Astonishing at least to me, though Josephine says that I need not have
been astonished had I kept my eyes open, inasmuch as the affair was
going on under my very nose, and everybody in town except myself knew
how it was likely to end. I refer to my daughter Josie's engagement.

Yesterday I gave her away--a euphemistic way of stating that she was
torn from my arms--to a young man of whom I know next to nothing,
though I hear on all sides that he is a very nice fellow, which might
mean that he is utterly without principle and an easy-going, idle,
selfish hound. In appearance he does not seem to me to differ from
nine-tenths of the young men who in the course of the last five years
have said, "How d'y do?" or "Good-by" to me (rarely more or less) when
they have run across me in my own drawing-room. My wife declares that
he has a spiritual face, and that he reminds her of me at the same age,
which I regard as an ingenious attempt to prepossess me in his favor.
She has informed me also that Josie is over head and ears in love with
him and he with Josie, a predicament on his part which I am not
surprised at; and I suppose that I am bound to admit that my daughter
is justified in her infatuation for him, if he resembles me at thirty.

Plainly, I have become an old cynic by reason of the loss of my dear
Josie. I realize that I have been like a bear with a sore head ever
since the ceremony. As for Josephine, she has been mooning about the
house all day in a state of chronic tearfulness. The responsibility of
the bride's appearance and the wedding collation kept her nerved until
everything was over. Last evening she collapsed and fell asleep in my
arms, sobbing like a child.

His name is James Perkins. I have been doing my best for several
months to call him "Jim," as everybody else does, instead of "James,"
or "Perkins," and yesterday I succeeded twice in doing so. I had had
three glasses of champagne. He is an architect, and I understand from
Josie that he has already made his mark in the erection of a church,
two school-houses, and a town-hall in the suburbs, which I have
promised her to go and see. It seems that a week before he had the
impertinence to offer himself to her he received word that his plans
for a vast railroad station in one of the large Western cities had been
accepted. But for this untoward circumstance, my dear Josie would
still be the light of my house, and I should not be gnawing at my
musta