What barrier can there be to a woman's progress? Truly life presents many. For instance, her idea of what would for her be progress, may not be the right idea. There are many stern duties that sometimes seem to impede progress; duties to parents, to family, or to the social order; duties to religious forms that have become woven into society and could not be drawn out without too much sacrifice of what is good and necessary; duties to common legal form that has dominance and is the result of centuries of experience, and that could not be taken exception to without too great risk--these and many other things may form barriers to the desire of the mere individual. But, these being granted, the woman can have a free chance for growth and development only when she believes that nothing coming out of the mere fact of sex has a right to hamper her growth or restrict her activity, and that no one shall have the right to say what is best for her or what she ought to wish for herself, in matters where she alone can have the means for understanding the situation. These principles intimately concern the question of marriage. George Meredith said that to a woman marriage should be a platform from which her soul may take a new flight. How wonderful! A platform from which the soul may take flight!--not a black cage in which the soul of woman must crouch, to which her soul must fit itself, moving cramped, and slowly, and at war with itself; not a cage in which a caught and imprisoned canary bird must sing for the amusement of its owner. No! a platform from which to take flight, with sunlighted realms to investigate and new skies to discover, with wings growing ever stronger for more daring ascensions into still clearer light. Let every girl make sure that that is the kind of platform that is being built for her in the character and in the attitude of mind of the destined lover. And let her make certain that she also is building and developing in herself a character that shall be worthy of her high mission, that shall be sufficient for all its needs, and that shall merit the deep reverence that all hearts give to the mother and homemaker.