This letter certainly indicates that the writer has a good amount of common sense. The trouble is she has become over-impressed with the possibilities of pain, and never has been told the wonderful truths that would overcome this fear. If love is the greatest thing in the world, fear and its companion, worry, certainly are the greatest curses of humanity. And the most pitiful part is that this fear and worry usually result from ignorance which a little instruction at the right time could dispel so easily. It is the unknown things that we fear. When any trouble actually comes we find strength enough to meet it, and, anyway, it usually is not half as bad in the reality as in the prospect. Young girls hear so much about the pains of childbirth that this fear overshadows the natural longings for motherhood. It is not until motherhood is an actual fact that they realize the happiness is worth all the cost. But this fear is not what actually makes many childless homes. They often are unpremeditated. A large percentage of the sterility in the world is due to the results of indiscretions that are the outcome of ignorance. One great factor in childless homes is the prevalence of the black plagues. It is estimated that forty-five per cent. of sterile marriages are due to that seemingly mild disease which is regarded as no worse than a cold and which has been contracted either by the man or the woman. This disease does not disqualify the woman alone, as was formerly thought, for recent investigations have proven that twenty-five per cent. of the sterile marriages are due to sterility of the male. Oh, the innumerable women who have submitted to unpleasant treatments and even operations in the hope of overcoming sterility when all the time the fault was elsewhere! The microscope has proven that even though a man may seemingly be healthy and capable of sustaining the marriage relation, yet his efforts are valueless; for the spermatozoa, the life-giving element, are dead, due usually to an inflammation which accompanied an attack of this seemingly mild disease,--gonorrhoea. This disease is responsible for many of the one child marriages. How often we see a family with only one child, this child born during the first year of married life, then there are no more pregnancies. The woman probably has contracted a disease from her husband and, during the period immediately following the birth of her baby when the entire generative system is in a condition to easily become inflamed, the tubes have become closed. Another pregnancy is very unlikely.