rls return these visits of congratulation in the
company of their parents. Some years ago, when a girl had been
confirmed, she was considered officially grown up and marriageable,
and entered straight away into the gaieties that are supposed to lead
to marriage. But the modern tendency in Germany is to prolong
girlhood, and the wife of sixteen is as rare there amongst the
educated classes as it is here.

Amongst the Jews in Germany marriages are still arranged for the young
people by their elders; often, as in France, through the intervention
of friends, but also by the business-like office of the marriage
broker. It need hardly be said, perhaps, that the refined and
enlightened Jews refuse to marry in this way. They insist on choosing
their own mate, and even on overlooking some disparity of fortune.
Unorthodox Jews marry Christian women, and the Jewish heiress
constantly allies herself and her money with a title or a uniform. In
the latter case, however, the nuptials are just as business-like as if
the _Schadchan_ had arranged them and received his commission. The
Graf or the Major gets the gold he lacks, and the rich Jewess gets
social prestige or the nearest approach to it possible in a
Jew-baiting land. An ardent anti-Semite told me that these mixed
marriages were not fertile, and that if only everyone of Jewish blood
would marry a Christian, the country would in course of time be
cleared of a race that, she solemnly assured me, is as great a curse
to it, and as inferior as the negro in America. But as she was an
anti-Semite with a sense of humour she admitted that the remedy was a
slow one and difficult to enforce. As a matter of fact, the Jews
marry mostly amongst themselves in Germany, and men are still living
in Frankfurt and other large cities who have made comfortable fortunes
by the brokerage they charged on their matchmaking. Formerly a
prosperous unmarried Jew used to be besieged by offers from these
agents; and so were men who could give their daughters a good dowry.
The better-class Jews do not employ them nowadays, but their marriages
are suggested and arranged much as marriages are in France. A young
merchant of Berlin thinks it is time to settle down, or perhaps wants
a little capital to enlarge his business. He consults an uncle in
Frankfurt. The uncle tells his old friend, the father of several
daughters, that the most handsome, industrious, and accomplished man
the world has ever seen, his own nep