the day's work. That may be counted on with confidence. What we want is poetry, with its lilt and swing and uplift, its soaring away to the blue sky from the lower levels on which we tread. In the halcyon season of betrothal the lovers are living in the realm of poetry.

After an interval the household and the friends settle down to the fact of an engagement, and then naturally the query presents itself, "When are the young people to marry?"

Occasionally there are excellent or compulsory reasons for a long engagement; an engagement of indefinite duration is sometimes entered upon, when a girl is bound by circumstances to remain with invalid or infirm parents or to play the part of caretaker to motherless brothers and sisters. Or the man may not yet have a firm standing in the business world; he may have obligations to his own people that handicap him; he may not have completed his professional equipment, and may have several years of study and waiting before him. In such case on either side prudence would dictate that both should be left free, and that no engagement should be considered. But lovers do not take counsel of worldly prudence or cool discretion.

Alfred can take no risks about Edith. He de

sires the assurance that one day, a day for which he will work with unflagging energy, she will become his own. Edith is in no haste to be married, but she does deeply care for Alfred, and is content with an understanding or a betrothal that leaves the wedding-day hidden in the mists of an unknown future. The girl is more patient than the man, other things being equal, under the strain of a long engagement.

For it is certain to be a strain. Unless, providentially, the engaged pair live far apart, so that they can seldom meet, the chances are that they will spend so many evenings together in the wastefulness of talk that they will finally lose the glamour of enchantment that should be theirs, and grow tedious to one another. When an engagement stretches over five years, or six, or seven, the result is an unnatural situation with embarrassments of its own. Conversation languishes. The lovers resort to instructive books which they dutifully read aloud in the long evenings.

There descends on them an oppressive sense of having little to anticipate. The girl begins to feel the pressure on her nerves, and, it may be, is irritable and fretful. The man chafes at the delay, and is a bit arbitrary; or, worse still, falls asleep to the monotonous music of the loved one's voice

as she reads. She is vexed, and friction is often repeated, until possibly the engagement breaks, like a tautly twisted rope that has a weak strand in the middle.

Of course, there are long engagements that eventuate in happy weddings, but there are fewer of them than of the others that have a disappointing end, after wasted years-years that the locusts of hope deferred have eaten, years that have brought rust and tarnish to the glittering shield of love.

Provided, however, that the engagement has been of normal length, not exceeding at the most two years, that it has met the hearty approval of all interested, and been duly announced, the trousseau looms large in home discussions. When there is a parental purse of gratifying depth, and the daughter may draw on her father's bank account at discretion, the matter is very simple. It then implies only selection and an order on milliner or dressmaker, which lifts the burden from the mother's shoulders.

This is the easy province of the minority. The majority are obliged to plan and contrive and consider, that Edith may go to the house of her husband in such attire and with such plenishing as shall do credit to her family.

Joyful beyond words is this planning and contriving. The woman who does not know the rapture of successful good management in so feminine a campaign has missed the sweetest draught in life. There is five times the pleasure in evolving an exquisite outfit for Edith from materials sought with eager zest, at a cost that does not too greatly tax the family means, than there is in languidly giving orders and drawing checks. In other words, the idle rich can never attain so high a degree of satisfaction in this familiar enterprise as the thrifty poor. The bride whose raiment represents to her and her people a little self-denial and a good measure of loving altruism will take more pride in it than she to whom pretty frocks and hats have meant nothing since her childhood days. Every purchase is a victory.

In an old idyl, sweet with pure sentiment as the attar of rose, we have these words:

The king's daughter is all glorious within. Her clothing is of wrought gold. She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework.

The bride, in her virginal whiteness, with her exquisite attire, has been the theme of song from ancient days.

She carries with her to the new home what