Can any wife be prettier than an after-dinner fancy, idle and yet vivid, can paint for you? Can any children make less noise than the little rosy-cheeked ones who have no existence except in the omnium gatherum of your own brain? Can any housewife be more unexceptionable than she who goes sweeping daintily the cobwebs that gather in your dreams? Can any domestic larder be better stocked than the private larder of your head dozing on a cushioned chair-back at Delmonico's? Can any family purse be better filled than the exceeding plump one you dream of, after reading such pleasant books as Munchausen or Typee? But if, after all, it must be--duty, or what-not, making provocation--what then? And I clapped my feet hard against the fire-dogs, and leaned back, and turned my face to the ceiling, as much as to say, And where on earth, then, shall a poor devil look for a wife? Somebody says--Lyttleton or Shaftesbury, I think--that "marriages would be happier if they were all arranged by the Lord Chancellor." Unfortunately, we have no Lord Chancellor to make this commutation of our misery. Shall a man then scour the country on a mule's back, like honest Gil Blas of Santillane? or shall he make application to some such intervening providence as Madame St. Marc, who, as I see by the Presse, manages these matters to one's hand, for some five per cent on the fortunes of the parties? I have trouted when the brook was so low and the sky so hot that I might as well have thrown my fly upon the turnpike; and I have hunted hare at noon, and woodcock in snowtime--never despairing, scarce doubting; but for a poor hunter of his kind, without traps or snares, or any aid of police or constabulary, to traverse the world, where are swarming, on a moderate computation, some three hundred and odd millions of unmarried women, for a single capture--irremediable, unchangeable--and yet a capture which by strange metonymy, not laid down in the books, is very apt to turn captor into captive and make game of hunter--all this, surely, surely may make a man shrug with doubt! Then, again, there are the plaguy wife's relations. Who knows how many third, fourth, or fifth cousins will appear at careless complimentary intervals long after you had settled into the placid belief that all congratulatory visits were at an end? How many twisted-headed brothers will be putting in their advice, as a friend to Peggy? How many maiden aunts will come to spend a month or two with their "dear Peggy," and want to know every tea-time "if she isn't a dear love of a wife?" Then, dear father-in-law will beg (taking dear Peggy's hand in his) to give a little wholesome counsel; and will be very sure to advise just the contrary of what you had determined to undertake. And dear mamma-in-law must set her nose into Peggy's cupboard, and insist upon having the key to your own private locker in the wainscot.