at," the stop-gap resumed, "but as an
inveterate enemy of divorce--"

An "Oh!" varying from surprise to derision chorused up; but he did not
mind it; he went on as if uninterrupted.

"I should put every possible obstacle, and at every step, in the way
of marriage. The attitude of society toward marriage is now simply
preposterous, absolutely grotesque. Society? The whole human framework
in all its manifestations, social, literary, religious, artistic, and
civic, is perpetually guilty of the greatest mischief in the matter.
Nothing is done to retard or prevent marriage; everything to
accelerate and promote it. Marriage is universally treated as a virtue
which of itself consecrates the lives of the mostly vulgar and
entirely selfish young creatures who enter into it. The blind and
witless passion in which it oftenest originates, at least with us, is
flattered out of all semblance to its sister emotions, and revered as
if it were a celestial inspiration, a spiritual impulse. But is it? I
defy any one here to say that it is."

As if they were afraid of worse things if they spoke, the company
remained silent. But this did not save them.

"You all know it isn't. You all know that it is the caprice of chance
encounter, the result of propinquity, the invention of poets and
novelists, the superstition of the victims, the unscrupulous
make-believe of the witnesses. As an impulse it quickly wears itself
out in marriage, and makes way for divorce. In this country
nine-tenths of the marriages are love-matches. The old motives which
delay and prevent marriage in other countries, aristocratic countries,
like questions of rank and descent, even of money, do not exist. Yet
this is the land of unhappy unions beyond all other lands, the very
home of divorce. The conditions of marriage are ideally favorable
according to the opinions of its friends, who are all more or less
active in bottling husbands and wives up in its felicity and
preventing their escape through divorce."

Still the others were silent, and again the stop-gap triumphed on.
"Now, I am an enemy of divorce, too; but I would have it begin before
marriage."

"Rather paradoxical again?" the bachelor alone had the hardihood to
suggest.

"Not at all. I am quite literal. I would have it begin with the
engagement. I would have the betrothed--the mistress and the
lover--come before the magistrate or the minister, and declare their
motives in wishing to marry, and then I wo