and the female mind is fixed on this
subject with such dire intent, it is not astonishing that a weaker sister
is occasionally tempted beyond her powers of resistance. Nor that each
day a new case of a well-dressed woman thieving in a shop reaches our
ears. The poor feeble-minded creature is not to blame. She is but the
reflexion of the minds around her and is probably like the lady Emerson
tells of, who confessed to him "that the sense of being perfectly well-
dressed had given her a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion was
powerless to bestow."

No. 5--On Some Gilded Misalliances

A dear old American lady, who lived the greater part of her life in Rome,
and received every body worth knowing in her spacious drawing-rooms, far
up in the dim vastnesses of a Roman palace, used to say that she had only
known one really happy marriage made by an American girl abroad.

In those days, being young and innocent, I considered that remark
cynical, and in my heart thought nothing could be more romantic and
charming than for a fair compatriot to assume an historic title and
retire to her husband's estates, and rule smilingly over him and a
devoted tenantry, as in the last act of a comic opera, when a
rose-colored light is burning and the orchestra plays the last brilliant
chords of a wedding march.

There seemed to my perverted sense a certain poetic justice about the
fact that money, gained honestly but prosaically, in groceries or gas,
should go to regild an ancient blazon or prop up the crumbling walls of
some stately palace abroad.

Many thoughtful years and many cruel realities have taught me that my
gracious hostess of the "seventies" was right, and that marriage under
these conditions is apt to be much more like the comic opera after the
curtain has been rung down, when the lights are out, the applauding
public gone home, and the weary actors brought slowly back to the present
and the positive, are wondering how they are to pay their rent or dodge
the warrant in ambush around the corner.

International marriages usually come about from a deficient knowledge of
the world. The father becomes rich, the family travel abroad, some
mutual friend (often from purely interested motives) produces a suitor
for the hand of the daughter, in the shape of a "prince" with a title
that makes the whole simple American family quiver with delight.

After a few visits the suitor declares himself; the girl is flattered