dear; but on general principles, I shouldn't advise such a match. A
widower would be just the thing for you, and there always are widowers,
and every year the list grows--death makes inroads, you know."

This idea, this hope of a second crop, as I had passed beyond the first
picking, was comforting. I knew perfectly well whom she had in mind for
me--a nice fat little widower, about fifty years old, who had been held
on the marital spit, until he was done to a turn.

III

The summer was ended, and I was not married. I am speaking now from the
standpoint of my neighbors; to my mind life did not swing on this hinge.
I had my occupations--there were a goodly number of needy folk to be
looked after; there was my reading; my music; my friends, and other
pleasures, and altogether I felt I was very well off. Not that I was
cynically opposed to marriage; I intended to marry, if the right man
called, but if he did not I was content to end life as I had begun it--in
single blessedness.

My neighbors, however, were of another mind--I must marry; and they kept
making efforts to find some one who would fit, trying on one man after
another, without his consent or mine, something as one would attempt to
force clothes on a savage.

But in spite of all such friendly offices the summer was ended, and I
was not married. I was thinking of it on this particular day, as I stood
gazing from the window--thinking of it with a sort of quiet wonder, for
with an entire neighborhood intent upon this end, it was rather
surprising that I was not double by this time. Had they succeeded I
should now occupy a very different attitude. It is only old bachelors
and old maids who speculate and theorize on marriage; when people are
really about it, they say little, and (it would often appear) think
less.

It was a day for speculation--this particular one; the dead leaves were
scurrying up the street as people ran for a train; a gusty wind was
carrying all before it for the time being, like an overbearing debater.
The trees shook and groaned, recoiled and shuddered, like human
creatures in the blast; in their agitation dropping hosts of leaves that
immediately slipped under covert, or else joined their fellows in the
race up town. The sky was non-committal, and the lake looked dark and
secretive, as if it meditated wreck and disaster.

It was only the middle of September, but there had been several of these
day