ne theory to a bridesmaid at a wedding, particularly
after alcohol and crocodile tears have done their disarming work upon
her. That is to say, just hint to her that the bride harboured no
notion of marriage until stormed into acquiescence by the moonstruck and
impetuous bridegroom.

I have used the phrase, "in despair of finding better game." What I mean
is this that not one woman in a hundred ever marries her first choice
among marriageable men. That first choice is almost invariably one who
is beyond her talents, for reasons either fortuitous or intrinsic. Let
us take, for example, a woman whose relative navetete makes the process
clearly apparent, to wit, a simple shop-girl. Her absolute first choice,
perhaps, is not a living man at all, but a supernatural abstraction in
a book, say, one of the heroes of Hall Caine, Ethel M. Dell, or
Marie Corelli. After him comes a moving-picture actor. Then another
moving-picture actor. Then, perhaps, many more--ten or fifteen head.
Then a sebaceous young clergyman. Then the junior partner in the firm
she works for. Then a couple of department managers. Then a clerk. Then
a young man with no definite profession or permanent job--one of the
innumerable host which flits from post to post, always restive, always
trying something new--perhaps a neighborhood garage-keeper in the end.
Well, the girl begins with the Caine colossus: he vanishes into thin
air. She proceeds to the moving picture actors: they are almost as
far beyond her. And then to the man of God, the junior partner, the
department manager, the clerk; one and all they are carried off by girls
of greater attractions and greater skill--girls who can cast gaudier
flies. In the end, suddenly terrorized by the first faint shadows of
spinsterhood, she turns to the ultimate numskull--and marries him out of
hand.

This, allowing for class modifications, is almost the normal history
of a marriage, or, more accurately, of the genesis of a marriage, under
Protestant Christianity. Under other rites the business is taken out of
the woman's hands, at least partly, and so she is less enterprising in
her assembling of candidates and possibilities. But when the whole thing
is left to her own heart--i.e., to her head--it is but natural that
she should seek as wide a range of choice as the conditions of her
life allow, and in a democratic society those conditions put few if any
fetters upon her fancy. The servant girl, or factory operat