h that his kind hosts have had their appreciation of his merits
considerably sharpened by the fact that there is an ugly daughter or
sister-in-law in the house whom they are sick to death of, whom they are
always imploring "to marry or do something," and who, having for years
ogled and angled for every marriageable pair of whiskers and pantoloons
within ten miles, has gradually become so well known in the neighborhood
that her one forlorn hope is to carry off some innocent stranger with a
rush.

"_Quere peregrinum, vicinia rauca reclamat;_" and if the _peregrinus_
happens to be young and verdant, and, having just been given a good
appointment, feels, with the Vicar of Wakefield, that one of the three
greatest characters on earth is the father of a family, he is possibly
hooked securely before he discovers his danger. He discovers it to find
himself tied for life to a woman with whom he has not a sympathy in
common, and for whom every day increases his disgust. And the people who
have ruined his life have not even the sorry excuse that they wished to
better hers. Their one thought was to get rid of her as speedily as
possible, no matter to whom; and they would rather have had Bluebeard at
a two-months' engagement than any other man at one of six. There is
something so coarse and revolting, so brutal, in the notion of bringing
two people together into such a relation as that of marriage on purely
selfish grounds, and without the slightest regard to their future
happiness, that any one who has seen the snare laid for himself or his
friends may well shudder at the mere sound of match-making. Mezentius
was more merciful, for of the two bodies which he chained together only
one had life.

The clumsy match-maker is a scarcely less dangerous, though a far more
respectable, enemy to the gentle craft than the coarse one. She makes it
ridiculous, while the latter makes it odious, and it is ridicule that
kills. She is, perhaps, a well-meaning woman, who would be sorry to
marry two people unless she thought them suited to each other; but the
moment she has made up her mind that they ought to marry, she sets to
work with a vigor which, unless she has a very young man to deal with,
is almost sure to spoil her plans. This would not be surprising in a
silly woman; but it is odd that the more energetic, and, in some
respects, the more able a woman is, the more likely sometimes she is to
fall into this error.

A woman may be the life a