It is not true that any husband, who can support a wife, is better than no husband. Marriage means more to a sensible woman than an alliance with a husband for the sake of being clothed and fed and housed. She has a heart and soul and mind that have their wants, and if they be starved, unhappy marriage, if nothing worse, is the result. Mothers and fathers! Have you watched over your daughter from the day of her birth; have you guarded her from infancy to girlhood, and from girlhood to womanhood; have you suffered for her sake; have you surrendered comforts and sacrificed pleasures for her sake; have you toiled and stinted and saved for her sake; have you afforded her the best education and all the pleasures and opportunities that your means will allow, and all to wish yourselves rid of her; to think that any husband, who can support your daughter--sometimes not even so much is expected from him--no matter how old, how uncultured, how unsuitable to her tastes and wants, is better than no husband? A father's personal attention to the training of his children will in time reduce materially unhappy marriages, and greatly lessen the miseries and vices of society. He owes his children more than support and chastisement. Society holds him responsible for their character. The duties of training devolve upon the father as much as on the mother. A father's wider experience and worldly wisdom prove valuable contributions to the mother's simpler knowledge in the raising of their children. A father's continuous absence, or neglects, or severity, or unkindness, or heartlessness, has made more reprobates and scamps and criminals in this world than all the failings of women combined. Think less of your dignity and more of your duty. Rather that your child should love you than fear you. You can maintain your authority and dignity by love and gentleness as well as by frowns and threats and chastisements. You may walk and talk and study and play with them, and yet have their full respect. The great and warlike Agesilaus did not think it beneath him to entertain his children during his leisure hours, to join them in all their merry sports, and permit himself to crawl on his fours with his little child upon his back. If you would raise good children let your example at home be accordingly. As you will teach them so they will act. If you are a devil they will scarcely be angels. Children are keen observers. An old proverb says that a father is a looking-glass by which children dress themselves. See to it, fathers, that the glass be clean, so that your children's morals may be pure.