performed on Sabbath afternoon, and of the very large
collection made on Sabbath evening. This lasts till three, when
the carriage again appears, and the lady and her basket return
home; she mounts to her chamber, carefully sets aside her bonnet
and its appurtenances, puts on her scolloped black silk apron,
walks into the kitchen to see that all is right, then into the
parlour, where, having cast a careful glance over the table
prepared for dinner, she sits down, work in hand, to await her
spouse. He comes, shakes hands with her, spits, and dines. The
conversation is not much, and ten minutes suffices for the
dinner; fruit and toddy, the newspaper and the work-bag succeed.
In the evening the gentleman, being a savant, goes to the Wister
society, and afterwards plays a snug rubber at a neighbour's.
The lady receives at tea a young missionary and three members of
the Dorcas society.--And so ends her day.

For some reason or other, which English people are not very
likely to understand, a great number of young married persons
board by the year, instead of "going to housekeeping," as they
call having an establishment of their own. Of course this
statement does not include persons of large fortune, but it does
include very many whose rank in society would make such a mode of
life quite impossible with us. I can hardly imagine a
contrivance more effectual for ensuring the insignificance of a
woman, than marrying her at seventeen, and placing her in a
boarding-house. Nor can I easily imagine a life of more uniform
dulness for the lady herself; but this certainly is a matter of
taste. I have heard many ladies declare that it is "just quite
the perfection of comfort to have nothing to fix for oneself."
Yet despite these assurances I always experienced a feeling
which hovered between pity and contempt, when I contemplated
their mode of existence.

How would a newly-married Englishwoman endure it, her head and
her heart full of the one dear scheme--

"Well ordered home, _his_ dear delight to make?"

She must rise exactly in time to reach the boarding table at the
hour appointed for breakfast, or she will get a stiff bow from
the lady president, cold coffee, and no egg. I have been
sometimes greatly amused upon these occasions by watching a
little scene in which the bye-play had much more meaning than the
words uttered. The fasting, but tardy lady, looks round the
table, and having ascertained that there was no