She is selected much as the bride of the Vicar of Wakefield chose her wedding-gown, only that the one was at least cut to suit, while the other is not. It is certainly easier, if less fitting, to get a wife as some people do clothes, not to their own order, but ready made; all the more reason when the bargain is for one's son, not one's self. So the Far East, which looks at the thing from a strictly paternal standpoint and ignores such trifles as personal preferences, takes its boy to the broker's and fits him out. That the object of such parental care does not end by murdering his unfortunate spouse or making way with himself suggests how dead already is that individuality which we deem to be of the very essence of the thing. Marriage is thus a species of investment contracted by the existing family for the sake of the prospective one, the actual participants being only lay figures in the affair. Sometimes the father decides the matter himself; sometimes he or the relative who stands in loco parentis calls for a plebiscit on the subject; for such an extension of the suffrage has gradually crept even into patriarchal institutions. The family then assemble, sit in solemn conclave on the question, and decide it by vote. Of course the interested parties are not asked their opinion, as it might be prejudiced. The result of the conference must be highly gratifying. To have one's wife chosen for one by vote of one's relatives cannot but be satisfactory--to the electors. The outcome of this ballot, like that of universal suffrage elsewhere, is at the best unobjectionable mediocrity. Somehow such a result does not seem quite to fulfil one's ideal of a wife. It is true that the upper classes of impersonal France practise this method of marital selection, their conseils de famille furnishing in some sort a parallel. But, as is well known, matrimony among these same upper classes is largely form devoid of substance. It begins impressively with a dual ceremony, the civil contract, which amounts to a contract of civility between the parties, and a religious rite to render the same perpetual, and there it is too apt to end. So much for the immediate influence on the man; the eventual effect on the race remains to be considered. Now, if the first result be anything, the second must in the end be everything. For however trifling it be in the individual instance, it goes on accumulating with each successive generation, like compound interest. The choosing of a wife by family suffrage is not simply an exponent of the impersonal state of things, it is a power toward bringing such a state of things about. A hermit seldom develops to his full possibilities, and the domestic variety is no exception to the rule. A man who is linked to some one that toward him remains a cipher lacks surroundings inciting to psychological growth, nor is he more favorably circumstanced because all his ancestors have been similarly circumscribed.