hat, as compared with their mothers
and grandmothers, they are rather forward and fast, and that
husband-hunting in their hands, is gradually being developed to an
extent scarcely compatible with the old-fashioned theories about
maidenly modesty and reserve. The change may be considered the effort of
modern civilization to remedy an evil of its own creation. The tide
advances in one direction because it recedes in another. If the men
will not come forward, the women must. It is all very well for satirists
to call this immodest, but even modesty could be more easily dispensed
with than marriage. Besides, without quitting our position as impartial
observers, we may point out that it is only fair to the professor of
husband-hunting to remember that there are two kinds of immodesty, and
that some actions are immodest merely because it is the custom to
consider them so. It would, no doubt, be immodest for a young lady to
ride through Hyde Park in man's fashion. Yet what is there in the nature
of things to make a side-saddle more modest than any other? The Amazons
were positive prudes, and would never have even spoken to man if they
could have contrived to carry on society without him; yet they rode
astraddle. And if fashion could make this practice feminine, why should
it not some day do as much for husband-hunting?

THE PERILS OF "PAYING ATTENTION."

We have elsewhere asserted that the art of match-making requires
cultivation. We are told, however, that, on the contrary, match-making
is so zealously studied and skillfully pursued that it bids fair to be
the great social evil of nineteenth-century civilization. The growing
difficulty of procuring sons-in-law has called forth a corresponding
increase in the skill required for capturing them, just as the wits of
the detective are sharpened to keep pace with the expertness which the
general spread of useful knowledge has conferred upon the thief.
Eligible bachelors complain that scarcity of marrying men has much the
same effect upon the match-making mother as scarcity of food upon the
wolf. It makes her at once more ferocious and more cunning. Her
invitations to croquet-parties and little dinners are so constant and so
pressing that it is scarcely possible for her destined prey to refuse
them all without manifest rudeness, and yet it is equally hard for him
to go without being judiciously manoeuvred into "paying attention" to
the one young lady who has been selected to