and rapidly decamped from the States back to his own country, where, as all the world knows, he did very well for himself. Strange to say, however, the girl whom he had thus brutally forsaken for no fault of her own, had loved him with all the romantic and trusting tenderness of first love, and the heartless blow inflicted upon her by his noble and honourable lordship was one from which she never recovered. The Noble and Honourable has, I repeat, done very well for himself, though it is rumoured that he sleeps badly, and that he has occasionally been heard muttering after the fashion of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,—"Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space were it not that I have bad dreams!"
Marriage, however, is by no means the only, or even the chief resource in life of the American woman. She evidently looks with a certain favour on the holy estate of matrimony and is quite willing to become an excellent wife and mother if the lines of her destiny run that way, but if they should happen to branch out in another direction, she wastes no time in useless pining. She is too vital, too capable, too intelligent and energetic altogether to play the rôle of an interesting martyr to male neglect. She will teach, or she will lecture,—she will sing, or she will act,—she will take her degrees in medicine and surgery,—she will practise for the Bar,—she will write books, and the days are fast approaching when she will become a high priestess of the Church, and will preach to the lost sheep of Israel as well as to the equally lost ones of New York or Chicago;—she will be a "beauty doctor," a "physical culture" woman, a "medium," a stock-broker, a
