ruin, despair, and death. God help those mistaken ones, who have
thus hurried into union, ignorant of each other's prejudices,
opinions, and dispositions, when too late they discover there is
not, nor ever can be, affinity between souls wide as the poles
asunder.

Notwithstanding these miserable unions, we must consider marriage
divine in its origin, and alone calculated to make life blessed. Who
can imagine a more blissful state of existence than two united by
the law of God and love, mutually sustaining each other in the
jostlings of life; together weathering its storms, or basking
beneath its clear skies; hand in hand, lovingly, truthfully, they
pass onward. This is marriage as God instituted it, as it ever
should be, as Moore beautifully says--

"There's a bliss beyond all that the minstrel has told,
When two that are linked in one heavenly tie,
With heart never changing and brow never cold,
Love on through all ills, and love on till they die!"

To attain this bliss, this union of the soul, as well as of hands,
it is necessary that much should be changed. Girls must not think,
as soon as emancipated from nursery control, that they are qualified
to become wives and mothers. If woman would become the true
companion of man, she must not only cultivate her intellect, but
strive to control her impulses and subdue her temper, so that while
yielding gently, gracefully, to what appears, at the time, perhaps,
a harsh requirement, she may feel within the "calm which passeth all
understanding." There must be a mutual forbearance, no fierce
wrestling to rule. If there is to be submission, let the wife show