leave your after-dinner
cigar and George Eliot's last novel in order to drive four miles through
wind and snow to a party which your hostess has given, not because she
has good fare, or good music, or agreeable guests, or anything, in
short, really calculated to amuse you, but simply and solely because she
has a tribe of daughters who somehow must be disposed of. Yet even a man
of the Sir Cornewall Lewis stamp, who thinks that this world would be a
very tolerable place but for its amusements, may forgive her when he
reflects that business, not pleasure, is at the bottom of the
invitation. If marriage is to be kept up, we must either abandon our
theory that young ladies are allowed to choose husbands for themselves,
or we must give them every possible facility for exercising the choice.
Bachelors must be dragged, on every available pretext, and without the
slightest reference to the nominal ends of amusement or hospitality,
from the novel or cigar, and made to run the gauntlet of female charms.

From the Sir Cornewall Lewis point of view, with which nearly all
Englishmen over thirty more or less sympathise, it is the only sound
defence of many of our so-called entertainments that they are virtually
daughter-shows--genteel auctions, without which a sufficiently brisk
trade in matrimony could not possibly be carried on. The consciousness
of this is doubtless in one way somewhat of an obstacle to flirtation,
and gives the frisky matron a cruel advantage over her unmarried rival.
A man must have oak and triple brass round his heart who can flirt
perfectly at his ease when he knows that his "attentions" are not
merely watched by vigilant chaperons, but are actually reduced to a
matter of numerical calculation--that a certain number of dances, or
calls, or polite speeches will justify a stern father or big brother in
asking his "intentions."

This application of arithmetic is, in some respects, as dangerous to
courtship as to the Pentateuch. But, nevertheless, it gives the clever
and courageous match-maker an advantage of which the eligible bachelor
complains that she makes the most pitiless use. He finds himself
manoeuvred into "paying the attentions" which society considers the
usual prelude to a marriage, with a dexterity which it is all but
impossible to evade. The lady is played into his hands with much the
same sort of skill that a conjuror exhibits in forcing a card. There are
perhaps a number of other ladies present,