t they regard him virtually as a deserter; they make parties
without including him; he drops out of their consultations; he has
lost his caste among the order of young men, and has not been
admitted among the husbands of the community; he hangs between two
states; is not of _that_, nor yet quite of _this_.

Naturally enough, there are a variety of opinions on the subject of
prolonging or cutting as short as possible this preliminary stage.
Those who regard marriage as a kind of commerce, whose clearing house
is St. Thomas's or St. Bartholomew's, will, of course, prefer to
clinch the contemplated arrangement as soon as possible. Their
business is intelligible; there is "no nonsense about them;" and, upon
the whole, the sooner they get to ordering dinner and paying taxes the
better. Many of us have sat waiting in a dentist's room with a
tooth-ache similar to that which made Burns

"Cast the wee stools owre the meikle;"

and some of us have watched for an editor's decision with feelings
which would gladly have annihilated the interval.

But it is not alone the prosaic and the impatient who are averse to a
long engagement: the methodical, whose arrangements it tumbles upside
down; the busy, whose time it appropriates; the selfish, who are
compelled during it to make continual small sacrifices; the shy, who
feel as if all the other relations of life had retired into the
background in order to exhibit them as "engaged men;" the greedy, who
look upon the expected love-offerings as so much tribute money,--these
and many other varieties of lovers would gladly simplify matrimony by
reducing its preliminaries to a question and a ceremony. Yet if Love
is to have anything like the place in life that it has in poetry; if
we really believe that marriage ought to be founded on sympathy of
tastes and principles; if we have any faith in that mighty ruler of
hearts and lives, a genuine love affair,--we shall not wish to dim the
glory of marriage by denying it this sojourn in a veritable enchanted
land; for in its atmosphere many fine feelings blossom that never
would have birth at all if the niceties of courtship were superseded
by the levelling rapidity of marriage. If people are _really_ in love
they gain more than they lose by a reasonable delay. There is time for
the reading and writing of love-letters, one of the sweetest
experiences of life; the tongue and pen get familiar with affectionate
and noble sentiments; indeed I doubt