4i6 MORE POT-POURRI 



help feeling. This I should recommend, even if from 

 no higher motive than that the casual observer should 

 not judge them too harshly. It is a rooted idea in the 

 minds of many men that a bad daughter makes a bad 

 wife. Was not lago's strongest argument in the poi- 

 soning of Othello's mind against poor Desdemona, ' She 

 did deceive her father marrying you' ? Not long ago I 

 heard a young man say: 'I mean to marry for a 

 mother-in-law — that is to say, I will never marry a girl 

 who does not love her mother, nor would I marry a girl 

 with a mother whom I thought unworthy of her love.' 



The French, of course, exact an outward expression 

 of devotion from both sons and daughters unknown in 

 this country, and I doubt whether our literature could 

 produce a parallel passage to these opening lines of 

 Florian's poem of ' Ruth' : 



Le plus saint des devoirs, eelui qu'en trait de flamme 

 La nature a grav6 dans le fond de notre dme. 

 Cast de cMrir I'objet qui nous donna le jour. 

 Qu'il est doux k remplir ce pr^eepte d'amour ! 

 Voyez ee faible enfant que le tr^pas menace ; 

 n ne sent plus ses maux quand sa mfere I'embrasse. 

 Dans I'age des erreurs ce jeune homme fougueux 

 N'a qu'elle pour ami dfes qu'il est malheureux ; 

 Ce vieillard qui va perdre un reste de lumilre 

 Ketrouve encore des pleurs en parlant de sa mfere. 



Last summer, while waiting at a hot railway station 

 and pondering in mj' mind how I could bring together a 

 few notes that might help to solve some of the dif&cul- 

 ties in girls' lives, I caught sight of a little yellow publi- 

 cation on the bookstall, called ' The Modern Marriage 

 Market.' It will be remembered that this consisted of 

 four articles, by ladies, reprinted from magazines. I 

 bought it at once, thinking that these ladies would prob- 

 ably say wh^t I wwted to say better than I could do it. 



