elds of law, medicine, and
newspaper enterprise, would be more appalling to man and encouraging to
the progressionists, but for the obstinate though obvious adhesion of
the great mass of woman-kind to the trick bequeathed to them by their
great-great-grandmothers of trying to look as well as they can. And
the terrible part of it is they succeed so wonderfully that
philosophers like myself are apt to find our ratiocinations wofully
mixed when we try to reason about the matter.

You remember, perhaps, that Josephine induced me earlier in our wedded
life to give a large party for her sister Julia? Within a year I have
submitted to a similar domestic upheaval on account of my elder
daughter, and I do not think that it can be said that I acquitted
myself in either case malignantly or even morosely. Indeed, though
this is not strictly relevant to the discussion, my wife informed me
after Josie's party was over that I had behaved like an angel. Now, my
sister-in-law, Julia, is still unmarried, and she cannot be far from
thirty. As I reflected at the time she came out, she is less comely
than my wife and not so sagacious, but she is decidedly an attractive
girl. She has had every advantage in the line of social
entertainments, and every opportunity to meet available young men. She
has waltzed all winter and been successively to Bar Harbor and Newport
in summer. She has been to Europe so as to let people forget her and
to reappear as a novelty, and she has altered the shape of her hair
twice to my individual observation. Yet somehow she hangs fire. I am
informed by Josephine, in strict confidence, that she has had offers
and might have been married to at least one eminently desirable man
before this had she seen fit to accept him; but I tell my darling that
though the consciousness of what might have been may be a legitimate
consolation to her and to her sister, it does not controvert the bald
fact that Julia is still unmarried at the end of ten years of social
divagations.

I do not mean that Julia may not marry. Very likely she will. She
certainly ought to if she has the desire; and she has time enough yet
if the right man only thinks so. It is rather on the system I am
pondering than on the individual, though the vision of Josie at thirty
unwedded, and a little hard and worn, haunts my retina and makes me
feel philosophical. Away down in the bottom of my boots or my soul, or
wherever a man can most safely harb