I remember that friends spoke of her engagement with Willis Grant as a “good match,” and rather wondered that she did not seem more elated with the prospect of being the mistress of such a pleasant little establishment as would be hers, for she was one of a large family of daughters, and her father’s income as a professional man did not equal that of Willis, who was at the head of one of our largest mercantile houses.  But it was in her nature to take things calmly, though she was young, and all the kindness of his attentions, and the prospect of a new home, as much as any happy bride could have done.  It was a delightful home—­not so extravagantly furnished as Willis would have chosen it to be, but tasteful, and withal including many of those luxuries and elegancies which we of the nineteenth century are rapidly, too rapidly, learning to need.  Willis declared that no one could be happier than they were; and, strange as it may seem, the envious world for once prophesied no cloud in the future.

But we have nothing to do with that first eventful year of married life—­the year of attrition in mind and character, when two natures, differing in many points, and these sharpened as it were by education, are suddenly brought into immediate contact.  There were some ideals overthrown, no doubt—­it is often so; and some good qualities discovered, which were unsuspected before.  The second anniversary of the wedding-day was also the birth-day of a darling child, and the home was more homelike than ever.

Yet Willis Grant was seldom there.  It was not that he loved his wife the less—­that her beauty had faded, or her temper changed.  She was the same as ever—­gentle, affectionate, and thoughtful for his wishes; and he appreciated all this.  But before he had known her, in those wild idle days of early manhood, when the spirit craves continual excitement, and has not yet learned that it is the love of woman’s purer nature which it needs, Willis had chosen his associates in a circle which it was very difficult to break from, now that their society was no longer essential to him.  He was close in his attention to business; his great, success had arisen from industry as well as talent; but when the counting-house was closed, there was no family circle to welcome him, and the doors of the club-house were invitingly open.

True, it was one of the most respectable clubs of the city, mostly composed of young business men like himself, who discussed the tariffs and their effects upon trade over their recherche dinners, and chatted of European politics over their wine.  And this reminds us of one thing that argues much, if not more than anything else, against the club-house system, that is so rapidly gaining favor in our cities.  It accustoms the young man just entering life to a surrounding of luxury that he cannot himself consistently support when he begins to think of having a home of his own.  He passes his evenings in a beautiful