Prophecies as to the probable result of a marriage are as a rule little to be trusted. It was so in the case of the celebrated Madame Necker. She had been taken to Paris to live with a young widow, to whom Necker--a financier from Geneva--came to pay his addresses. The story goes that the widow, in order to rid herself of her admirer, got him to transfer his addresses to her young companion, saying to herself, "they will bore each other to death, that will give them something to do." The happy pair, however, had no such foreboding. "I am marrying a man," wrote the lady, "whom I should believe to be an angel, if his great love for me did not show his weakness." In his way the husband was equally satisfied. "I account myself as happy as it is possible for a man to be," he wrote to a mutual friend; and to the end of the chapter there was no flaw in that matrimonial life. Never to marry a genius was the advice of Mrs. Carlyle. "I married for ambition. Carlyle has exceeded all that my wildest hopes ever imagined of him, and I am miserable." As the supply of geniuses is very limited, this advice may seem superfluous. It is not so, however, for there is enough and to spare of men who think that they are geniuses, and take liberties accordingly. These are very often only sons of fond but foolish mothers, who have persuaded them that they are not made of common clay, and that the girls who get them will be blessed. From such a blessing young women should pray to be delivered. Perhaps it may be said that though it is easy to write about choosing a husband, for the majority of English girls, at least, there is but little choice in the matter. Dickens certainly told an American story--very American--of a young lady on a voyage, who, being intensely loved by five young men, was advised to "jump overboard and marry the man who jumped in after her." Accordingly, next morning the five lovers being on deck, and looking very devotedly at the young lady, she plunged into the sea. Four of the lovers immediately jumped in after her. When the young lady and four lovers were out again, she said to the captain, "What am I to do with them now, they are so wet?" "Take the dry one." And the young lady did, and married him. How different is the state of affairs on this side of the Atlantic, where, if a young woman is to be married, she must take not whom she will, but whom she can. "Oh me, the word choose! I may neither choose whom I would, nor refuse whom I dislike." But is it necessary to marry? Far better to have no husband than a bad one.