When all the fifteen bachelors had ceased to talk about themselves and settled down to bridge with the rest of the company, an old lady who, like myself, preferred to be a looker-on, came and sat beside me. ‘How they _do_ talk,’ she said! ‘But I can tell you why they don’t marry, in six words, my dear: because they don’t fall in love! And why don’t they fall in love? Because the girls are too eager; because the girls meet them all the way--that’s why! I’ve seven sons, all unmarried, and _I_ know!’ * * * NOTE.--It is interesting to note that Westermarck in his _History of Human Marriage_ quotes a number of authorities to prove that among many ancient nations marriage was a religious duty incumbent upon all. Among Mohammedan people generally it is still considered a duty. Hebrew celibacy was unheard of, and they have a proverb, ‘He who has no wife is no man.’ In Egypt it is improper and even disreputable for a man to abstain from marriage when there is no just impediment. For an adult to die unmarried is regarded as a deplorable misfortune by the Chinese, and among the Hindus of the present day a man who remains single is considered to be almost a useless member of society, and is looked upon as beyond the pale of nature. III WHY WOMEN DON’T MARRY ‘It’s a woman’s business to get married as soon as possible and a man’s to remain unmarried as long as he can.’ --G. BERNARD SHAW. ‘Marriage is of so much use to a woman, opens out to her so much of life, and puts her in the way of so much more freedom and usefulness, that whether she marry ill or well, she can hardly miss some benefit.’ --R. L. STEVENSON. ‘Why women don’t marry? But they do--whenever they can!’ the intelligent reader will naturally exclaim. Not ‘whenever they get the chance,’ mark you; no _intelligent_ reader would make this mistake, though it is a common enough error among the non-comprehending. Most spinsters over thirty must have winced at one time or another at the would-be genial rallying of some elderly man relative: ‘What! you not married yet? Well, well, I wonder what all the young men are thinking of.’ I write _some man_ advisedly, for no woman, however cattishly inclined, however desirous of planting arrows in a rival’s breast, would utter this peculiarly deadly form of insult, which, strangely enough, is always intended as a high compliment by the masculine blunderer. The fact that the unfortunate spinster thus assailed may have had a dozen offers, and yet, for reasons of her own, prefer to remain single, seems entirely beyond their range of comprehension.