y gone--and it is
romance upon which her soul feeds. There can be none of that dear
delight in the first home building, which is the most beautiful part of
marriage to a girl. Her pretty concern about draperies and colours is
all an old story to the man. She may even have to buy her kitchen ware
all alone, and it is considered the nicest thing in the world to have a
man along when pots and pans are bought.

If widowers and widows would only mate with each other, instead of
trespassing upon the hunting grounds of the unmarried! It is an
exceptional case in which the bereaved are not mutually wary. They seem
to prefer the unfair advantage gained by having all the experience on
one side.

The normal man proposes with ease and carelessness, but the ceremony is
second nature to a widower. If he meets a girl he likes, he proceeds at
once to business and is slow indeed for his kind if he does not offer
his hand and heart within a week.

A clever man once wrote a story, describing the coming of a girl to a
widower's house. With care and forethought, the dying wife had left a
letter for her successor, which the man fearlessly gave her before she
had taken off her hat, because, as the story-teller naievely adds, "she
was twenty-eight and very sane."

[Sidenote: A Nice Letter]

This letter proved to be various admonitions to the bride and earnest
hopes that she might make her husband happy. It was all very pretty and
it was surely a nice letter, but no woman could fail to see that it was
an exquisite revenge upon the man who had been rash enough to install
another in the place of the dead.

There was not a line which was not kind, nor a word which did not
contain a hidden sting. It would be enough to make one shudder all one's
life--this hand of welcome extended from the grave. Yet everything
continued happily--perhaps because a man wrote the story.

A woman demands not only all of a man's life, but all of his thoughts
after she is dead. The grave may hide much, but not that particular
quality in woman's nature. If it is common to leave letters for
succeeding wives, it is done with sinister purpose.

Romance is usually considered an attribute of youth, and possibly the
years bring views of marriage which are impossible to the younger
generation. No girl, in her wildest moments, ever dreams of marrying a
widower with three or four children, yet, when she is well on in her
thirties, with her heart still unsatisfied, she of