of their so much coveted gold? How many women, for the consideration of a home of leisure and luxury, would rush into a marriage "of convenience" with a man for whom they knew they had no semblance of an affection, if they felt, with certainty, that nature does not discriminate, even for a marriage license and a religious ceremony, between prostitution within the bonds of wedlock, and without, and that the horrors of remorse and disappointment are just as frightful in one case as in the other? How many young men would go out into the world with a Satanic sneer upon their faces, a cigarette between their lips, and a glass of champagne in their hands, to sow their wild oats under the tutelage of their older degenerate friends, if they fully realized that, in this one act, they were forever incapacitating themselves for the highest pleasure of life, and that no matter what their lives might be thereafter, that nature would ruthlessly hold them to the strictest accountability for their actions, and that ignorance would be no plea for mercy before her bar? This inexorable impartiality of nature is at once the saddest and the sublimest matter of contemplation, depending entirely upon whether we are considering the awful weight of her penalties or the magnificence of her rewards. The old axiom of prudery that "knowledge often comes hard," is, in the cold light of fact and reason, a most palpable absurdity. It is to-day, the man and woman who _knows_; not necessarily from his or her own experience, but from the authentic records of the results of the actions of others, whose motives of narration cannot be questioned, who are well-equipped to fight the battles of life, and get from terrestrial existence all the real pleasure which is to be obtained. It is from such simple yet grand souls that we have inspirations, and fortunate is that individual who can call himself a friend to a man or woman whose life has, from the earliest childhood, been so ordered that purity and sincerity have been kept inviolate, and all of the fundamental conditions of equity, as applicable to our fellow human beings, have been observed. A friendship with this character of human being is one of the few unalloyed pleasures of life, inasmuch as their company, when present, or their memory, when absent, is equally delightful. But to get the highest enjoyment from such a person, we must not only strive to reach his or her level, but, just in proportion as we do attain their moral altitude, we will have our capacity for enjoyment augmented.