lf, it
were much better for him had he not done so, for the choice of a bride
is not his, nor of a bridegroom hers. Marriage to a Far Oriental is
the most important mercantile transaction of his whole life. It is,
therefore, far too weighty a matter to be entrusted to his youthful
indiscretion; for although the person herself is of lamentably little
account in the bargain, the character of her worldly circumstances is
most material to it. So she is contracted for with the same care one
would exercise in the choice of any staple business commodity. The
particular sample is not vital to the trade, but the grade of goods is.
She is selected much as the bride of the Vicar of Wakefield chose her
wedding-gown, only that the one was at least cut to suit, while the
other is not. It is certainly easier, if less fitting, to get a wife as
some people do clothes, not to their own order, but ready made; all the
more reason when the bargain is for one's son, not one's self. So the
Far East, which looks at the thing from a strictly paternal standpoint
and ignores such trifles as personal preferences, takes its boy to the
broker's and fits him out. That the object of such parental care does
not end by murdering his unfortunate spouse or making way with himself
suggests how dead already is that individuality which we deem to be of
the very essence of the thing.

Marriage is thus a species of investment contracted by the existing
family for the sake of the prospective one, the actual participants
being only lay figures in the affair. Sometimes the father decides the
matter himself; sometimes he or the relative who stands in loco parentis
calls for a plebiscit on the subject; for such an extension of the
suffrage has gradually crept even into patriarchal institutions. The
family then assemble, sit in solemn conclave on the question, and
decide it by vote. Of course the interested parties are not asked their
opinion, as it might be prejudiced. The result of the conference must
be highly gratifying. To have one's wife chosen for one by vote of one's
relatives cannot but be satisfactory--to the electors. The outcome of
this ballot, like that of universal suffrage elsewhere, is at the best
unobjectionable mediocrity. Somehow such a result does not seem quite
to fulfil one's ideal of a wife. It is true that the upper classes
of impersonal France practise this method of marital selection, their
conseils de famille furnishing in some sort a para