Here is the solution of the whole question. While the human race is interested in everything pertaining to literature, the arts, manufacture, commerce, religion, and science, the welfare of the race itself has been sadly overlooked. And the admission of my old farmer friend can well be made by all of you. And what I said to him in concluding our conversation, I now say to you. You have spent many hours in instructing your children in all that was desirable in literature, art, science, commerce, and religion. You have surrounded them with educational advantages; but you have neglected to instruct them on this vital topic of matrimony. You have treated it lightly or with indifference. You have left them in ignorance of the great social and physiological facts which surround it; and then you wonder when they marry upon blind impulse, and you call it lottery. Of course, they can't display judgment when they have no facts to exercise judgment upon. And you feel offended when your child marries contrary to your advice, when you have been exposing your ignorance to that child ever since it was able to comprehend anything. You set yourself up as an authority on this question, when your youngest baby is fully alive to the fact that you are a total ignoramus in regard to it. For my part, I admire the spirit of the young man or woman who, realizing the discouraging failure of the old folks, starts out on a new line in obedience to one of nature's impulses, independent alike of paternal wrath or criticism. If such a one will consult the dictates of science in shaping and directing the impulse, the marriage will be much more likely to be happy, than those formed in deference to parental wishes, which, in a majority of cases, we regret to say, are dictated by merely prudential if not sordid reasons. Before we discuss the main issue of our subject to-night, it may be interesting and instructive to ask: Why do people marry, anyhow? Did you ever think about that? There are a number of reasons, and we will discuss some of them. A great many people marry because it is fashionable. They never stop to reason about it; they simply observe that nearly everybody else marries, and consequently they jump to the conclusion that it is the proper thing to do. Like most devotees of fashion in other things, they find it a very unprofitable investment. A great many men marry, because they want a servant. That's unprofitable also. Young man, you can hire your washing and ironing done by a Chinaman, and live in a first-class boarding house with much less expense. It don't pay. Some women marry because they want a home, and they find--a penitentiary. I visited a state prison a few days ago, and I found inside the walls a lot of convicts that were having a much better time than some married people of my acquaintance.