Ladies and gentlemen of the romantic order of mind will be shocked at the indelicacy of Mistress Matilda--she of the many names. I suspect that they would be shocked by a great many things in the domestic life of England five centuries ago. Marrying for love has a sweet sound about it, but the thing did not exist in the old days. When did it exist? History is very hard upon romance; History, disdaining courtesy, lifts one veil after another, opens closed doors, reveals long-buried secrets, turns her bull's-eye upon the dark corners, and breaks the old seals. She is very cynical, and will by no means side with this appellant or with that. Beautiful theories crumble into dust when they stand before her judgment-seat, and old dreams, offspring of brains that were wrestling with slumber in the darkness, pass away as the dawn comes, bringing with it, too often, such revelations as are not altogether lovely to dwell on. In the fourteenth century an unmarried woman was a chattel, and belonged to somebody who had the right to sell her or to give her away. That is the naked truth. You may make a man an offender for a word if you will, and object that "sell" is an incorrect term; but the fact remains, however much some may-- leave the sense their learning to display, And some explain the meaning quite away. Hence, when a wretched woman was mourning alone over the husband who had just been hustled into his grave, the men were after her like wolves, every one of her neighbours knowing exactly what she was worth even to the fraction of a rood of land, or the last lamb that had been dropped, or the litter of pigs that were rootling up the beech-nuts in the woods. They gave her short time to make up her mind. Sentiment? We in the East--the land of the wise men since time was young--we know nothing of sentiment. We can hate with a sullen tenacity of resentment which knows no forgiveness; but love--nay we leave that for the "intense" of other climes. And women in the good old times--positively women--love one man more than another? What _they?_ "Whose love knows no distinction but of gender, And ridicules the very name of choice!" Why, where were you born?