decorators, and caterers. After that,
comes a rush through offices, where one waits in line, gazing vaguely at
busy clerks engulfed in papers. A fortunate thing, if there be time when
this is over, to run home and dress for the series of ceremonial
dinners--betrothal dinners, dinners of presentation, the settlement
dinner, receptions, balls. About midnight, home again, harassed and
weary, to find the latest accumulation of parcels, and a deluge of
letters--congratulations, felicitations, acceptances and regrets from
bridesmaids and ushers, excuses of tardy tradesmen. And the
_contretemps_ of the last minute--a sudden death that disarranges the
bridal party; a wretched cold that prevents a favorite cantatrice from
singing, and so forth, and so forth. Those poor Blanchards! They will
never be ready, and they thought they had foreseen everything!

Such has been their existence for a month. No longer possible to
breathe, to rest a half-hour, to tranquillize one's thoughts. _No, this
is not living!_

Mercifully, there is Grandmother's room. Grandmother is verging on
eighty. Through many toils and much suffering, she has come to meet
things with the calm assurance which life brings to men and women of
high thinking and large hearts. She sits there in her arm-chair,
enjoying the silence of long meditative hours. So the flood of affairs
surging through the house, ebbs at her door. At the threshold of this
retreat, voices are hushed and footfalls softened; and when the young
_fiances_ want to hide away for a moment, they flee to Grandmother.

"Poor children!" is her greeting. "You are worn out! Rest a little and
belong to each other. All these things count for nothing. Don't let them
absorb you, it isn't worth while."

They know it well, these two young people. How many times in the last
weeks has their love had to make way for all sorts of conventions and
futilities! Fate, at this decisive moment of their lives, seems bent
upon drawing their minds away from the one thing essential, to harry
them with a host of trivialities; and heartily do they approve the
opinion of Grandmamma when she says, between a smile and a caress:

"Decidedly, my dears, the world is growing too complex; and it does not
make people happier--quite the contrary!"

* * * * *

I also, am of Grandmamma's opinion. From the cradle to the grave, in his
needs as in his pleasures, in his conception of the world and of
himself, the m