_Madame A._ "I'M AFRAID, MADAM, THAT SHE WOULD NOT DO FOR MOST OF _MY_ CUSTOMERS!"] * * * * * ROUNDABOUT READINGS. In this depressing weather it is always well to have something to be thankful for. My own special subject for gratitude is the cessation and final end of the Marlborough-Vanderbilt wedding. All these columns of matrimonial gush which have been arriving by mail and cable from America have been sufficient to make even a good man curse his fellow-man, and retire to some other planet. Perhaps the young Duke himself ought not to be blamed. I know nothing against him except that he was arrested in New York for "coasting" on a bicycle, and that he has made one speech in the House of Lords. These are grave matters, no doubt, but they must not be allowed to blast a young man's career at its very outset. * * * * * Nor possibly are the VANDERBILTS altogether in fault. They possess many millions, and it is perhaps natural that they should desire to celebrate the marriage of their daughter by spending some of their dollars on diamonds, rubies, gold, silver, and exotic flowers. But what is offensive about the business is the morbid excitement of the American public. The American public may declare that it was not excited; but, in that case, it is difficult to understand why its newspaper proprietors should have flooded their columns with descriptive gush in which not even the bride's underclothing is spared from publicity. * * * * * Moreover, this marriage was rehearsed. I don't think I am putting the matter too strongly when I say that this constitutes an outrage not only on good taste, but on all proper religious feeling. I imagine the happy pair bowing and kneeling with their bridesmaids and attendants, and the weeping maiden aunts who are never absent from such a ceremony, going solemnly through the intricate maze of responses, while a mock clergyman reads a mock service and all the spectators indulge in a mockery of emotion and congratulation. For myself I would as soon re-marry a hearse, as rehearse a marriage. * * * * * The whole business is, in fact, an illustration of that passion for tawdry display and vulgar ostentation in which the great American Republic seems to have gone not one but about a million better (or worse) than the parent stock. I sincerely hope that the supply of marriageable peers and American heiresses is now exhausted, and that we may hear no more of these international engagements. * * * * *