I shall not quarrel with a woman who desires a husband superior to herself, for I know it will be well for her to obtain such an one, if she will be stimulated by contact with a higher mind to a brighter and broader development. At the same time I must believe that for a man to marry his inferior, is to call upon himself a great misfortune; to deprive himself of one of the most elevating and refining influences which can possibly affect him. I therefore believe it to be the true policy of every young man to aim high in his choice for a companion. I have previously given a reason for this policy, and both that and this conspire to establish the soundness of my counsel. One thing more: not the least important, but the last in this letter. No woman without piety in her heart is fit to be the companion of any man. You may get in your wife, beauty, amiability, sprightliness, wit, accomplishments, wealth, and learning, but if that wife have no higher love then herself and yourself, she is a poor creature. She cannot elevate you above mean aims and objects, she cannot educate her children properly, she cannot in hours of adversity sutsain and comfort you, she cannot bear with patience your petulance induced by the toils and vexations of business, and she will never be safe against the seductive temptations of gaiety and dress. Then, again, a man who has the prayers of a pious wife, and knows that he has them-upheld by heaven, or by a refined sense of obligation and gratitude can rarely become a very bad man. A daily prayer from the heart of a pure and pious wife, for a husband engrossed in the pursuits of wealth or fame, is a chain of golden words that links his name every day with the name of God. He may snap it three hundred and sixty-five times in a year, for many years, but the chances are that in time he will gather the sundered filaments, and seek to re-unite them in an everlasting bond LETTER III. Manners and Dress. So over violent, or over civil, That every man with him has God or devil. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, DRYDEN But not expressed in fancy; rich, nor gaudy; SHAKSPEARE. T is well for young men to obtain, at the very IT start of their career, some idea of the value of politeness. Some cannot be otherwise than urbane. They are born so. One can kick them roundly and soundly, and they will not refuse to smile, if it be done good naturedly. They dodge all corners by a necessity of their nature. If their souls had only corporeal volume, we could see them making their way through a crowd, like nice little spaniels, scaring nobody, running between nobody's legs, but winding along shrinkingly and gracefully, seeing a master in every man, and thus flattering every man's vanity into good nature, but really spoiling their reputation as reliable dogs by their undiscriminating and universal complaisance. There is a self-forgetfulness which is so deep as to be below self-respect, and such instances as we occasionally meet with should be treated compassionately, like cases of idiocy or insanity, except when found in connexion with the post-office department or among hotel waiters. But puppyism is not really politeness. The genuine article is as necessary to success, and particularly to an enjoyable success, as integrity, or industry or any other indispensable thing. All machinery ruins itself by friction, without the presence of a lubricating fluid. Politeness, or civility, or urbanity, or whatever we may choose to call it, is the oil which preserves the machinery of society from destruction. We are obliged to bend to one another—to step aside and let another pass, to ignore this or that personal peculiarity, to speak pleasantly when iritated, and to do a great many things to avoid abrasion and collision. In other words, in a world of selfish interests and pursuits, where every man is pursuing his own special good, we must mask our real designs in studied politeness, or mingle them with real kindness, in order to elevate the society of men above the society of wolves. Young men generally would doubtless be thoroughly astonished if they could comprehend at a single glance how greatly their personal happi ness, popularity, prosperity, and usefulness depend on their manners. I know young men who, in the discharge of their duties, imagine that if they go through them with a literal performance, they are doing all that they undertake to do. You will never see a smile upon their faces, nor hear a genial word of good fellowship from their lips; and from the manner in which their labor is performed you would never learn that they were engaged in intercourse with human beings. They carry the same manner and the same spirit into the counting-room that they do into the dogkennel or the stable. Everybody hates such young men as these, and recoils from all contact with them. If they have business with them, they close it as soon as possible, and get out of their presence. A man who, having got his vessel under headway on the voyage of life, takes a straight course, minding nothing for the man-of-war that lies in his path, or the sloop that crosses his bow, or the fishing smacks that find game where he seeks nothing but a passage, or interposing rocks or islands, will be very sure to get terribly rubbed before he gets through --and he ought to be. I despise servility, but true and uniform politeness is the glory of any young man. It should be a politeness full of frankness and good nature, unobtrusive and constant, and uniform in its exhibition to every class of men. The young man who is overwhelmingly polite to a celebrity or a nabob, and rude to a poor Irishman because he is a poor |