he lingers where she stays, and
hastens when she leaves,--when his eyes follow her as she moves and rest
upon her when she is still,--when he begins to grow a little timid,
he who was so bold, and a little pensive, he who was so gay, whenever
accident finds them alone,--when he thinks very often of the given young
lady, and names her very seldom,--

What do you say about it, my charming young expert in that sweet science
in which, perhaps, a long experience is not the first of qualifications?

--But we don't know anything about this young man, except that he is
good-looking, and somewhat high-spirited, and strong-limbed, and has a
generous style of nature,--all very promising, but by no means proving
that he is a proper lover for Iris, whose heart we turned inside out
when we opened that sealed book of hers.

Ah, my dear young friend! When your mamma then, if you will believe it,
a very slight young lady, with very pretty hair and figure--came and
told her mamma that your papa had--had--asked No, no, no! she could n't
say it; but her mother--oh the depth of maternal sagacity!--guessed it
all without another word!--When your mother, I say, came and told her
mother she was engaged, and your grandmother told your grandfather, how
much did they know of the intimate nature of the young gentleman to whom
she had pledged her existence? I will not be so hard as to ask how much
your respected mamma knew at that time of the intimate nature of
your respected papa, though, if we should compare a young
girl's man-as-she-thinks-him with a forty-summered matron's
man-as-she-finds-him, I have my doubts as to whether the second would be
a facsimile of the first in most cases.

The idea that in this world each young person is to wait until he or she
finds that precise counterpart who alone of all creation was meant for
him or her, and then fall instantly in love with it, is pretty enough,
only it is not Nature's way. It is not at all essential that all pairs
of human beings should be, as we sometimes say of particular couples,
"born for each other." Sometimes a man or a woman is made a great deal
better and happier in the end for having had to conquer the faults of
the one beloved, and make the fitness not found at first, by gradual
assimilation. There is a class of good women who have no right to marry
perfectly good men, because they have the power of saving those who
would go to ruin but for the guiding providence of a good wife.