My dear Fitz-Herbert: I cannot allow your very silly remark to pass unnoticed, for two reasons: First. You would never sacrifice anything in marrying any woman. The woman who marries you will do all the sacrificing. The hymeneal altar, in her case, will be eminently a sacrificial altar, and she will be the garlanded and orange-blossomed victim, to be carved up with the sacrificial knife. You have everything to gain--she has everything to lose. Second. Neither your reason, nor any other, is valid against marriage. I am often amused at the excuses men make when they approach this question. Brown thinks it is too expensive, and, of all silly excuses, I think this is the silliest. Brown is earning a good salary, and yet Brown, at the end of the year, has no more money than when he commenced. He has expenses for cigars and meerschaums, for suppers for his bachelor friends, for fast horses, for baskets of champagne, for wagers based on trifles, for the wear and tear of clothes, and for a thousand and one little items, none of which he would or need incur in married life. Then, again, if Brown knew, as any milliner can tell him, how many seasons that same bonnet is made over; how it comes out bran new every spring and fall, by some of those mysterious alterations, of a bit of lace here or a few flowers there, of which only women are capable; how that same dress is made over from year to year by the cunning hand of some dressmaker; how a piece of lace, which may seem costly at first, does duty in a dozen different ways--now serving a term on a bonnet-crown, now appearing on the sleeve of a basque, anon reappearing as the trimming of a dress, then laid away, only to appear once more in some useful and graceful manner, connected with the gear of the little folks; and if Brown further knew that nine women out of ten, not only in low life but in high life, practice this economy--making the old new, and serving up old dishes in new forms--Brown would be ashamed to offer such a flimsy excuse. Marriage is the essence of economy. Brown, alone, with two thousand a year, lays up nothing. Brown and a wife, with the same amount per year, would lay up five hundred. And now comes Jones, like Fitz-Herbert, with his twaddle of sacrificing his freedom. The plea is so flimsy that it is hardly worth an answer. Jones may lose the freedom to get drunk; the freedom to waste his money; the freedom to squander his earnings at the gaming-table; the freedom to indulge in dissipation; and the freedom to practice unlimited selfishness. And the sooner he loses all these freedoms, the better it will be for him. In the place of these losses, he gains the freedom to be the emperor of a little household; to love a woman; to make the future President of the United States; to make some one happy; and to show a certificate that he is a Man, and has fulfilled the mission of a Man.