Few people consider how much our _moral_ as well as our _physical_ health depends upon exercise, cleanliness, and temperance. How much our happiness depends upon a free circulation, unobstructed perspiration, and a good digestion. How much domestic discomfort is caused by the querulousness of ill health. Many a man of weak and unsettled principles is driven to dissipation and vice, and it may be to crime, by the discomforts of his home, of his sickly and nervous wife, fretful and troublesome children. Another prominent cause of unhappy marriages, is the too unguarded and unrestrained association between young persons of opposite sexes in the same rank of society. If the dress and address of a young man are passable, if his conduct is unimpeachable, and his _prospects fair_, however otherwise unknown and untried, he may be admitted at once to the intimacy of a young lady, and after a brief courtship, _too_ brief to give either a knowledge of their own or each other’s hearts, take the last irrevocable step—_marriage_. And this youth of fair manners, fair appearance, and fair conduct, may turn out to be, if not positively depraved, yet weak, unstable, untried, possessing the _best reputation_, based upon the morality of externals, rather than the tested, sound integrity of heart; with the most _defective character_, totally unfit to guide himself, still less another, through the shoals and quicksands of life. In the old times of chivalry, a knight must have proved his prowess before he could successfully aspire to the hand of his lady love. The days of knight-errantry are long past, but in the age of man, or of the world, the days of moral warfare are never over; never over with the world while it exists; never over with man until death; and I would have some better proof of moral force in an untried young man, than a few weeks of acquaintance, popularity, and mere amiability of manners would give, before I could trust the temporal and eternal welfare of my daughter to his keeping. When a young girl’s heart is lost and won, it is too late for these prudential considerations; in this case, as in every other, the old proverb holds good—_Fidarsi è bene, e non fidarse e meglio_. The conversational acquaintanceship should be prevented from maturing into the dangerous intimacy. Yet do not misunderstand me; I would not have you pain or repulse a young heart by the coldness of suspicion. I would not have you shut yourselves up in a dark distrust, and close your doors, and guard your girls with Eastern jealousy; far from it, one need not run upon Scylla in avoiding Charybdis. “Moderation is the golden thread that holds together the bead-roll of the virtues.” I would have you take the middle course—“the golden mean” between jealous surveillance and dangerous neglect. In all other civilized and enlightened society in the world, young ladies are carefully guarded and guided, chaperoned through the mazes of life. In countries of the