g the contagion and then gets it horribly and marries his
cook or a chorus girl young enough to be his granddaughter. Haven't you
seen confirmed bachelors successfully resist the wiles of the most
fascinating women and turn down a dozen suitable girls--and then, just
when you thought they were quite safe and entirely past the chance of
marriage as well as their first youth, turn around and tie themselves
to some little fool thing without a penny to her name or a thought worth
half that amount? That was a late attack of the matrimonial fever--and
the older you get it the harder it goes. Let me see," added the widow
thoughtfully, "how old are you?"

"I haven't lost my ideals--nor my teeth!" declared the bachelor
defensively.

"What is your ideal?" asked the widow leaning over and peeping up under
the bachelor's hat brim.

The bachelor stared back at her through lowered lashes.

"It's got on a violet hat," he began, "and violet----"

"Is that a ship out there?" asked the widow, suddenly becoming
interested in the sea.

"And violet----"

"Oh, dear!" she interrupted petulantly. "Of course, you've got ideals.
All men have ideals--but they don't often marry them. The trouble is
that when a man has the marrying fever he can clothe anything in curls
and petticoats with the illusions he has built around that ideal, and
put the ideal's halo on her head and imagine she is the real thing. He
can look at a red-headed, pug-nosed girl from an angle that will make
her hair seem pure gold and her pug look Greek. By some mental feat, he
can transform a girl six feet tall with no waist line and an acute elbow
into a kittenish, plump little thing that he has always had in mind--and
marry her. Or, if his ideal is tall and willowy and ethereal, and he
happens to meet a woman weighing 200 pounds whose first thought in the
morning is her breakfast and whole last thought at night is her dinner,
he will picture her merely attractively plump and a marvel of intellect
and imagination. And," the widow sank her chin in her hand and gazed out
to sea reflectively, "it is all so pitiful, when you think how happy men
could make marriage, if they would only go about it scientifically!"

"Then what," inquired the bachelor flinging away his cigar and folding
his arms dramatically, "is the science of choosing a wife?"

"Well," said the widow, counting off on the tips of her lilac silk
gloves, "first of all a man should never choose a wife when he f