In every large city there are certain places where upon definite days members of the upper classes come together, chiefly for the purpose of match-making. Rightly have these reunions been called the “matrimonial market”; for just as on the stock market, speculation and barter dominate, and not infrequently fraud and deception enter into the dealings. Here we find officers of the army, over head and ears in debt, but possessing some ancient title of nobility; roués, weakened by a life of debauchery, who seek a wife to nurse them and hope to mend their shattered health in marriage; manufacturers, merchants and bankers, who are at the verge of bankruptcy, sometimes at the verge of imprisonment and who wish to be saved, and public officials who have prospects of promotion, but are in need of money; here they come as customers and conclude the marriage bargain. In these marriages it frequently is deemed quite immaterial whether the future wife is young or old, pretty or ugly, well-built or deformed, educated or ignorant, pious or frivolous, a Christian or a Jewess, provided that she has money. Money redeems all faults and compensates for the lack of anything else. According to the German law, procurers are severely punished by imprisonment. But when parents or guardians barter their children or relatives to some unloved man or woman for life, for the sake of wealth, social position or some other advantage, no public prosecutor may interfere, and yet a crime has been committed. There are many well-organized matrimonial agencies, and any number of procurers and procuresses who are searching candidates for the “sacred wedded state.” These transactions are especially profitable when performed in the interest of members of the upper classes. In 1878 a procuress was tried in Vienna who had been accused of being an accomplice in murder, and was finally sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment. Among other things the trial revealed that the former French ambassador to Vienna, Count Banneville, had paid this woman 22,000 guilders for procuring a wife for him. Other members of the aristocracy were also involved in this trial. For years the authorities had permitted this woman to ply her criminal trade unmolested. In the capital of the German Empire similar occurrences were reported. They are met with wherever there are persons seeking to contract mercenary marriages. During the last few decades the daughters and heiresses of American millionaires have become special objects of desire to the pauperized European nobility. These American women, on the other hand, have exchanged their millions for the rank and title that are unknown in their own country. A number of communications, published in the German press during the fall of 1889, contained some characteristic information on this subject. According to this a German nobleman living in California had offered his services as a match-maker by advertising in German and Austrian papers. The offers he received