--And with it all there is such a foolish, deplorable, ruinous neglect of the proper instruction of young women. They are taught heaps of things that are of no possible use to them, and they are not taught those which concern them most nearly. Here is this miserable "Throop-Price" affair, as it is called, in which a young lady belonging to a family of some culture and social position is actually taken before a clergyman and half married before she knows it; but suspecting that something is wrong, and being assured by the clergyman that the ceremony he is performing solemnizes a real, binding marriage, she flies off, but is immediately induced to go before the Mayor, and is there married out of hand when she meant to do no such thing. It seems incredible; but it is actually true. We make, as we should do, an awful fuss about marriage, and a good marriage is, as it should be, the desire of a young woman's heart, and yet in regard to all the essentials of marriage as well as the duties and personal relations of married life, we leave them in ignorance. There would seem to be but two ways about this matter: one, the French way of keeping young girls in seclusion and absolute ignorance, and then marrying them off as a sort of business transaction--an arrangement that does not suit our social life, and which, it must be confessed, does not tend to produce the best state of morals in France; the other to give young girls reasonable liberty, under the general supervision of their parents and family, but in this case to arm them with knowledge, to let them know what marriage is legally, ceremonially, socially, and physiologically. This is a safe way, and the only safe one. Let this be done, and then if a girl "goes wrong" in any way, it is merely one of those unavoidable misfortunes which some of us have to encounter.