There is an idea prevalent that the young women of our land welcome addresses which the golden youth of the opposite sex urge upon their consideration, and that a girl’s happiness augments in proportionate ratio as the number of the proposals bestowed upon her increases. This, however, is merely a supposition, and there are unfortunately no statistics to which an historian, anxious to be accurate in statement, may turn in order to substantiate or overthrow this almost universally held opinion. It is to be regretted that the census, which gathers together in tabulated form so many interesting facts pertaining to the race, gives no attention to this particular subdivision of human data; and that, so far from being able to form any definite estimate of the feeling with which a girl welcomes the undoubted compliment of a marriage offer, we are left in the dark as to the average number of proposals a woman receives, say, between the ages of seventeen and thirty-seven. An inquisitive government which does not hesitate to ask a woman every ten years to set down her age in black and white seems, strangely enough, to shrink from inquiring into a vital question on which the future well-being of a nation largely depends; thus no one can positively state that matrimonial advances are held in high estimation by their recipients, clinching the proposition by referring the doubter to Blue Book such a number and such a page. It being thus impossible to generalize, the careful writer is compelled to fall back on individual instances, and it must be set down that Edna Sartwell, so far from being happy or elated over the fact that two young men within one week had asked her to share their varying fortunes, walked hurriedly back to the school, filled with terror and dismay. On the very threshold of womanhood she had suddenly and unexpectedly been brought face to face with a state of things which made her wish to shrink back into the untroubled tranquillity of the life she had hitherto led. These two disquieting events, following one so closely on the other, loomed up in undue proportion to their importance, and threatened to overshadow the future. It seemed an appalling thing that the fate of two men should be placed at her disposal; that on her shoulders should be cast the great responsibility of deciding, unaided, a momentous question with far-reaching consequences. And if the first two young men with whom she became acquainted acted thus, what was to be expected from the numerous host she was still likely to meet? A pathway strewn with broken hearts offered no allurements to the feet of the young traveller; a life lived in an atmosphere of deep sighs was intolerable. The girl was frightened at the outlook, which was all the more bewildering because only partly understood. “It is often as important to classify your problem as to solve it,” her father had once said to her; but solution or classification appeared equally difficult to her.