Parents are greatly at fault in the issues of the matrimonial market. After all these centuries of experience you would give them credit for more tact than they possess. Any match they do not desire, they oppose at once, and thereby set alight all the contradictory elements in your nature. If Laban had been less obstinate, and had consented to an alliance between Jacob and Rachel from the first, provided Leah was left behind to look after him, the latter would immediately have been endowed with attractions innumerable to Jacob, tender eyes and all! Nowhere is there such a fertile soil for love as opposition! On the other hand, if parents wish to encourage a match, young people are thrown together as much as possible. However big the gathering, you are somehow always paired off with the eligible parti until you grow to loathe the man, and would sooner become an "old maid" than marry him. Parents have a bad time altogether I am afraid. Their nice little plans are so nearly always upset by their ungrateful children, and then they have to be continually looking after their brood. I knew one mother who used to take her daughters on the pier and lose sight of them at once, as they paired off with their he-acquaintances. Do what she would she could not find them again, so many were the nooks and crannies near at hand. Finally she had recourse to the Camera Obscura, and, with the help of the views set before her there, she found the missing girls! "We never can escape her now," they told me in mournful tones, after her fatal discovery. Girls are degenerating sadly, it is said. They are getting too masculine, too independent, too different from man's ideal--the modest little maid who sits at home and mends her husband's socks. I do not dispute the fact. They _are_ degenerating. Neither, though I dislike the ideal specimen, and have a contempt for her, do I stand up for the other extreme. I have a horror of fast masculine girls, and agree with all that is said against them. Nevertheless, I do not consider men have any right to complain, as they are the chief cause of the deterioration of our sex. Everyone knows that a girl thinks more of a man's opinion than that of anyone else. If he applauds, then she is satisfied. She does not consider it ignominy to be termed "a jolly good fellow!" She gets praise, and in a way admiration, when she caps his good stories, smokes, and drinks brandies and sodas. Unfortunately, she does not hear herself discussed when he is alone with his friends, or perhaps she would be more cautious in her manners and conversation for the future, for this is not the kind of girl who is "Rich in the grace all women desire, Strong in the power that all men adore." CHAPTER II. ON BILLS. BILLS! BILLS! BILLS! Detestable sound! Obnoxious word! Why were such things ever invented? Why are they sent to destroy our peace of mind?