"It would be interesting, I think, to a student of social statistics, to know how many engagements there are to one marriage, how many offers to one engagement, how many flirtations to one offer, and how many tender advances to one flirtation." "Oh, Lydia! Love and Arithmetic! they never went together. I leave all calculations to my wise and busy brother. I like to wander like a hummingbird, that keeps no account of the flowercups it has sipped out of." "Let us reckon. I can help you, perhaps. I have heard you talk of half a dozen. There is Colonel Langford,--one." "Handsome, proud, and shallow. Let him go!" "There is Lieutenant Allen,--two." "Fierce, impatient, and exacting. He can go also. I had as lief be loved by a lion." "Next is Mr. Lanman,--three." "Wily, plausible, passionate, and treacherous. He is only a cat in a new sphere of existence." "Then there is Denims,--I am not sure about the order,--four." "Rich, vain, and stupid;--there never was such a dolt." "But you kept him for a longer time than usual." "Yes, rather; but he was too dull to understand my ironical compliments, or to resent my studied neglect." "Jaunegant makes five." "Oh, the precious crony of my brother Charles! The best specimen of the dandy race. The man who gives so much love to himself and his clothes, that he has none to spare for any one else. But, Lydia, this is tedious; we shall never get through at this rate. Besides," with a mock-sentimental air, "you have not been here long enough to know the melancholy history,--to count the wrecks that are strewn along the coast, where the Siren resorts. Let me take up the list. Corning, who really loved me, (six,) and went to sea to cure the heart-ache. I heard of him in State Street a month ago,--with a blue shirt and leather belt, and chewing a piece of tobacco as large as his thumb. He seemed happy as a king." "I saw a kind of tobacco advertised as '_The Solace_';--the name was given by some disappointed swain, I suppose." "Probably," said Marcia, smiling. "Then there was Outrack, (seven,) who was so furious at the refusal, that he immediately married the gay Miss Flutter Budget, forty-five, short, stout, and fifty thousand dollars,--he twenty-six, tall, slender, and some distant expectations. I heard him, at a party, call her 'Dear'!" "I don't think you get on any faster than I did. We shall have to finish the tour of the portrait-gallery another day." "You are not tired? I wanted to tell you of several more. Yet I don't know why I should. I declare to you seriously, that I never before mentioned the names of these persons in this way, nor referred to them as rejected lovers." "I have no doubt of it. It has seemed like a fresh, spontaneous confession."