They expect that a girl should show her feeling toward them, before they come to the point.  But you must remember that girls also have to be cautious, and a few—­I acknowledge it is only a few—­would rather die than show they cared for a man who after all might only “love and ride away.”

Not that I altogether blame man in this respect.  I always admire pride, and am afraid I should not care for a refusal myself.  I am intolerant of it even in the smallest matters!

It is curious how men run in grooves.  The same style of man nearly always marries the opposite type of girl.  I mean that the intellectual, the clever, invariably choose the insipid brainless girl.  Pretty, she may be, but it is in a doll-like way, with not a thought above her household.  You would have imagined that such men would require some help-meet, in the fullest sense of the word; with a brain almost as quick as their own.  But such a choice occurs very seldom.

Again, why is it that little men always select the very tallest women they can find?  You would think that a man would hesitate to show off his meagre inches to such bad advantage.  But these pigmies appear to enjoy the contrast.  It is evidently quantity they admire, not quality.

I daresay a good deal of what I have written sounds very cynical, but perhaps my experience has been unfortunate, therefore you must forgive me:  certainly it is sometimes very difficult to distinguish between the real thing and its successful counterpart.

Parents are greatly at fault in the issues of the matrimonial market.  After all these centuries of experience you would give them credit for more tact than they possess.  Any match they do not desire, they oppose at once, and thereby set alight all the contradictory elements in your nature.  If Laban had been less obstinate, and had consented to an alliance between Jacob and Rachel from the first, provided Leah was left behind to look after him, the latter would immediately have been endowed with attractions innumerable to Jacob, tender eyes and all!

Nowhere is there such a fertile soil for love as opposition!

On the other hand, if parents wish to encourage a match, young people are thrown together as much as possible.  However big the gathering, you are somehow always paired off with the eligible party until you grow to loathe the man, and would sooner become an “old maid” than marry him.

Parents have a bad time altogether I am afraid.  Their nice little plans are so nearly always upset by their ungrateful children, and then they have to be continually looking after their brood.  I knew one mother who used to take her daughters on the pier and lose sight of them at once, as they paired off with their he-acquaintances.  Do what she would she could not find them again, so many were the nooks and crannies near at hand.  Finally she had recourse to the Camera Obscura, and, with the help of the views set before her there, she found the missing girls!  “We never can escape her now,” they told me in mournful tones, after her fatal discovery.