proprietors believe that he or she has the "larger half"!

arouse

She must be wise and tactful not to jealousy, rivals are seldom friends, and in her relations with her lover let her remember that nothing so whets appreciation of anything as not to have all that we want.

A young woman who was criticised for prolonging her engagement laughingly replied: "Oh, I know when I am well off. I have always noticed that before marriage the man is all eagerness to please the woman, but when they are married, presto! all is changed, and the anxiety is transferred!'

An Italian woman once pathetically remarked: "Bee-fore 'e marry weeth-a-me, 'e want kees-aground where I walk. After, 'e treat-a-me like-awas hees donkey!" She was a believer in long engagements.

Engaged couples might be interested to learn that young persons in their condition in early colonial times were reduced to the Engagements in necessity of using a "courting-stick," colonial which was a hollow tube, eight feet long, days through which lovers, in the presence of the assembled family, could whisper tender messages, unheard by the rest, the telephone's earliest development. One is still preserved at Long Meadow, Massachusetts.

An engaged girl should accept from her lover only such gifts, beyond the usual flowers and

bonbons, as might be returned uninjured should the engagement be broken, since such calamity sometimes befalls.

Gifts

A chaperon is still demanded by convention. Nothing is worse form than for an engaged couple to travel together or to go alone to the theatre in the evening, though they age may drive in an open carriage, unchap

Chaperon

eroned. So says Madam Grundy, who, however, sometimes admits exceptional and extenuating circumstances.

Chapter Fourteenth -WEDDING

PREPARATIONS AND PRELIMINARIES

IFE is set to a merry tune during the weeks preceding a wedding to those who are to take the leading rôles, provided always that their hearts are making melody, since love is the key-note that unlocks the music. All the world turns a smiling face. Family and friends. enter into loving conspiracy to make the time a happy one. The home-faces were never so tender, and love's idealizing faculty persuades the young couple that each has won the gem of human kind and paints the future one prolonged honeymoon.

It is no wonder that girls look forward and women look back to these halcyon days.

A wedding may be either formal or simple. Both are equally honorable, and the observance of the etiquette that is sanctioned by custom or prescribed by fashion is altogether optional.

A church wedding is the one most in favor with those having a large circle of friends. The consecrated edifice seems, to some, to hallow the rite; others, believing that God is everywhere present, feel that the atmosphere of home is fraught with special blessing and prefer a house wedding.

The former stately ceremonial is the typical, fashionable wedding of to-day, and as such, we will consider the preparations and preliminaries usually observed, in the order in which they would claim attention.

All the expenses of a wedding are as- Wedding sumed by the bride's family, - cards, expenses carriages for the bridal party, floral decorations at house and church, music, sexton's serviceseverything.

The bridegroom's first privilege is to pay the clergyman's fee when the bride has become his wife. Occasionally he pays the organist and the sexton, thereby asserting independence of conventional etiquette.

A well-known writer says that in early and savage times a man carried off his bride by force, and there still lingers some faint trace of the idea. that the groom is a sort of "friendly enemy" who comes to rob a loving and jealous family of a cherished object, and may therefore assume no privileges of ownership. In England the only carriage furnished by the groom at his wedding is the one in which he drives his wife away to spend the honeymoon. In this country the same rule generally prevails.

It is the bride's prerogative to name the wedding day. When this has been decided upon careful lists are made of the entire acquaintance of both families, that none may be overlooked in the invitations, which should be ordered at

least a month in advance of the time for their sending.

Sometimes, for economy's sake, instead of having the invitations directed at the engraver's or intrusted to other agency, the bride-elect makes the addressing of them an occasion for a pleasant gathering of her intimate friends, who all take part. June strews the pathway of every bride with The time roses, and scatters sunshine so lavishly for the that it is no wonder that the flowery wedding month has always been thought propitious for weddings. There has long been a foolish prejudice against marrying in May, but all such superstitions are fast disappearing, our heaven has a Father in it. October's golden days make that month a favorite for weddings.

The most fashionable hour for the ceremony, is "high noon," according to English precedent, but any reasonable hour of the twenty-four may be selected. The time between three and five o'clock of the afternoon offers the advantages of more leisure for preparation, the greater convenience for the attendance of the guests, and a more easily conducted entertainment after the rite.

The English custom of appointing the hour of noon for weddings has a lamentable origin. At the time of its institution the early hour insured. the sobriety of the bridegroom; later in the day he might not be responsible for his promises!

Church, clergyman, all the details of the wedding are left to the choice of the bride.