The Golden Censer. John McGovern
Mother of Greater Years—The Mother of Mothers—She Gathered the Orphans Together and Poured Out Her Tenderness Upon Them.
Love.
A Great Passion, Therefore not one to Trifle and Be Familiar With—Its Tyranny—Feelings and Actions of a Young Man in Love—Utter Uselessness for Business of a Young Man During the Uncertain Period Between Desire and Possession—Love Rules The Universe—How The Sages Look upon Love—It Is But the Flash in the Broad Pan of True Happiness—Shakspeare, Tennyson, Overbury, Mrs. Sigourney, South, Dryden, Plautus, Goethe, Burton, Valerius Maximus, Rochefoucauld, Addison. Hazlitt and Emerson—"The Wooden God's Remorse"—"Love Me Little Love Me Long"—The Poet Petrarch's Strange Behavior—"If She Do not Care for Me, What Care I How Fair She Be!"—LaFontaine, Lyttleton, Schiller, Ruffini, Ducoeur, DeStael, Colton, Dudevant, Balzac, Moore, Beecher, Victor Hugo, Longfellow, Limayrac, Howe, Deluzy and Jane Porter—"Solomon was So Seduced, and He Had a Very Good Wit"—Alexander Smith—Great Space Given to Love in all the Books of the World—Some Things to Remember While Viewing the Passion in Others.
Courtship.
The Young Man Finds Himself in Love and "Begins to Think"—He Wonders That He Never Before Thought of Money—Difference Between a Wharf-Rat and a Man—Difference Between a Married Man and an Old Bachelor Who Has Always Been Afraid of the Expense—Everything Natural in Marriage—Be "Square" with Your Sweetheart—The Circus-Poster—The Quarry of Truth—Do not "Talk Big" and Love Little—Courtship and Marriage not a Matter of "Want to or Don't Want to," but a Strenuous Case of "Got to"—Marriage Like Life Insurance—Closing Hints.
Marriage.
Sample of a "Swell Wedding"—Undignified Aspects of a Swell Wedding Where It Takes Every Cent a Man Can Earn, Beg and Borrow—A Farce, and an Example to Shun—Let us Have Some Manhood and Womanhood at a Critical Point, the Start in Real Life—To Be a Man Is to Be Married—Nature's Artful Treatment of Human Beings—Folly of Men Who Throw Away Their Happiness—Be Inquisitive Before Marriage—Be Blind Thereafter—The Law Approves and Encourages the Married State—The Married Man Is of the Greater Importance in the Nation—A Thing to Be Kept in Mind—Married Men Healthier than Bachelors—Married Women Healthier than Maids—A Married Man Has a Greater Excess of Comforts than of Troubles as Compared with the Comforts and Troubles of the Bachelor.
Wedded Life.
A Practical Chapter on Life as It Is Actually Lived by a Man and Woman Who Have a Fair Chance in the World—A Home With a Young Wife in It no Place for Other Men, no Matter How Dear they May Be to the Husband—Give the Wife a Chance—Kindness—Do not Be Afraid of Honoring Your Wife any Too Much—The Wife's Proper Cares—A Reply to the Common Form of Attack on the Principle that Marriage Is Both Natural and Expedient—McFarland—A Man's Happy Experience as a Husband—Judgment, Vanity, Selfishness and Trepidation—Good for Evil—Astonishing Changes in a Man's Needs—The Fireside of a Man Who Is Trying to Do Right—His Profound Gratitude at the Accuracy of His Taste in Earlier Years—Death, or Worse than Death—Three Studies—Apology for a Somewhat Uncharitable Reply to a Selfish Argument.
Bachelors.
A Chapter on Bachelors Apt to Diverge into a Dissertation on Solitude—Arguments which the Bachelor Applies to the Question of Marriage—Being the Soul of Selfishness He Is Unwilling to Believe Happiness In Marriage Possible until He Shall Himself Have Embarked in Matrimony—Manner in Which He Usually Proclaims That all Men Who Marry Are Fools—Single Life Unavoidable with Some Men—A Mere Spectator of Other Men's Fortunes—The One Grand Result of Single Life—Wearing Out One Set of Faculties by Forty—Losing Control of the Other Set by Disuse—The Way a Bachelor Judges a Young Girl—His Somewhat Sordid Ideas—Events Have Distorted His Nature—A Bachelor's Great opportunities for Getting Book-Knowledge—Good out of Evil—Mistaken Ideas about Bachelors, which the Ladies are Apt to Entertain—Foolish Diatribes against Women—The Lack of Knowledge which Those Diatribes Betray—The Front-Porch View of Girlhood Esteemed to be the whole of Woman's Nature!
Sickness.
Health, Even with Memory, cannot conceive the Feelings of Disease—The Invalid's Sad Weakness—The King cannot Hire a man to Have the Typhoid Fever for Him—The Strong man Felled to His Couch—Chances for Philosophy—The Chances Usually Thrown Away with the Medicine Bottles—The Bachelor Sick—His Body now as Full of the need of Woman's attention as It was of Brags that He would Have none of Her—Let Us do something, by not attempting Everything in the way of Reformation.
Sorrow.
The Tallest mountains, although They Gather the Heaviest Clouds about Their Solemn Sides, Yet Look Through Cloudless Skies up Toward the Sun—Effect of Deep Sorrow on the Appearance of Beauties of Nature—We Deprecate Grief, and yet We Rail at Its Short Duration—The Stricken Wife—The Young man who Loves and Is Rejected—His Dilemma—His Erroneous and Immature Decision that He would Love But One, and Love Forever—A Peak which Hardly Rises to the Bottom of the Valleys in the Mountains Piled Down by Events in After-life—True Greatness is True Humility—Affliction Beautifies Human Nature—Blessedness of Employment—Efficacy of Religion—The Beautiful Poem of "The Lamb in the Shepherd's Arms."
Poverty.
A Topic That Hits Close to Every Man—In the Old World the Countries Are to Blame; In the New the Individual Is Generally at Fault—Case of Vanderbilt—Fears of Enormously Rich men that their Wealth will excite the Irresistible Cupidity of their Governments—Burdens of Immense Riches in an Active Land Like This—The Shocking Imbecility of False Poverty—"Appearances"—Popular Errors as to Servants—Big Houses—Story of the Happy Man.
Facts About Progress.
Progress the Stride of God—The Field-Hand in 1350—One hundred and Twelve Hours' Labor for a Bushel of Wheat—The same Laborer in 1550, in 1675, and in 1795—Seventy Hours for a Bushel of Wheat—The Same Laborer To-day—Twenty Hours for the Bushel of Wheat—The Children of the Laborer who Came to America—Seven or Eight Hours for a Bushel of Wheat.
Failure in Life.