Their friends were usually so inevitably of the same financial standing and of similar cultural ideals and manners that they would be likely to be congenial to each other and all to both husband and wife.

When the one chosen was selected by the fathers and mothers there were some essentials for successful married life secured in advance.

We have now come to feel that each couple must choose for themselves and that conscious, selective love is the very essence of that choice.

It is well, however, to name over the essentials secured by the arranged marriages, to which such an enlightened country as France still gives much heed and still holds to some extent in family control.
=Some Advantages in Choices of Marriage by the Elders.=--The old arranged choice for marriage, in the first place, secured, and still secures in countries not yet changed in this particular, a similar financial position.

Often greed of family prestige made the money end the chief one and sacrificed everything else to the bringing together of two great fortunes.