In every large town, there are certain places and days when the higher classes meet, mainly for the purpose of match-making. These gatherings are, accordingly, quite fitly termed "marriage exchanges." Just as on the exchanges, speculation and chaffer play here the leading _role_, nor are deception and swindle left out. Officers, loaded with debts, but who can hold out an old title of nobility; _roues_, broken down with debauchery, who seek to restore their ruined health in the haven of wedlock, and need a nurse; manufacturers, merchants, bankers, who face bankruptcy, not infrequently the penitentiary also, and wish to be saved; finally, all those who are after money and wealth, or a larger quantity thereof, government office-holders among them, with prospects of promotion, but meanwhile in financial straits;--all turn up as customers at these exchanges, and ply the matrimonial trade. Quite often, at such transactions, it is all one whether the prospective wife be young or old, handsome or ugly, straight or bent, educated or ignorant, religious or frivolous, Christian or Jew. Was it not a saying of a celebrated statesman: "The marriage of a Christian stallion with a Jewish mare is to be highly recommended"?[69] The figure, characteristically borrowed from the horse-fair, meets, as experience teaches, with loud applause from the higher circles of our society. Money makes up for all defects, and outweighs all vices. The German penal code punishes[70] the coupler with long terms of imprisonment; when, however, parents, guardians and relatives couple their children, wards or kin to a hated man or woman only for the sake of money, of profit, of rank, in short, for the sake of external benefits, there is no District Attorney ready to take charge, and yet a crime has been committed. There are numerous well organized matrimonial bureaus, with male and female panders of all degrees, out for prey, in search of the male and female candidates for the "holy bonds of matrimony." Such business is especially profitable when the "work" is done for the members of the upper classes. In 1878 there was a criminal trial in Vienna of a female pander on the charge of poisoning, and ended with her being sentenced to fifteen years in the penitentiary. At the trial it was established that the French Ambassador in Vienna, Count Bonneville, had paid the pander 12,000 florins for procuring his own wife. Other members of the high aristocracy were likewise highly compromised through the trial. Evidently, certain Government officials had left the woman to pursue her dark and criminal practices for many years. The "why" thereof is surely no secret. Similar stories are told from the capital of the German Empire. During recent years, it is the daughters and heirs of the rich American capitalist class, who, on their side, aspire after rank and honors, not to be had in their own American home, that have become a