My dear Mignon: I was smiling at this repetition of the old, old story. It is one of the most curious revelations in these _affairs de coeur_, that the engaged parties always leave this world and create one of their own of the most gorgeous description. In that new world the skies are always translucent, the air is full of winged Cupids and young cherubim, flowers grow under their feet, birds sing on every branch, and no inhabitants grosser than fairies dwell in it. In that world there are no storms, no pains, no sorrows. Every breeze is laden with odors, and the beautiful rainbow of promise always spans its sky from one horizon to the other. There are none of the vulgar realities or harassing cares of this world in that. The happy pair feed on ambrosia and nectar supplied for them gratuitously, and have no fears based upon bread and butter or other provender, which troubles us mortals so much to provide for ourselves. They look upon everything through some peculiar medium which transforms it into beauty and clothes it with the sheen of the prism. All gross sounds are turned into music. All the faculties of the soul become merged in the one faculty of the imagination, and that imagination knows no bound especially in the case of the woman. She always makes the man a hero. She surrounds him with a halo just as pious Catholics surround their saints. She looks at him through an atmosphere which magnifies him into something quite above the follies and stupidities of the world. The other day, as I was passing along Lake street, I met an engaged couple. They had just come in from Kankakee to see the sights of the city, and as they wandered along, hand in hand, looking into the shop windows, the future bridegroom munching an apple, and the future bride doing the same to a pear, I could not but regard these two innocent lambs with interest. To be sure, the future bridegroom was a tall, shambling, ungainly, awkward, red-faced lout, but to her he was the Admirable Crichton, the ideal of her dreams, and the hero of her life. She was in that world of which I have spoken. She did not see the smiling faces about her as they regarded this innocent simplicity. She was walking on roses with him. The pear she munched was ambrosia bought of a beneficent old fairy at the street corner, who sold them for ten cents a piece. A year or two hence, when they get settled down upon their Kankakee farm, he will be nothing but the old man and she will be plain Hannah, superintending the dairy and the kitchen garden. But now John Thomas is a hero.