The single man has a fine chance to be “a scholar and a ripe good one.”  Having been denied the joys of a household all dependent on him, he may surround himself with books, he may pursue investigations, he may gather the ideas of the wits and the thinkers, and he may thus broaden his brains until he is the honored associate of the best minds in his region.  This form of happiness is, to those who are within reach of it, one of the most satisfying within the gift of God.  There is no reaction, there is no sorrow.

MAN LIVES TO LEARN,

after all.  If the mind goes on in the culture of those high qualities which have been inwoven with his weak frame, it seems to me his selfishness has been well disposed of.  The dollar which, in the cautious mind, was begrudged to a wee toddler who never lived, for a pair of shoes, has been placed where it has brought new knowledge of the power and wisdom of God, the Creator and Conservator of the Universe.  The wisdom thus born out of selfishness will inculcate in those to follow him the folly of selfishness, and the tastelessness of its brightest apples of gold.

BE KIND TO THE OLD BACHELOR.

When he tries to be friendly, give him a lift.  His mode of life has left him with many advantages for usefulness which married people have not got.  On committees and in preliminary work he is often the best man in the neighborhood.  At funerals, in sickness, he has been known to be almost the very instrument of the merciful Father.  Teach the young ladies that he is harder to “catch” than they suppose, and perhaps they will turn toward him a portion of their character which will please him better with womankind.

TO HEAR SOME MEN TALK,

and from experience, too, you would think that a breed of creatures born from such women as are now living would be a herd of monsters, incapable of civilization and refinement.  And yet the world will go on, and we know, almost, that our posterity will bring about wonders in the arts and sciences, and perhaps even in society itself,—­wonders which will even surpass the triumph of our own generation.  We are on the eve of both traveling and talking through the bare air.  We are in a way to avoid the worst of our wars.  It cannot be that the women who will bear the men who will do all these things are to be

JUDGED AS THE BACHELORS VIEW THEM.

The bachelor sees as through a glass, darkly.  Being, for the time, incapable of the passion of love, having failed to exercise it when it came upon him, he thus rails at woman.  If you are young enough, watch the events of the next thirty years, and see how they will give the lie to such a tirade as this, from

THE SAME BACHELOR