themselves with a wife, who requires at least half the money--they
have never found sufficient for themselves alone--besides a great deal
of looking after!

Women, on the contrary, are different. They have to make some
provision for the future, so to speak. How do you like it, oh men! the
idea that you, with your handsome personages and fascinating ways, are
used only as a kind of insurance office? This is the case very often,
however, though you may not know it!

Yet others pursue the god Hymen merely for the sake of being married.
As soon as they leave the school-room, sometimes before, they begin
their search for a husband, and look out for him in the person of
every man they meet. No matter who it is so long as they are married
before So-and-So, and can triumph over all their friends.

It must be said for men that they are falling off in the marrying
line. This is not nearly such a proposing generation as the last. Then
they married much younger and seemed to propose after a few days'
acquaintance. No, this is a more cautious age altogether. Men look
round carefully before they make their choice. They sample it well,
they watch it in the home circle, they watch it abroad, they watch it
with other men, and finally come to the conclusion that it is worthy
to be allied to their noble selves, or they don't!

Another thing. Men of the present day are so direfully afraid of a
refusal! So fearful are they, that rather than risk one, they give up
many chances of happiness.

They expect that a girl should show her feeling toward them, before