Eastern continent this system of surveillance is excessive; here, it is reprehensibly deficient; in England it is perfect. I confess I would have our manners resemble the English in _this_ respect. Still another primary cause (I speak only of _primary causes_ here, deeming discord, tyranny, drunkenness, infidelity, and desertion so many _effects_), still another primary cause of unhappiness in the marriage state, is that marriage is contracted too early in life. American girls are proverbially married too young; at an age at which even a hearty robust Englishwoman would scarcely be permitted to enter upon the responsibilities of marriage. How much more improper then must it be for an American girl, with her national extreme delicacy of organization, to take upon herself the heavy burdens and onerous duties of matrimony, before her feeble constitution is mature, or her frail strength confirmed. But our girls, with all these natural disadvantages, are married early, and hence the early (_proverbially_ again) wasting of health and life; the failing of beauty, decline of grace, and loss of attractions in the women; and hence the vexatious, nervous irritability so common in young mothers, so destructive to domestic harmony and happiness. How can it be otherwise with the continued tax of a young and increasing family upon the immature strength of the youthful wife and mother? Our girls are extremely fragile at best, and will ever be so, aye and will grow more so, unless a better system of physical education is generally adopted. When these delicate girls prematurely assume the cares and burdens of a family, they break down under it, become thin, pale, sickly, nervous, and fretful; no longer attractive, almost repulsive; and the husband, father, if his disposition be benevolent and protective, as is the nature of most American men, suffers martyrdom, devotes himself a living sacrifice to his sickly wife and large family. I know hundreds of such devoted men, all unconscious of their self-devotion, passing their lives in dull counting-houses, dark stores, dingy offices, dirty work-shops, or crowded school-rooms, so cheerfully! to provide a comfortable or a luxurious home where their wives and children ever live, but where they only come to snatch a hasty meal, or late at night to sleep. This, I think, is what Dr. Dewey calls “The Religion of Toil.” But if on the other hand this husband of the sickly wife, this father of the peevish children, this victim of early marriage and other abuses, happens to be selfish and unprincipled, he becomes, more or less, tyrant or reprobate, or he sometimes quietly _leaves_, goes to the West or South, to sea, or to parts unknown, and is never heard of again. If he be licentious as well as selfish, his wandering fancies fix upon some younger, fresher, fairer, or some _new_ form; then comes the thought of the possibility, the probability, the almost certainty, if he pursues it, of getting a legal enfranchisement from his