ing to
the love of one" and that in a right marriage there would be no
conscious sacrifice. If she were not free to continue the work that she
loved, she would feel no deprivation.

Happiness is often thrust aside because of her ideals. She demands all
things in a single man, forgetting that she, too, is human and not by
any means faultless. Some day, perhaps too late, she understands that
love and criticism lie far apart, that love brings beauty with it, and
that the marks of individuality are the very texture of charm, as the
splendour of the opal lies in its flaws.

[Sidenote: The Vital Touch]

There is always the doubt as to whether the seeker may be the one of all
the world to find the inmost places in her heart. Taste and temperament
may be akin, position and purpose in full accord, and yet the vital
touch may be lacking. Sometimes, in the after-years, it may be found by
two who seek for it patiently together, but too often dissonance grows
into discord and estrangement.

The march of civilisation has done away with the odium which was
formerly the portion of the unattached woman. It is no disgrace to be a
spinster, and apparently it is fitting and proper to be an old maid,
since so many of them have "Mrs." on their cards, and since there are
so many narrow-minded and critical men who fully deserve the
appellation.

There is no use in saying that any particular girl is a spinster from
necessity rather than choice. One has but to look at the peculiar
specimens of womankind who have married, to be certain that there is no
one on the wide earth who could not do so if she chose.

[Sidenote: "A Discipline"]

Some people are fond of alluding to marriage as "a discipline," and
sometimes a grey-haired matron will volunteer the information that "the
first years of marriage are anything but happy." To one who has hitherto
regarded it from a different point of view, the training-school idea is
not altogether attractive.

Men and women who have been through it very seldom hold to their first
opinions. It is considered as a business arrangement, a social
contrivance, sometimes as an easy way to make money, but by very few as
the highest form of happiness.

[Sidenote: Small Extravagances]

The consolations of spinsterhood are mainly negative, but the minus sign
has its proper place in the personal equation. "The other woman" does
not exist for the spinster, save as a shadowy possibility. She is not
asked what she