Chapter 32

THE WEDDING.

Folly of preparing an elaborate trousseau--The way of one sensible girl--The wedding gifts--Bridal tours--The realities of wedded life. 267

PREFACE.

During a number of years it has been my privilege to be the confidante and counsellor of a large number of young women of various stations in life and in all parts of the United States.

These girls have talked freely with me concerning their plans, aspirations, fears and personal problems. It has been a great revelation to me to note with what unanimity they ask certain questions concerning conduct--queries which perhaps might astonish the mothers of those same girls, as they, doubtless, take it for granted that their daughters intuitively understand these fundamental laws of propriety.

The truth is that many girls who have been taught in the "ologies" of the schools, who have been trained in the conventionalities of society, have been left to pick up as they may their ideas upon personal conduct, and, coming face to face with puzzling problems, are at a loss, and perhaps are led into wrong ways of thinking and questionable ways of doing because no one has foreseen their dilemma and warned them how to meet it.

The subjects treated in this little book are discussed because every one of them has been the substance of a query propounded by some girl otherwise intelligent and well informed. They have been treated plainly and simply because they purport to be the frank conferences of a mother and daughter, between whom there can be no need of hesitation in dealing frankly with any question bearing on the life, health or happiness of the girl. There is therefore no need of apology; the book is its own excuse for being, the queries of the young women demand honest answers.

Life will be safer for the girl who understands her own nature and reverences her womanhood, who realizes her responsibility towards the human race and conducts herself in accordance with that realization.

Life will be nobler and purer in its possession and its transmission, if, from childhood onward to old age, the thought has been held that "Life is a gift of God and is divine," and its physical is no less sacred than its mental or moral manifestation; if it has been understood that the foundations of character are laid in the habits formed in youth, and that a noble girlhood assures a grand maturity.

Dear girls who read this book, the mother-heart has gone out to you with great tenderness with every line herein written, with many an unspoken prayer that you will be helped, uplifted, inspired by its reading, and made more and more to feel

"A sacred burden is this life ye bear. Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly; Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly; Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin, But onward, upward, till the goal ye win."

MARY WOOD-ALLEN. ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN.