own. One angle alone of the many-sided character may have "made the match;" quite other angles have already attracted and still hold the friends. These often mutually incongruous friends of both sides must somehow be made to attach themselves to the marriage plan or they may work much harm to the new home.

The art of holding on to old associations and yet substituting, where substitution is wise or necessary, a new for an established relationship is a great art. In the case of the newly married whose friends have been in widely different circles, it is often an impossible one.

Here is where the social wisdom that in some manner essays to make the twain to be later one a part of the same or a very similar social group, shows its finest results. When marriage was arranged by the elders of the respective families there was likely to be a similarity in the social standards of the two circles from which the bride and groom were drawn. Their friends were usually so inevitably of the same financial standing and of similar cultural ideals and manners that they would be likely to be congenial to each other and all to both husband and wife. When the one chosen was selected by the fathers and mothers there were some essentials for successful married life secured in advance. We have now come to feel that each couple must choose for themselves and that conscious, selective love is the very essence of that choice. It is well, however, to name over the essentials secured by the arranged marriages, to which such an enlightened country as France still gives much heed and still holds to some extent in family control.

Some Advantages in Choices of Marriage by the Elders.— The old arranged choice for marriage, in the first place, secured, and still secures in countries not yet changed in this particular, a similar financial position. Often greed of family prestige made the money end the chief one and sacrificed everything else to the bringing together of two great fortunes. Yet the fact that family choices usually united those of similar financial standing and power of gratification of taste did lead toward an easy adjustment of the young couple to life together. One of the chief causes of unhappiness in marriages wholly from personal choice and in response to an impulse of passionate attachment is that the taste and "style" į of living of the two has been so different that it is hard, after the

first glamour wears away, to settle down to agreeable compromises. As a rule, "the beggar maid and King Cophetua" can get on better than the young woman heiress and the ex-chauffeur in such compromises; for it is always easier to extend one's income than to contract it, and women can still owe all to the loved one with better grace than men can bear the position of one "marrying above his lot." The tendency of the older custom, however, to limit all marriage choices on the basis of money to be contributed to the common fund was, and is when now in force, as destructive to real happiness in marriage as any ill-considered leaping across social barriers could well be. It is well, therefore, that it is outgrown.

The second condition believed essential to success in marriage from the point of view of family stability, when the marriage choice of the loved one was made by the elders, is far more important than that of financial equality. It is the congeniality of the two families to be united by the marriage. The custom of betrothing their children as a means of carrying on the close friendship of a lifetime beyond its natural limit into the generations yet to be, is an old and not a wholly bad one. It insures for the young couple a genuine love from both sides the family line. To be sure, that love may be an oppressive and undesired gift which one or the other of the young people ardently wishes to ignore or to be freed from, but it contains also some elements of a good start for those same young people in a mutually devoted double parentage. When, however, as in Eastern countries, it leads to betrothal in infancy or very early childhood and sets the girl who is to be the wife in the family of her betrothed when she is too young to know her own real nature or to have a mind to make up about what she would wish for herself, it may be and generally is an evil thing. In the questions concerning the family set forth by the Chinese inquiry, to which allusion has already been made, the first set of problems relates to "Early Engagements," and it is asked, "Is the practice of parents in arranging for the engagement of a girl while still a mere child productive of happiness in the future home?" And, again, "Can a woman refuse to marry a man whom her family decides she should marry, after the formal engagement has taken place?" To our Western ideas the answer is so plain to both these questions that one may be impatient at their

repetition here. Yet it is certainly true that many people hood engage themselves to their later unbuggine wood to be m mary family virtues bred on even the ulgown furioum of Topoly choice. Where unhappiness has been picuded in the poolfe of family choice doubtless the friendship of the boy homly boud: Jan had much to do with such mitigation of bad wodą zł konops parental control in marriage.

Social protection of the young bus at man k anger family arrangement, ya? WLAN * bana bak THEY DE ÍOULc to-day it be set, & yoral Mah J s that of the gir. e. 1. & WORD #BAR kad tas the more wie of & tu! be

The ancient family choice in marriage tried in the third place 3 to give every one an equal chance to be married. The families concerned, when the age thought to be marriageable had been reached, sought to give the young persons a place in the family order. The idea of bachelors and maids of mature years was not only repugnant, it was an indictment of the vigilance and good offices of the elders. When a certain Doctor Brickell practised medicine in North Carolina in about 1731, he declared that "She that continues unmarried until twenty is reckoned a stale maid, which is a very indifferent character in this country;" and in New England the unmarried man, as elsewhere, was subjected to special tax and social odium.

The family arrangement for marriage of the young did one thing, at least, in a time when women and girls enjoyed little protection or financial security outside of marriage-it set at work forces to provide husbands for many girls who would not be the first choice in a free competition for masculine favor.

Some Ancient Spinsters, But Few.-There were, however, some distinguished women of the older time who never married. Margaret Brent, of Maryland, for example, whose appeal for "voyce and vote with men," in the making of laws to which she must owe allegiance, is historic. And that Mary Carpenter, sister of Alice, wife of Governor Bradford, who, at the beginning of her ninety-first year, was declared a "godly old maid;" and, again, that "ancient maid of forty years," who is said to have founded the town of Taunton, Massachusetts. Others of distinction might be mentioned. These show clearly that the right not to marry at all, and the right not to marry a person whom she had not seen or, having seen, did not want as husband, was well sustained in the case of young girls in our own country from the first.

The lot of most women here in the United States, as elsewhere in the world, includes marriage; and although no one wants to go back to family arrangement of nuptials, the desirability of marriage within a congenial and familiar circle-that which the family arrangement distinctly set out to secure-is still obvious.

The fourth element of family stability and well-being which the ancient parental arrangement of marriage was intended to secure is deliberation and chance for learning all the facts on both

sides, so that there may be no marrying in haste to repent at leisure. The reaction from this deliberation in tying the nuptial knot is seen in “running away to be married" without the slightest knowledge on either side of the qualities or capacities of the chosen partner and without giving the parents any opportunity of safeguarding from disastrous choice. This is the swing of the pendulum in a new freedom, often to personal disaster. Social ideals and legal provisions are alike engaged more and more to prevent too ignorant and too hasty marriages. Such may turn out to have been made in heaven as nearly as the average union, but the chances are against that happy consummation.

New Demands for Social Control of Marriage Choices.Social wisdom obliges more deliberation in the case of young people seeking a marriage license on their own initiative and perhaps after a very brief acquaintance. There is a strong demand that certain period shall elapse between the request for the license and its granting and that sufficient publicity be secured to make it easy for interested parties to ascertain any facts concerning both the man and the woman involved, which might make the marriage either illegal, as bigamy, or a catastrophe, as uniting one unfit for marriage with an unsuspecting person blinded by sudden attraction. More than this, many States of our Union are beginning processes of law to require certificates of physical fitness, of freedom from infectious or dangerous disease, and some statement of facts as to previous obedience to law and ability for self-support such as alone would make marriage successful. Ministers of religion of various sects are taking more and more a stand against marriage of persons whom they know are of bad habits or otherwise likely to give a married partner an unhappy life. Insanity in the family is now considered in some States a disqualification for marriage, and statutes requiring some family testimony to facts concerning that inheritance are coming into enactment and enforcement. The tragedy of marrying ignorantly into a certain and hopeless fate of union with one who can never be of sound mind is so terrible that the state itself is trying to safeguard carelessness on that point. The medical profession is more and more acting a parental part in requiring the registry of diseases that are most unsocial