y young girl, and six years
before her engagement, met Burton at Boulogne. They met in the street,
but did not speak. A few days later they were formally introduced at a
dance. Of this she writes: "That was a night of nights. He waltzed with
me once, and spoke to me several times. I kept the sash where he put his
arm around me and my gloves, and never wore them again."

A glance at what Emerson says about marriage shows that he suspected
that institution. He can hardly speak of it without some sort of caveat
or precaution. "Though the stuff of tragedy and of romances is in a
moral union of two superior persons whose confidence in each other for
long years, out of sight and in sight, and against all appearances, is
at last justified by victorious proof of probity to gods and men,
causing joyful emotions, tears, and glory,--though there be for heroes
this _moral union_, yet they too are as far as ever from, an
intellectual union, and the moral is for low and external purposes, like
the corporation of a ship's company or of a fire club." In speaking of
modern novels, he says: "There is no new element, no power, no
furtherance. 'Tis only confectionery, not the raising of new corn. Great
is the poverty of their inventions. _She was beautiful, and he fell in
love_.... Happy will that house be in which the relations are formed by
character; after the highest and not after the lowest; the house in
which character marries and not confusion and a miscellany of
unavowable motives.... To each occurs soon after puberty, some event, or
society or way of living, which becomes the crisis of life and the chief
fact in their history. In women it is love and marriage (which is more
reasonable), and yet it is pitiful to date and measure all the facts and
sequel of an unfolding life from such a youthful and generally
inconsiderate period as the age of courtship and marriage.... Women more
than all are the element and kingdom of illusion. Being fascinated they
fascinate. They see through Claude Lorraines. And how dare any one, if
he could, pluck away the coulisses, stage effects and ceremonies by
which they live? Too pathetic, too pitiable, is the region of affection,
and its atmosphere always liable to mirage."

We are all so concerned that a man who writes about love shall tell the
truth that if he chance to start from premises which are false or
mistaken, his conclusions will appear not merely false, but offensive.
It makes no matter how