This club will help to educate the youngsters, and also to give them a good time, developing both their minds and bodies, and learning to know them thoroughly. When they are sixteen each one will have another talk, this time about marriage and what it means; learning that it is not merely flirtations and delicious thrills, but a business partnership, and the deepest and best of all friendships. So when John finds that he likes Mary best of all the girls he knows, this won't be a subject for "kidding" and sly innuendo, and blushes and simpering on Mary's part, but an occasion for decent and sensible talk about what each of them really is, and what each thinks the other to be. If they think they are in love, then there will be a council of the elder statesmen, to consider that case, and what are the chances of happiness in that love. This may sound forbidding, but it is exactly what is done at present--only it is not done honestly and frankly, and therefore does not carry proper weight with the young people. I am an opponent of long engagements, but I am also an opponent of no engagements at all; I know no truer proverb than "Marry in haste and repent at leisure." It would be my idea that a very young couple should announce their engagement, and then wait six months, and be consulted again about the matter, and have a chance to withdraw with no hard feelings, if either party thought best. If they wished to go on, they might be asked to wait another six months, if their elders felt very certain there were reasons to doubt the wisdom of the match. There are, of course, people who, because of disease or physical defect, should never be allowed to marry; and others who might marry, but should not be allowed to have children. There should be laws providing for such cases, requiring physical examination before marriage, and in extreme cases providing for a simple and harmless surgical operation to prevent the hopelessly unfit from passing on their defects to the future. But dealing for the moment with normal young persons, members of our modern marriage club, I should say that if, after they have listened to the warning of their elders, and have waited for a decent interval to think things over, they still remain of the opinion that they can make a successful marriage, then it is up to the elders to wish them luck. I have known of young couples who have refused to heed warnings, and regretted it; but I have known of others who went ahead and had their own way and proved they were right. There is a form of wisdom called experience and there is another form called love.