union is very seldom a happy one. The wife never feels sure that her husband really loves her or would have chosen her. She knows that he was her choice, rather than she his, and a racking jealousy seizes her and makes her not only miserable herself, but a very uncomfortable companion for him. He, too, often finds when it is too late that she fulfils none of his ideals, and is in many ways a contrast to the girl he would have chosen if she had not whirled him into the vortex of her own strong feeling. And he occasionally wonders if she may not some day experience a similar strength of attraction for some other man and let herself be carried away by it as she had been by her feeling for him. “Hot fires soon burn out,” he thinks, and remembers the warning given to Othello: “She hath deceived her father, and may thee.” No man should drag a girl into a long engagement. Nor should any man propose to a girl until he is in a position to provide for her. He is only standing in the way of other wooers who may be well supplied with this world’s gear. Such trifles as wealth and ease may appear as nought to the mind of the youthful lover, not to be weighed for a moment in the balance with love and young romance. The girl, too, may be of the same way of thinking at the time, but it the more behoves the man, the stronger, to consider her and to remember that poverty is such a bitter and a cruel thing that it even kills love at times. Recrimination in the home is a hard thing to bear. And yet how many millions of women since the world began have said to their husband: “Oh, why did I ever marry you? I could have done so much better.”

And how many men have said to their wives: “Well! You were determined to have me, so now you must make the best of me.”

The bridegroom’s obligations.

However, we will suppose these rocks and quicksands past, the engaged couple happy, and the wedding day at hand. Custom demands that the bridegroom shall present her bouquet to the bride, as well as bouquets and a present each to the bridesmaids. He must furnish the house for the bride in every detail, not excepting the house and table linen, which, in the old days of spinning-wheels, was wont to be contributed by the bride herself.

The best man.

He must provide the wedding ring and the carriage in which his best man and himself go to church. He pays the fees to clergyman and clerk, but it is the best man who hands them over. With him the bridegroom waits at the altar till the bride arrives. She takes her place at his left hand for the first time, and at the proper moment he produces the ring which is the symbol of their union.

The bridegroom’s dress.

The usual dress of a bridegroom consists of a very dark blue frock-coat, light trousers, light or white scarf-tie, patent boots, and a new hat.