I think I have said all that is to be said on the subject of weddings, and have stated boldly how best to secure the happiness of our children; it is a subject on which I feel very deeply, and when I see girls marry men who cannot by any possibility make good husbands or good fathers, I long to tell them this, but of course no one but their mothers can; and I shall hope that I may influence one or two to do so, and moreover to insist that their children do not marry to perpetuate the disease or the evil tendencies that must wreck innocent lives that have no business ever to exist; for while, if marriage is entered into properly, there can be no failure about it, marriage being the perfection of life, the uniting and joining of the two lives, which, separate, are indeed incomplete, but which, brought together, form an absolute and wonderful whole, a marriage which perpetuates the vices of a drunkard, of an evil temper, of an habitual liar, or the constitution of a consumptive or of a lunatic, is absolutely wicked, and can never be anything but a curse to the wife and mother, whatever it may be to the man himself. A _roué_ has discounted his chances of a happy married life. No woman can reform a _roué_, and even if she could she should not try, because in her children she will perpetuate the father’s vices, and will make the world worse a thousandfold by those she brings into it, while at the best she may save a soul, though I personally do not believe she could even do this; at all events, it is not right to sacrifice her future and her children’s future in the endeavour, and therefore I hope she may never try. As I said before, we cannot explain away the mysterious influence of heredity; but as it exists and is inexorable in its consequences, we must acknowledge it, and we must all do our best so to live that we can give our children the noblest inheritance on earth--an unimpaired constitution, and a name unstained by any mean or low vice, a name that may be our proudest possession: aye, even if we saw it first above the window of some suburban shop! Then shall the world become better because we have lived in it and given it hostages also: and so shall we prove what I should like to be always preaching--that marriage is the most blessed state on earth, if it is begun and carried on mutually with esteem, affection, and real consideration, for each other’s welfare. CHAPTER IX. ABOUT THE BOYS. The poor boys! When I begin to write about their home I could almost weep when I think how small a space of their young lives they are permitted to spend under the home roof.