13. SELECT CAREFULLY.--While character, health, accomplishments and social position should be considered, yet one must not overlook mental construction and physical conformation. The rule always to be followed in choosing a life partner is _identity of taste and diversity of temperament_. Another essential is that they be physically adapted to each other. For example: The pelvis--that part of the anatomy containing all the internal organs of gestation--is not only essential to beauty and symmetry, but is a matter of vital importance to her who contemplates matrimony, and its usual consequences. Therefore, the woman with a very narrow and contracted pelvis should never choose a man of giant physical development lest they cannot duly realize the most important of the enjoyments of the marriage state, while the birth of large infants will impose upon her intense labor pains, or even cost her her life. {148} * * * * * CHOOSE INTELLECTUALLY--LOVE AFTERWARD. [Illustration: Explaining the Necessity for a New Bonnet.] 1. LOVE.--Let it ever be remembered that love is one of the most sacred elements of our nature, and the most dangerous with which to tamper. It is a very beautiful and delicately contrived faculty, producing the most delightful results, but easily thrown out of repair--like a tender plant, the delicate fibers of which incline gradually to entwine themselves around its beloved one, uniting two willing hearts by a thousand endearing ties, and making of "twain one flesh"; but they are easily torn asunder, and then adieu to the joys of connubial bliss! {149} 2. COURTING BY THE QUARTER.--This courting by the quarter, "here a little and there a little," is one of the greatest evils of the day. This getting a little in love with Julia, and then a little with Eliza, and a little more with Mary,--this fashionable flirtation and coquetry of both sexes--is ruinous to the domestic affections; besides, effectually preventing the formation of true connubial love. I consider this dissipation of the affections one of the greatest sins against Heaven, ourselves, and the one trifled with, that can be committed. 3. FRITTERING AWAY AFFECTIONS.--Young men commence courting long before they think of marrying, and where they entertain no thoughts of marriage. They fritter away their own affections, and pride themselves on their conquests over the female heart; triumphing in having so nicely fooled them. They pursue this sinful course so far as to drive their pitiable victims, one after another, from respectable society, who, becoming disgraced, retaliate by heaping upon them all the indignities and impositions which the fertile imagination of woman can invent or execute.