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 parallel. But, as is
well known, matrimony among these same upper classes is largely form
devoid of substance. It begins impressively with a dual ceremony,