"Do men never marry for money?" inquired the Girton Girl. "I ask
merely for information. Maybe I have been misinformed, but I have
heard of countries where the dot is considered of almost more
importance than the bride."

"The German officer," I ventured to strike in, "is literally on
sale. Young lieutenants are most expensive, and even an elderly
colonel costs a girl a hundred thousand marks."

"You mean," corrected the Minor Poet, "costs her father. The
Continental husband demands a dowry with his wife, and sees that he
gets it. He in his turn has to save and scrape for years to provide
each of his daughters with the necessary dot. It comes to the same
thing precisely. Your argument could only apply were woman equally
with man a wealth producer. As it is, a woman's wealth is
invariably the result of a marriage, either her own or that of some
shrewd ancestress. And as regards the heiress, the principle of
sale and purchase, if I may be forgiven the employment of common
terms, is still more religiously enforced. It is not often that the
heiress is given away; stolen she may be occasionally, much to the
indignation of Lord Chancellors and other guardians of such
property; the thief is very properly punished--imprisoned, if need
be. If handed over legitimately, her price is strictly exacted, not
always in money--that she possesses herself, maybe in sufficiency;
it enables her to bargain for other advantages no less serviceable
to her children--for title, place, position. In the same way the
Neolithic woman, herself of exceptional strength and ferocity, may
have been enabled to bestow a thought upon her savage lover's
beauty, his prehistoric charm of manner; thus in other directions no
less necessary assisting the development of the race."