ave even looked at rooms where you believe you and Ernest could be
ideally happy. And you want me to act as matron-of-honour at that very
informal little wedding.

Now, my dear girl, before you take this important step, give the matter
careful study.

Your impulses are beautiful, and your ideal natural and lovely. God
intended men and women to choose their mates in this very way, with no
consideration of a worldly nature to mar their happiness.

But civilized young ladies are a far call from God's primitive woman.
You have lived for twenty-three years in the lap of modern luxury. Your
father prides himself upon the fact that, although your mother died when
you were very young, he has carefully shielded you from everything which
could cast a shadow upon your name or nature. Your lover is fascinated
with your absolute purity and innocence. Yet he does not realize that a
young woman who has so long "sat in the lap of Luxury," is unfit to be a
poor man's wife.

Some girl who might know much more than you of the dark and vulgar side
of life, would make him a better companion if he could love her enough
to ask her hand in marriage.

The girl who has received the addresses of this fascinating old fellow
"Luxury," never quite forgets him, or ceases to bemoan him if she
throws him over for a poor man.

To _look_ at two rooms and a bath is one thing, to _live_ in them
another, after having all your life occupied a suite which a queen might
envy, with retinues of servitors at call.

You tell me you could die for your lover.

But can you bathe from a wash-bowl and pitcher, and can you take your
meals at cheap restaurants, and make coffee and toast on an oil-stove or
a chafing-dish?

Can you wear cheap clothing and ride in trolleys, and economize on
laundry bills to prove your love for this man?

You never have known one single hardship in your life; you never have
faced poverty, or even experienced the ordinary economies of well-to-do
people.

You are an only daughter of wealth--_American wealth_. That sentence
conveys a world of meaning. _It means that you are spoiled for anything
but comfort in this life_.

For a few weeks you might believe yourself in a fairy-land of romance
if you married your lover and went to live in the two rooms. But at the
end of that period you would begin to realize that you were in a very
actual land of poverty and discomfort.

Discomfort is relative. Those rooms to the shop-girl who ha