To use the common phrase, you “want to look nice” in the eyes of that one who has done all but tell you that you occupy the first place in his heart, and to whom you have virtually given your own.
Do I blame you for wishing to be externally attractive? Assuredly not. It is your duty to try and be so at all times and under all circumstances.
Only, do not be too anxious about outside adornment. Let your life commend you, rather than your good looks or your tasteful dress. These may attract in the first instance, but they will not keep what is best worth having.
A friend once spoke to the mother of a large family of girls in regard to the anxiety she must feel about their future settlement in life.
She answered with a bright smile, which suggested anything but anxiety, “I try so to train my girls that they will be fit for the sacred duties that wives and mothers have to fulfil, and I leave the rest to God.”
One would like to see all girls actuated by the same spirit, that, without undervaluing anything that helps to make them externally attractive, they should cultivate every quality that will place them on a level with the best man in the best things.
In speaking to you, dear girl members of my Twilight circle, I assume that you desire in all your ways to acknowledge God, and pray that He will direct your paths. Can there be a more important matter on which you need guidance than that on which the happiness of your future life depends? And yet, how common it is for girls to be so carried away by flattering words and delicate attentions, which make them the envy of others, that they do not pause to think how small a part these things play in most married lives.
Are you accustomed to lay bare your heart to God in prayer, and to seek His aid in all things? If so, have you asked yourself whether the one to whose keeping you think of committing your future, will be likely to kneel by your side and join heart to heart with you in making your joint requests known to God?
Believe me, if husband and wife never pray together, they never taste the sweetest portion possible in the cup of wedded happiness.
If their ways diverge when the path leads to the House of God; if they neither worship together in the home nor the sanctuary, they are without the precious bond of union that makes their lives truly one here, and gives the assurance of an eternal reunion beyond the grave.