_Don’t marry an idle spendthrift_; one whose money comes without effort at first, and goes as rapidly, will one day come to want as certainly as waters reach their level. Nature has fashioned us all for work,--work of mind or work of body, mental or physical labor,--and with it comes strength of muscle and of will. Listless life of idleness, without motive, without aim, is open to every form of temptation. It is not a crime to be rich, or to be poor. It is a crime to be listless in a busy world. He would be disgraced who, standing on a wharf, saw a drowning crew without offering relief. He would be a coward who would not defend a woman in distress; yet all around us are the needy, helpless, drowning, starving, whom it is our duty to rescue and lift up in life; and marriage is the place where society is born, and grows and ripens into use. _Don’t marry a stingy man_; of all narrow, mean men, he is worst who has money, and has no will to do good with it. A “dog-in-the-manger” man, who can improve his town, his church, his neighborhood, and does not, is a drone in life’s hive and deserves no success. One who is poor and has no means is excusable; one who locks and buries treasures deserves the Bible sentence of him who hid his talent in the earth--to be taken from him and placed with the active one’s talent. A narrow, selfish, stingy man will count your pennies spent, and postage used, and clothing worn, as wasted. One must live in constant dread of such a creature--we need not name him man; it would disgrace the term. A miser’s wife lives a loveless life. _Don’t marry too hastily._ Some rush into matrimony like a steam-engine going to put out a fire, as though one moment lost would be eternal defeat, and the first there gain the highest prize. Many a one has repented more leisurely and in sorrow for such conduct. But of all things, marry at a good opportunity. _Don’t be too slow about it._ Girls who give up the society of all but one, and turn their homes into special receptions for one person, will be worried to death in a year or two, if things move too moderately. Brace up and proceed to business, or release your claim and let some one else have an opportunity. Long engagements lead to lovers’ quarrels; they, in turn, fail to make up sometimes, and then follow scandal and gossip over broken ties; and later two go down to their early sleep disheartened, ruined by a trifling neglect and a reasonable inventory of prospects. You will see it all plainly when it is over. It will be a “might have been” then, sure enough, but too late.