s. You
can't choose them. You've just got to sit down and wait until they
arrive; and sometimes they don't arrive at all. A woman doesn't 'pick
out' a husband; she 'picks over' what's offered and takes the best of
the lot."

"And sometimes you're so long picking them over," added the bachelor,
"that the best ones are snapped up by somebody else and you have to take
the left-overs."

The widow poised her spoon above her cup tentatively.

"Well," she sighed, "it's all a lottery anyhow. The girl who snaps up
her first offer of marriage is as likely to get something good as the
one who snaps her finger at it and waits for a Prince Charming until the
last hour and then discovers that she has passed him by and that some
other woman has taken him and made him over beautifully. And even if a
girl had the whole world to select from, she wouldn't know how to
choose. You never can tell by the way a thing looks under the electric
light in the shop how it will look in broad daylight when you have got
it home, or how it will make up or whether it will fade or run or
shrink. And you never can tell by the way a man acts before marriage how
he will come out in the wash of domesticity, or stand the wear and tear
of matrimony. It's usually the most brilliant and catchy patterns of
manhood that turn out to be cotton-backed after the gloss of the
honeymoon has worn off. And on the other hand you may carefully select
something serviceable--dull and virtuous and worthy and all that--and he
may prove so stiff and lumpy and set in his ways and cross-grained and
seamy and irritable that you will cultivate gray hairs and wrinkles----"

"Ironing him out?" suggested the bachelor.

"Yes," agreed the widow, "and the wildest 'jolly good fellow' will
often tame down like a lamb or a pet pony in harness and will become a
joy forever with a little trimming off and taking in and basting up."

"Humph," protested the bachelor, "but when you catch 'em wild and tame
'em, how do you know they are not going to break the harness or burst
the basting threads?"

The widow considered a moment.

"You don't," she acknowledged grudgingly. "But there is a great deal in
catching the wild variety and domesticating them while they are young.
Of course, it's utterly impossible to subdue a lion after he has got his
second teeth, and it's utterly foolish to try to reform a man--after he
is thirty or has begun to lose his hair. Besides," she added, "there is
so much