ion, and knew a man of my education
"must despise the butterfly existence of the surrounding throng."
Sometimes she would invite me to go with her to catch beetles and queer
insects--"not that she needed my help," she would say, "but my
intellectual society was indeed a treat in this crowded desert."

All this was very agreeable, but also very perplexing. At the end of the
season I found myself as far from making a choice as ever. If I indulged
one taste at the expense of the others, I should become a less perfect
man; nor could I decide in which of my pursuits I needed sympathy the
most--music, painting, dancing, riding, reading. Alas! could I find one
woman congenial in all my moods I would marry her immediately. Wearied
by the attentions of so many, I yet feared an imperfect life spent with
but one. I saw that I had made another mistake, and retired to my
country-seat, "The Beauties," to recruit.

I know there is a modern idea that women are the equals of men (the
poets, you remember, thought them superior), and many may consider it
odd that I did not find it so. I do not wish to offend. To those who
hold that opinion I modestly suggest my unfortunate superiority as the
probable cause of my failure. I do not blame the ladies, be it
understood.

Again I sat down to plan and reflect. I looked mournfully on the past
and less hopefully on the future. The obstacles were beginning to
dishearten me, but even after a second failure I dared not relinquish my
quest: my mother's wishes must be fulfilled. A woman worthy of me:
behold the difficulty! What course of action should I now pursue?

At last I had a flash of brain-light on the subject. I would look for
the purely good, rejecting the intellectual entirely. I would plunge
into the country and seek a bride fresh from the hands of Nature, a wild
flower without fashion, guile or brains--one who in leaving me free to
follow my own pursuits would yet adorn my life with charms of the
heart--a heart that had known no love but mine.

It was in the most beautiful month of autumn that I made this resolve,
which I lost no time in putting into execution. I wrote to my old
college friend, Dick Hearty, that I would spend a month with him: he had
often invited me to visit him in the country. I counted on doing enough
love-making in that time to win my wild rose, and at my return I would
bring home my bride. I reasoned that in those unsophisticated regions,
in the shadow of the virg