It is true that the liberty of American girls occasionally leads to improprieties. But, except in certain great cities, such instances are rare. The safeguards of virtue are knowledge and self-command, not duennas and jalousies. Let mothers properly instruct their daughters, and they need have no apprehension about their conduct.
The period of courtship is one full of importance. A young woman of unripe experience must decide from what she can see of a man during the intercourse of a few months, whether he will suit her for a life-companion. She has no knowledge of human nature; and what would it avail her if she had, when at such a time a suitor is careful only to show his eligible traits? 'Go a-courting,' said old Dr Franklin, in his homely language, 'in your everyday clothes.' Not one man out of a thousand is honest enough to take his advice.
It is useless for her to ask aid of another. She must judge for herself. What, then, is she to do?
There is a mysterious instinct in a pure-minded woman which is beyond all analysis,—a tact which men do not possess, and do not readily believe in. At such a crisis this instinct saves her. She feels in a moment the presence of a base, unworthy nature. An unconscious repulsion is manifest in her eye, her voice. Where a suitor is not a man of low motive, but merely quite incongruous in temper and disposition, this same instinct acts, and the man, without being able to say just why, feels that he is laboring in vain. If he blindly insists in his wooing, he has no one to chide but himself when he is finally discarded.
But if the man is worthy, and suitable, does this blessed instinct whisper the happy news with like promptness to the maiden's soul? Ah! that raises another issue. It brings us face to face with that difficult question of
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT.
Jung Stilling, a German author of note, a religious enthusiast, and full of queer fancies, was, when young, a tutor in a private family. On one occasion his employer took him to a strange house, and introduced him to a roomful of company. Stilling had not contemplated marriage; but, in the company, he saw, for the first time, a young woman who he felt was his destined wife. Walking across the room, he addressed her with the utmost simplicity, telling her that an inward monitor advised him that she, of all womankind, was his predestined helpmeet. She blushed, was confused, but presently confessed that she had experienced the same conviction on first beholding him. They married, and the most curious part of the tale remains to tell,—it is, that they proved a happy, well-matched couple.
We do not advise others to follow their example. Not many souls are capable of such reciprocity. Choosing an associate for life is too serious a business to be made the affair of a moment. Reason, reflection, thought, prayer,—these are aids in such a momentous question not to be lightly thrown aside. Many a passing fancy, many an evanescent preference, catches for a moment the new-fledged affections. But for the long and tedious journey of life we want a love rooted in knowledge.
We are not blind to the fact, that often from the first interview the maiden feels an undefined spell thrown around her by him who will become her husband. She feels differently in his presence; she watches him with other eyes than she has for the rest of men. She renders no account to herself of this emotion; she attempts no analysis of it; she does not acknowledge to herself that it exists. No matter. Sooner or later, if true to herself, she will learn what it is, and it will be a guide in that moment, looked forward to with mingled hopes and fears, when she is asked to decide on the destiny, the temporal and eternal destiny, of two human lives.
That she may then decide aright, and live free from the regrets of a false step at this crisis of life, we shall now rehearse what medical science has to say about