they ought not to be cheerful and happy in their lot? For a character of
this undeniable sobriety there is indeed a positive advantage in a plain
girl as a wife. It should never be forgotten that the man who marries a
plain girl never need be jealous. He is in the Arcadian and fortunate
condition of a lover who has no rivals. A sensible unambitious nature
will recognize in this a solid benefit. Plain girls rarely turn into
frisky matrons, and this fact renders them peculiarly adapted to be the
wives of dull and steady mediocrity.

Lest it should be supposed that the above calculation of what plain
girls may do leaves some of their power and success still unaccounted
for, it is quite right and proper to add that the story of plain girls,
if it were carefully written, would contain many instances, not merely
of moderate good fortunes, but of splendid and exceptional triumph. Like
_prima donnas_, opera-dancers, and lovely milliners, plain girls have
been known to make extraordinary hits, and to awaken illustrious
passions. Somebody ought to take up the subject in a book, and tell us
how they did it.

This is the age of Golden Treasuries. We have Golden Treasuries of
English poets, of French poets, of great lawyers, of famous battles, of
notable beauties, of English heroes, of successful merchants, and of
almost every sort of character and celebrity that can be conceived. What
is wanted is a Golden Treasury containing the narrative of the most
successful plain girls. This book might be called the Book of Ugliness,
and we see no reason why, to give reality to the story, the portraits of
some of the most remarkable might not be appended. Of course, if ever
such a volume is compiled, it will be proved to demonstration that plain
girls have before now arrived at great matrimonial honor and renown.

There is, for example, the sort of plain girl who nurses her hero
(perhaps in the Crimea) through a dangerous attack of illness, and
marries him afterwards. There is the class of those who have been
married simply from a sense of duty. There is the class that
distinguishes itself by profuse kindness to poor cottagers, and by
reading the Bible to blind old women; an occupation which as we know,
from the most ordinary works of fiction, leads directly to the
promptest and speediest attachments on the part of the young men who
happen to drop in casually at the time. The catalogue of such is perhaps
long and famous. Yet, allowing for al