say, just hint to her that the bride harboured no notion of marriage
until stormed into acquiescence by the moonstruck and impetuous
bridegroom.


I have used the phrase, "in despair of finding better game." What I
mean is this that not one woman in a hundred ever marries her first
choice among marriageable men. That first choice is almost
invariably one who is beyond her talents, for reasons either
fortuitous or intrinsic. Let us take, for example, a woman whose
relative navetete makes the process clearly apparent, to wit, a simple
shop-girl. Her absolute first choice, perhaps, is not a living man at
all, but a supernatural abstraction in a book, say, one of the
heroes of Hall Caine, Ethel M.Dell, or Marie Corelli. After him
comes a moving-picture actor. Then another moving-picture actor.
Then, perhaps, many more--ten or fifteen head. Then a sebaceous
young clergyman. Then the junior partner in the firm she works
for. Then a couple of department managers. Then a clerk. Then a
young man with no definite profession or permanent job--one of the
innumerable host which flits from post to post, always restive,
always trying something new--perhaps a neighborhood
garage-keeper in the end. Well, the girl begins with the Caine
colossus: he vanishes into thin air. She proceeds to the moving
picture actors: they are almost as far beyond her. And then to the
man of God, the junior partner, the department manager, the clerk;
one and all they are carried off by girls of greater attractions and
greater skill--girls who can cast gaudier flies. In the end, suddenly
terrorized by the first faint shadows of spinsterhood, she turns to the
ultimate numskull--and marries him out of hand.