You find her everywhere almost nowadays. She is not a natural production. She is got up. She is forced and artificial. She cannot be healthy, and has no more heart than a hen, no more stamina or staying power than a stalk of hemp. She is a resultant of the inflexible law of supply and demand. Made for the matrimonial market, grown to be sold, and if—like a choice standard rose—she is labelled with a title, she will go all the sooner. Money will purchase a wife like this, and, though marriage may change her and love may come after, the man who has her has speculated on the off-chance. And now that wax dolls can be manufactured that can both talk and walk, it seems to me that the man might have done better with his money. But, thank goodness, the majority of men prefer the genuine, well-reared, healthy girl, and the girl that has a heart. But love is still a great factor—nay, the very greatest—in this life, and, if that love be real, oh, there is nothing it cannot do! I must, as a medical man, go a little farther, and tell the mater something that no scientist will venture to deny. It is this: a loveless or commercial marriage is not only followed by a senseless and dreary monotonous life, but children born in such wedlock are never truly healthy in body, and very often they are defective in mental qualifications, that is, in brain power. Many a case of epilepsy is congenital, and a child that is nerveless is liable to future degeneracy, and apt to fall into any kind of temptation. Doctors have proofs of this every day. But though ambitious parents may try to alter Nature’s law, she herself is inexorable and tells us sternly that the fittest shall survive. * * * * * But, harking back to our poet’s lines— “From work she wins her spirits light, From busy day, the peaceful night,” I must give my medical testimony to the truth herein conveyed. Work does give exhilaration of spirits and enables a girl truly to enjoy recreation and outdoor exercise, and, moreover, the busy day results in calm refreshing sleep at night. Without sleep, without perfect exercise, ventilation of rooms and fresh air everywhere, no girl can grow up happy and healthful. Coddling children and keeping them too warm causes them to become fragile and delicate, with no nerves worth mentioning, except when they give rise to the tortures of toothache and neuralgia, and no lungs good enough to last. There is, mother, but a sad future for that girl who is ashamed to soil her fingers by doing honest work, or ashamed to wear a thimble and wield woman’s real weapon—the needle. But it is not natural for girls to hate work. Do they not make the best of nurses, for instance, and the most gentle-handed? It is Scott who says—