llustration]

The Consolations of Spinsterhood

[Sidenote: "A Great Miration"]

The attached members of the community are wont to make what Uncle Remus
called "a great miration," when a woman deliberately chooses
spinsterhood as her lot in life, rather than marriage.

There is an implied pity in their delicate inquiries, and always the
insinuation that the spinster in question could never have had an offer
of marriage. The husband of the lady leading the inquisition may have
been one of the spinster's first admirers, but it is never safe to say
so, for so simple a thing as this has been known to cause trouble in
families.

If it is known positively that some man has offered her his name and his
troubles, and there is still no solitaire to be seen, the logical
hypothesis is charitably advanced, that she has been "disappointed in
love." It is possible for a spinster to be disappointed in lovers, but
only the married are ever disappointed in love.

[Sidenote: A Cause of Stagnation]

The married women who ask the questions and who, with gracious kindness,
hunt up attractive men for the unfortunate young woman to meet, are, all
unknowingly, one great cause of stagnation in the marriage-license
market.

Nothing so pleases a woman safely inside the bonds of holy matrimony as
to confide her sorrows, her regrets, and her broken ideals to her
unattached friends. Many a woman thinks her ideal is broken when it is
only sprained, but the effect is the same.

Was the coffee weak and were the waffles cold, and did Monsieur express
his opinion of such a breakfast in language more concise than elegant?
Madame weeps, and gives a lurid account of the event to the visiting
spinster. By any chance, does a girl go from her own dainty and orderly
room into an apartment strewn with masculine belongings, confounded upon
confusion such as Milton never dreamed? Does she have to wait while her
friend restores order to the chaos? If so, she puts it down in her
mental note-book, upon the page headed "Against."

The small domestic irritations which crowd upon the attached woman from
day to day, leaving crow's feet around her eyes and delicate tracery in
her forehead, have a certain effect upon the observing. But worse than
this is the spectre of "the other woman," which haunts her friend from
day to day, to the grave--and after, if the dead could tell their
thoughts.

If she has been safely shielded from books which were not wri