It is sad to reflect upon a young lady, said to be good-looking (let us say good-looking and be done with it: a neighbourhood does not rise up and declare a girl good-looking if she is not good-looking, that is only her modest way of putting it), let us say a young lady, good-looking, well-educated, of affectionate disposition—it is undeniably sad to reflect that such an one, matrimonially inclined, should be compelled to have recourse to the columns of a matrimonial journal. What are the young men in the neighbourhood thinking of? What more do they want? Is it Venus come to life again with ten thousand a year that they are waiting for! It makes me angry with my own sex reading these advertisements. And when one thinks of the girls that do get married! But life is a mystery. The fact remains: here is the ideal wife seeking in vain for a husband. And here, immediately underneath—I will not say the ideal husband, he may have faults; none of us are perfect, but as men go a decided acquisition to any domestic hearth, an agreeable gentleman, fond of home life, none of your gad-abouts—calls aloud to the four winds for a wife—any sort of a wife, provided she be of a serious disposition. In his despair, he has grown indifferent to all other considerations. “Is there in this world,” he has said to himself, “one unmarried woman, willing to marry me, an agreeable man, in receipt of a good income.” Possibly enough this twain have passed one another in the street, have sat side by side in the same tram-car, never guessing, each one, that the other was the very article of which they were in want to make life beautiful. Mistresses in search of a servant, not so much with the idea of getting work out of her, rather with the object of making her happy, advertise on one page. On the opposite page, domestic treasures—disciples of Carlyle, apparently, with a passionate love of work for its own sake—are seeking situations, not so much with the desire of gain as with the hope of finding openings where they may enjoy the luxury of feeling they are leading useful lives. These philanthropic mistresses, these toil-loving hand-maidens, have lived side by side in the same town for years, never knowing one another.