A man may well ponder, as he seldom does, on the change of identity undergone by a woman who takes another name on signing the register. In general, the sacrifices and accommodations involved in marriage are mutual. If the woman loses some independence, the man loses more; the elimination of caprice is equal for both, though one may eliminate more freely than the other; the community of goods and persons hits, on the whole, both sides equally; both are vulnerable in the same degree by ills affecting their complement. But a woman loses her maiden name, and the man makes no equivalent sacrifice. The possibility of so doing would hardly strike him, for the assumption of a new identity is to him almost inconceivable. It would appear strange to him, indeed, if the case were reversed, and that ever after marriage he should feel about himself the implied question “Who _was_ he?” Men feel that there is so little about themselves that requires explanation, a fact which accounts for what is to women their extraordinary want of curiosity about one another. Men take one another for granted as they take themselves: were this state of things altered it would be tantamount to a revolution. Men’s clubs, which flourish on the assumption of the individual’s unalterable identity and a nebulous tolerance of most of his general social connections, would find the new flavour of enigma too disruptive for their continuance in comfort. There is no getting over this difference by any amount of tact. The most unassuming of men, the most diffident, amplifies his personality in marriage, casting his name, like a protective cloak, round the person whom he has chosen with a generous finality which makes any inquiry as to the nature of her former covering theoretically superfluous. But the woman, however fondly she may cherish the garment of her maiden name, even to the extent of showing it at every opportunity through the chance openings of her new covering, has accepted a restriction as she has accepted a label. A man’s appellation or title reveals nothing of his private state, but a married woman’s name is a sign to all the world that she is, or has been, wrapped in the mantle of a man.