The statistics of marriages, as compared with those of population, would seem to indicate that there is an increasing unwillingness on the part of men or women, or both, to take upon themselves the responsibilities of wedded life. Whether because of the increased expense of living due to the development of luxurious tastes, and the selfishness which results; or the difficulties in the way of securing remunerative and constant employment; or because of other reasons, the sly god seems to have lost something of his former power. Perhaps the chief cause lies with the young men, who dare neither to face the cares of matrimony themselves, nor to ask others to do so. Whatever there is of cowardice in this matter, we do not believe that it can, as a rule, be charged upon the women of America, without regard to their station in life. It is claimed that in Massachusetts, of every 1,000 inhabitants in 1850-1860, 21 married, now only 17; that in Connecticut, while the population has increased 56 per cent during the last decade, marriages have increased but 34 per cent; that in Providence, R.I., while the number capable of marrying was in the last decade 115 percent greater than in the decade preceding the war, the number who married was only 77 per cent greater; and that in Ohio, while, in 1850-1880, the inhabitants had increased 37 per cent, the number of marriages had advanced only 26 per cent. * * * * * Mistakes go in pairs. It was a mistake for a body of Protestant ministers to meddle in the matter of the succession to a generalship in the army, and it is a mistake for the _Catholic Standard_ to make this the occasion for invidious statements in reference to the service of Catholics in the late war. "Never," it says, "was any company or any regiment or brigade that entwined on its colors emblems of the Catholic faith, and on the eve of a battle knelt to receive absolution from a Catholic priest, recorded but as first to advance and last to retreat. And since then, whether in barracks or in camp, ... you look in vain for any disgraceful record of Catholic privates and officers." We submit that neither caste nor class nor sect has any place in determining the relative merits of the brave soldiers who fought in the Civil War. In camp, and upon the field of battle, they stood side by side, not as New Yorkers, Vermonters, Germans, Irishmen, Catholics, or Protestants, but as patriotic Americans. Some of these, perhaps, were better soldiers because they were devout Catholics, and others because they were earnest Presbyterians or Methodists, and this for the reason that those who fear God are the readier to face duty, brave danger, and die for country. No: our army is not an army of Catholics, Baptists, etc., but an army of Americans. * * * * *