DORCAS. That my own marriage has been a happy one, and that my good husband has striven, by recognizing my womanly as well as individual idiosyncrasies, to render the yoke as light as it possibly can be, is the very circumstance that gives me a right to speak and offer my testimony against ideas which I think wholly unwarranted by the facts in the case. The views of modern philosophers, attacking the sanctity of Christian marriage, are to me perfectly abhorrent. Deprive marriage of its mystical, sacramental, penitential character, and it ceases to be the bulwark of a well-ordered society. I must again call upon St. John Chrysostom to speak for me. He says: 'Marriage is one of the most surprising mysteries, by reason of the sublime character which belongs to it, of representing the alliance of Jesus Christ with His Church. The necessary consequence of which is, that it should not be contracted lightly and through interested motives. No, marriage is no bargain; it is the union of the entire life.' This is what true marriage should be; but in so far as mankind fall below the lofty standards set before them, so far does actual marriage fail to reach its glorious ideal. Meantime, reverence for maidenhood is one of the strongest safeguards of the sanctity of wedded life, and no delusions of any school, whether romantic, sentimental, Micheletic, humanitarian, or Lutheranistic, should be permitted to obscure this reverence. Neither my own experience, nor that of the young maidens best known to me, teaches me that the idle hours of women are haunted by dreams of some human lover, who must be found to save them from despair. I cannot think that marriage is essential to, or even best for, the happiness of women. If we enter the nearest institution of Charity Sisters, Sisters of Mercy, or of the Poor, we cannot fail to remark the contrast between the healthful, cheery, unsolicitous countenances of the inmates, and the nervous, suffering, careworn faces of the wives and mothers in our midst. Both live in the conscientious performance of equally estimable duties, but the pleasing of a Heavenly Master would seem to be a more peaceful and less wearing task than the gratification of an earthly lord. Let us hearken for a moment to an eloquent French theologian: 'Woman's nature, in some exceptional cases, rises to such a height of intellect and sensitiveness, that it ceases to be capable of accepting that subordination which constitutes the essence of Christian marriage. Think you there are not women athirst for the ideal; who are crushed by the commonplace of ordinary affections; who would go beyond that narrow circle traced round them by domestic cares? Give to such natures as good, kind, and conscientious a husband as you will, do you think he can ever satisfy the ardent longings of their mind and heart? Do you think they can find in the family the realization of the brilliant dream caressed by them from the earliest years of infancy? Do you not believe