AN ENGAGEMENT.

Sometimes it is necessary to break off an engagement. Many circumstances
will justify this. Indeed anything which may occur or be discovered
which shall promise to render the marriage an unsuitable or unhappy one
is, and should be accepted as, justification for such rupture. Still,
breaking an engagement is always a serious and distressing thing, and
ought not to be contemplated without absolute and just reasons. It is
generally best to break an engagement by letter. By this means one can
express himself or herself more clearly, and give the true reason for
his or her course much better than in a personal interview. The letter
breaking the engagement should be accompanied by everything, in the way
of portraits, letters or gifts, that has been received during the
engagement. Such letters should be acknowledged in a dignified manner,
and no efforts should be made or measures be taken to change the
decision of the writer, unless it is manifest that he or she is greatly
mistaken in his or her premises. A similar return of letters, portraits
and gifts should be made.

Many men, in taking retrospective glances, remember how they were
devoted to women, the memory of whom calls up only a vague sort of
wonder how they ever could have fallen into the state of infatuation in
which they once were. The same may be said of many women. Heart-breaking
separations have taken place between young men and young women who have
learned that the sting of parting does not last forever. The heart,
lacerated by a hopeless or misplaced attachment, when severed from the
cause of its woe, gradually heals and prepares itself to receive fresh
wounds, for affection requires either a constant contemplation of, or
intercourse, with its object, to keep it alive.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVII.

Etiquette of Weddings.

The circumstances under which weddings take place are so varied, and the
religious forms observed in their solemnization so numerous, that to lay
down rules applicable to all cases would be a matter of great
difficulty, if not an impossibility. Consequently only those forms of
marriage attended with the fullest ceremonies, and all the attendant
ceremonials will here be given, and others may be modeled after them as
the occasion may seem to require. After the marriage invitations are
issued, the _fiancee_ does not appear in public. It is also _de rigueur_
at morning weddings, that she does not see the bridegro