“Her face is big and round and white, and her eyes are bluer than any summer sky the poets could rave about.  Her lips are the original Cupid’s bow,—­in fact, Julia’s lips have about convinced me that Cupid must have been a woman, certainly he could ask no more deadly weapon for shattering the hearts of men.  Her hair is comical.  It is yellow gold, but it sticks straight out in every direction.  It is the most aggravatingly, irresistibly defiant hair you ever saw in your life.  It makes you kiss it, and brush it, and soak it in water, and shake Julia for having it, and then fall in love with her all over again.

“She is just beginning to talk.  When I arrived the whole family was assembled to do me honor, Prudence and Fairy, Lark and all the babies.  Julia seemed to resent her temporary eclipse in the limelight.  She crowed in a compelling way, and when I advanced to bow reverently before her, she pointed a fat, accusing finger at me, and said, ’Who is ‘at?’ Her very first word,—­and no presidential message ever provoked half the storm of approval her little phrase called forth.  We laughed, and kissed each other, and begged her to say it again, and Prudence said ‘Oh, if Carol could have heard that,’ and then we all rushed off and cried and scolded each other for being so silly, and Julia screamed.  Oh, it was a formal afternoon reception all right.

“And I am putting a little three-line ad in the morning Tribune.  ’Young, accomplished, attractive lady without means, of strong domestic tendencies, desires a husband, eugenic, rich, good looking.  Object matrimony.’

“Of course I know that I repeat myself.  But if you don’t say ’Object matrimony,’ some men wouldn’t catch the point.

“And so you are out of the San and keeping house again.  A brand-new honeymoon, of course, and cooing doves, and chiming bells, and all the rest of it.  When the rest of us back here write to each other, we say at the end, ‘Carol is well and David is better.’  It conveys the idea of a Thanksgiving service and a hallelujah chorus.  It means Good night, God bless you, and Merry Christmas, all in one.

“By the way, do you remember William Canfield Brewer, the original advertiser who got moved out when I moved in?  Well, between you and me, almost for a while I did begin to see some charms in matrimony.  He came again, and was properly introduced.  And took me for a drive,—­it seems he had just collected his salary,—­and he came again, and we went to the park, and he came again.  And that was when I began to see the halo around the wedding bells.  One night he was telling me his experiences in saving money,—­uproariously funny, my dear, for he never could save more than five dollars a month, and ran in debt fifteen dollars to encompass it.  He said: 

“’My wife used to say it was harder work for me to carry my salary home from the office than to earn it right at the start.’