his wife and children, your maiden soul had better return to God
unadorned with the diadem of conjugal and maternal love than that you
should become the wife of such man and the mother of his children.
[Illustration: ROMAN LOVE MAKING.]
[Illustration: UNIFORMED MEN ARE ALWAYS POPULAR.]
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