more tact than they possess. Any match they do not desire, they oppose
at once, and thereby set alight all the contradictory elements in your
nature. If Laban had been less obstinate, and had consented to an
alliance between Jacob and Rachel from the first, provided Leah was
left behind to look after him, the latter would immediately have been
endowed with attractions innumerable to Jacob, tender eyes and all!

Nowhere is there such a fertile soil for love as opposition!

On the other hand, if parents wish to encourage a match, young people
are thrown together as much as possible. However big the gathering,
you are somehow always paired off with the eligible party until you
grow to loathe the man, and would sooner become an "old maid" than
marry him.

Parents have a bad time altogether I am afraid. Their nice little
plans are so nearly always upset by their ungrateful children, and
then they have to be continually looking after their brood. I knew one
mother who used to take her daughters on the pier and lose sight of
them at once, as they paired off with their he-acquaintances. Do what
she would she could not find them again, so many were the nooks and
crannies near at hand. Finally she had recourse to the Camera Obscura,
and, with the help of the views set before her there, she found the
missing girls! "We never can escape her now," they told me in mournful
tones, after her fatal discovery.

Girls are degenerating sadly, it is said. They are getting too
masculine, too independent, too different from man's ideal--the modest
little maid who sits at home and mends her husband's socks.