On the other hand, the following, among other evils, are the results of deferring marriage. 1. The temper and habits of the parties become stiff and unyielding when advanced in life, and they learn to adapt themselves to each other with difficulty. In the view which I have taken above they become miserable as teachers, and still more miserable as scholars. 2. Youth are thus exposed to the danger of forming habits of criminal indulgence, as fatal to the health and the character, as they are ruinous to the soul. 3. Or if they proceed not so far, they at least acquire the habit of spending time in vain or pernicious amusements. All mankind must and will seek for gratifications of some sort or other. And aside from religious principle, there is no certain security against those amusements and indulgences which are pernicious and destructive, but early and virtuous attachments, and the pleasures afforded by domestic life. He can never want for amusement or rational gratification who is surrounded by a rising family for whom he has a genuine affection. 4. Long continued celibacy _contracts_ the mind, if it does not enfeeble it. For one openhearted liberal old bachelor, you will find ten who are parsimonious, avaricious, cold-hearted, and too often destitute of those sympathies for their fellow beings which the married life has a tendency to elicit and perpetuate.[12] 5. Franklin says that late marriages are attended with another inconvenience, viz.; that the chance of living to see our children educated, is greatly diminished. 6. But I go much farther than I have hitherto done, and insist that other things being equal, the young married man has the advantage in a _pecuniary_ point of view. This is a natural result from the fact that he is compelled to acquire habits of industry, frugality, and economy; and is under less temptation to waste his time in trifling or pernicious amusements. But I may appeal to facts, even here. Look around you in the world, and see if out of a given number of single persons, say one thousand, of the age of thirty-five, there be not a greater number in poverty, than of the same number who settled in life at twenty. Perhaps I ought barely to notice another objection to these views. It is said that neither the mind nor the body come to full maturity so early as we are apt to suppose. But is complete maturity of body or mind indispensable? I am not advocating the practice of marrying in childhood. It takes sometime for the affections toward an individual to ripen and become settled. This is a matter involving too high responsibilities to justify haste. The consequences, speaking generally, are not confined to this life; they extend to eternity. [11] Some of the topics of this section have been anticipated, in part, in a previous chapter; but their importance entitles them to a farther consideration.