Keen dealers seldom banter; they may hesitate, they may explain their wants and wishes, they never parley very long or express much anxiety to strike a bargain. _Winning a wife or a lover is a rare art._ To be worthy of either is the first essential. It is better to be worthy of it than to be President and unworthy. It must be consoling even to a jilted lover to feel that he is superior to the one successful. The next thing to being worthy is being ready. Many a youth begins driving, sleighing, and dressing for society who pays his clothing bills by instalments, and whose salary is wholly unequal to his outlay. Fairness demands that a girl in marrying should better her condition. How can one expect her to marry into misery? Chesterfield quotes an old Spanish saying of great force and aptness: “It is the beginning that costs in everything. The first step over, the rest is easy.” _Don’t marry recklessly._ Before two or more men form a partnership, they learn each other’s means of furthering the business to be engaged in; the confidence that each is worthy of, the skill, attention, etc., each can give, and the prospects of a mutual agreement and prosperity. Without some inquiry on these vital requisites, no company concern would be founded. It would be a foolish investment to purchase goods and fit up stores or warehouses without some forecast of results; and yet this is precisely in the line of marriage. Partnerships are business marriages. It is not best to be too cool and calculating about it; one caution may let another take the venture and draw the premium. But some common-sense may as well be mixed with a matter so vital as a life-long engagement. Firms are limited to a few years; marriages are unlimited save by death, or divorce, for over a third of a century, on an average. While it is very difficult to tell whom to marry,--for no one can foresee your circumstances,--still, it is well to mention a large class that no one should marry, at least till all others are no longer accessible. If one could foresee the extent of happiness depending on this selection of partners, if he would take a simple business caution and investigate enough to be considerate, he might save society from disgrace and himself from lasting misery. For the fact is, that the most glaring of all our American evils is the looseness of marriage ties, and the misery it entails on domestic relations. If these hints or reminders should induce one woman to avoid a bad marriage, and one man to contract a good one, or save a long quarrel, or keep families in harmony, or help some poor bashful fellow to gain his Yes by a sensible proposal, the time in reading will be well spent, the trifling cost will be a splendid investment. ROMANTIC MARRIAGES.