marrying a
daughter.

Thirdly, there was that daughter, a dear, sweet girl, who seemed to me
perfectly content in her enjoyment of the social pleasures in which she
was so well adapted to shine. I regarded her as still a mere child,
and though youths came and went, never for one moment did I suspect
that she was meditating the blow which she has since inflicted upon me,
until Josephine told me one evening, with a mysterious, agitated air,
that Mr. James Perkins wished to see me in the library. He saw me, and
all the consolation I derived from our interview was the impression
that he considered that he was acting generously in asking my consent
to the match, and that custom would have justified him in letting me
hear the news of my daughter's engagement elsewhere and in seeing me
further, as the phrase is, before he saw me at all. Remembering as I
did that I regarded the views of Josephine's father concerning our
little matter twenty-five years ago as a matter of mere detail, only
think how far I fell short of the temper of a real philosopher in
allowing myself to become violently angry, and to pace the library
until one o'clock in the morning after my would-be son-in-law had left
it! An especially futile proceeding, as Josephine subsequently
remarked, inasmuch as, by my own admission, I had behaved like a
veritable lamb in his presence and had told him blandly that if he and
my daughter were agreed upon the subject I had not a word to say
against it.

This was the first break in our peaceful, happy domestic circle. Do
you know what the period of an idolized daughter's engagement seems to
the disdained and discarded husband and father? He is too shy and
dignified to peep at the billing and cooing through the crack of the
drawing-room door like the younger members of the family; consequently,
the six months which intervene between the making of the match and its
consummation, impress him as a Sahara of tedious confabulation between
the pair of turtle doves as to whether they have too many salt-cellars
for their marital needs, and whether the exchange of a third set of
oyster-forks without the knowledge of the donor would be a violation of
the highest code of ethics. Presents, presents, nothing but presents,
of every kind and degree, from the solid silver tea-set of exquisitely
fluted pattern to the excruciatingly ugly bit of _bric-a-brac_ which
has captivated the undiscerning eye of some dear friend. After ever