chever they like best of all the admiring
swains whom they fascinate at croquet-parties or balls. Practically, the
majority marry for an establishment, and only flirt for love. They leave
the school-room, no doubt, with an unimpeachably romantic conception of
a youthful bridegroom who combines good looks, great intellect, and
fervent piety with a modest four thousand a year, paid quarterly.

But they are not very long in finding out that the men whom they like
best, as being about their own age or still young enough to sympathise
with their tastes and enter heartily into all their notions of fun, are
rarely such as are pronounced by parents and guardians to be eligible;
and so, after one or two attacks, more or less serious, of love-fever,
they tranquilly look out for an admirer who can place the proper number
of servants and horses at their disposal, while they in return
magnanimously decline to make discourteously minute inquiries as to the
condition of his hair or teeth. A marriage made in this spirit, even
where no pressure is put upon the young lady by parents or friends, and
she is allowed full liberty of action, is open to all the charges
ordinarily brought against the Continental _mariage de convenance_. Yet,
on the other hand, it has not the advantage of being formally arranged
beforehand by a couple of elderly people, who are in no hurry, and who
have seen enough of the world to know thoroughly what they are about;
nor, we may add, does it usually take place in time to avert some one or
more of those troublesome flirtations with handsome, but penniless,
ball-room heroes which are not always calculated to improve either
temper or character.

Still, whatever our practice may be, we nevertheless do homage to the
theory that, in this favored country, young ladies choose whatever
husbands they like best, and marry for love; and although this theory is
in some respects a serious obstacle to marriage, and often stands
cruelly in the way of people with weak nerves, it places a powerful
weapon in the hands of the dauntless and determined match-maker. If
young people are to marry for love, they must obviously have every
facility afforded them for meeting and fascinating each other. It is
this consideration which reconciles the philosopher to some of our least
entertaining entertainments, although, at the same time, it makes so
much of our hospitality an organized hypocrisy.

It is, indeed, a hard fate to be obliged to