s in the use of negatives, is a
standing menace to the future happiness of the people."

"Hoity-toity," cried Mrs. Pedagog. "What a proposition. Tell me, Mr.
Idiot, if a woman is not capable of selecting her own husband, who on
earth is? Man himself--that embodiment of all the wisdom and all the
sagacity of the ages?"

"I didn't say so," said the Idiot. "And I don't really think so," he
added. "The whole institution of getting engaged to be married should be
regulated by the public authorities. Every county should have its
Matrimonial Bureau, whose duty it should be to pair off all the eligible
candidates in the matrimonial market, and in pairing them off it should
be done on a basis of mutual fitness. Bachelors and old maids should be
legislated out of existence, and nobody should be allowed to marry a
second time until everybody else had been provided for. It is perfectly
scandalous to me to read in the newspapers that a prominent widow in a
certain town has married her third husband, when it is known that that
same city contains 25,000 old maids who haven't the ghost of a show
unless the State steps in and helps them out. What business has any
woman to work up a corner in husbands, with so many of her sisters
absolutely starving matrimonially?"

"And the young people are to have nothing to say about it, eh?" asked
Mr. Brief.

"Oh yes--they can put in an application to the Bureau stating that they
want to wed, and the Board of Managers can consider the desirability of
issuing a permit," said the Idiot. "And they should be compelled to show
cause why they should not be restrained from getting married. It is only
in such a way that the state can reasonably guarantee the permanence of
a contract to which it is in a sense a party. The State, by the
establishment of certain laws, demands that the marriage contract shall
practically be a life affair. It should therefore take it upon itself to
see to it that there is a tolerable prospect at least that the contract
is a just one. Many a poor woman has been bound to a life-long
obligation of misery in which no consideration whatever has been paid by
the party of the second part. If a contract without consideration will
not stand in commerce, why should it in matrimony?"

"What you ought to go in for is Mormonism," snapped Mrs. Pedagog. "Keep
on getting married until you've found just the right one and then get
rid of all the others."

"That is a pleasing alternative," s