She meets you kindly—a comely, matronly dame in gingham, with her curls all gathered under a high-topped comb; and she presents to you two little boys in smart crimson jackets dressed up with braid. And you dine with madam—a family party; and the weazen-faced old gentleman meets you with a most pleasant shake of the hand—hints that you were among his niece’s earliest friends, and hopes that you are getting on well? —Capitally well! And the boys toddle in at dessert—Dick to get a plum from your own dish, Tom to be kissed by his rosy-faced papa. In short, you are made perfectly at home; and you sit over your wine for an hour, in a cozy smoke with the gentlemanly uncle and with the very courteous husband of your second flame. It is all very jovial at the table, for good wine is, I find, a great strengthener of the bachelor heart. But afterward, when night has fairly set in and the blaze of your fire goes flickering over your lonely quarters, you heave a deep sigh. And as your thought runs back to the perfidious Louise, and calls up the married and matronly Nelly, you sob over that poor dumb heart within you, which craves so madly a free and joyous utterance! And as you lean over with your forehead in your hands, and your eyes fall upon the old hound slumbering on the rug—the tears start, and you wish—that you had married years ago, and that you too had your pair of prattling boys to drive away the loneliness of your solitary hearthstone. —My cigar would not go; it was fairly out. But, with true bachelor obstinacy, I vowed that I would light again. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] III LIGHTED WITH A MATCH I HATE a match. I feel sure that brimstone matches were never made in heaven; and it is sad to think that, with few exceptions, matches are all of them tipped with brimstone. But my taper having burned out, and the coals being all dead upon the hearth, a match is all that is left to me. All matches will not blaze on the first trial, and there are those that with the most indefatigable coaxings never show a spark. They may indeed leave in their trail phosphorescent streaks; but you can no more light your cigar at them than you can kindle your heart at the covered wife-trails which the infernal gossiping old match-makers will lay in your path. Was there ever a bachelor of seven and twenty, I wonder, who has not been haunted by pleasant old ladies and trim, excellent, good-natured married friends, who talk to him about nice matches—“very nice matches,” matches which never go off? And who, pray, has not had some kind old uncle to fill two sheets for him (perhaps in the time of heavy postages) about some most eligible connection—“of highly respectable parentage!”