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or two looked to another limit which nature herself has marked out, and drawing thence a significant conclusion, were ready to say with the poet :

"So let your list of she-promotions Include those only, plump and sage, Who've reach'd the regulation age; That is, (as near as one can fix From Peerage dates) full fifty-six."

The opinion of the majority, which in the end prevailed, seemed to be that this point in woman's age was controlled by external circumstances, and varied like the length of the second's pendulum, according to latitude; and that, looking to the locality, climate, and social customs of Boston, celibacy prolonged there beyond thirty, would properly entitle the single dame to the name and character of an "old maid." This decision, though concurred in by a majority, and sanctioned by the written opinion of several distinguished old women of New England, -[among the rest, that of Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson, editress of Emerson's Magazine,]-whom we consulted, did not give universal satisfaction. Indeed it occasioned us the loss of one of our previously most active female members, who having herself married at thirty-five, was outraged that we should pitch upon thirty as the entering point of an old maid's life, and left our society because of this (as she chose to call it) "bald anachronism in our proceedings."

We admit no applicants, then, under the age of thirty. They, when admitted, oblige themselves to obey the regulations of the Institution. They are placed upon the confessional before the females of the Matrimonial Committee, and must commit in sacred confidence their ages, healths, fortunes, family connections, &c. -all of which are duly registered. Being thus inducted into the Institution, let us explain the manner and philosophy of their preparation for, and introduction into the married state.

Primarily, then, we regard celibacy in a female after attaining a certain age, as a disease. Woman was created for practical results; she is neither a pla

tonic deduction, nor a physicological abstraction. She is dual in her nature, and a parasite by first intention. The German language designates the unmarried maid by a term of the neuter gender; thus in its admirable philosophy, voting woman a sexless cipher until married. What think ye of a mateless dove?-or a barren fig-tree?-or a bell without a clapper ?-or the half of a pair of scissors? Woman unmarried is not less an abnormal curiosity than these. We regard celibacy, then, in the old maid as a disease. Her disease admits of but one cure, and that is marriage. But if she has been long suffering from it, she is every day removed further and further from a cure. Violent symptoms are developed which, without removal, render a cure next to impossible. Some of the most prominent of these symptoms are spleen, melancholy, dislike of her sex, affectation, friskiness, fickleness, swimming in the head, and fainting fits upon the near approach of men, feline proclivities, intense piety, gossiping, garrlity, and many others too numerous to mention. Our first care, then, is to remove as far as we are able these symptoms. We do this by removing, if possible, the original causes connected with them. Thus spleen and melancholy are readily traceable to neglect and despair, and their natural remedies, therefore, are society and attention. When the despairing old maid is thrown into the company of gentlemen who are polite and attentive, hope revives, her spirits return, and a gentle breeze and buoyant waters seem to lift up her stranded bark, and bear it onward in the broad road-stead towards the haven of matrimony. Then, the attention of the members of the Association being gratuitous, and assiduous, she leaves off her old and disagreeable arts to attract attention upon finding them supererogatory. Cats are carefully excluded from the Asylum. Mirrors, also, after several months of experience, have been banished, and our patients are dressed by waiting maids in a style appropriate to their ages. Looking in mirrors, we found, excited that vanity in some which it was our design to soothe; others it

rendered fretful and peevish,-and for some again it seemed to weave mourning weeds for roses faded, and beauty departed. Our discipline discourages sentimentality, as we generally find it unnaturally developed. We exclude all novels and poetry, Milton, Shakespeare, and Hudibras excepted. Our diet is simple and wholesome, condiments being avoided as much as possible. We have musical instruments of all kinds, with carefully selected music, such as "Love Not," "Twenty Years Ago," &c. Italian and opera airs have been latterly excluded, because they seemed to act unfavourably on the nerves of many patients.

So much for the details of our plan, and our discipline, and mode of treatment; now for the results of our experiment.

Upon opening the Asylum, the committee fixed the number of inmates which our present means enables us to accomodate at fifty; which number we always keep full by supplying vacancies as soon as they occur. The number of members of our Association, including the Executive Committee, varies from twenty-five to one hundred. We opened the Asylum on the Ist of April, 1857. Our two drawing-rooms are constantly open and full of company,-none, however, having access to them but members of the Association. We give parties regularly, and balls occasionally, adopting, in short, all the approved routine of fashionable city entertainment. The Sine-cure Members, who, as I have remarked, include only bachelors and widowers, being obliged to attend our entertainments, they are never insipid for want of company or a disproportion between the sexes. If any bachelor is peculiarly diffident he is placed under the patronage of some experienced member, who introduces him, and does not desert him until association has worn off any uneasy sensibility, and thus, in a short time the most bashful bachelor will find himself at ease in any company or society. The true parent of that sympathy called love, is association. Proximity produces love between man and woman as naturally and certainly as it produces assimilation and attraction

between any other two magnets. Recognizing this secret, the constant aim of the Committee has been to keep up a constant and hilarious communion between the members and our patients or maids. In this way the Association married off no less than twenty-five maids during the first three months of its existence! And since the 1st of August, there have occurred in the Asylum no less than thirtyone marriages!

Another great secret to which the Association ascribe much of their success is this: the membership pledge is, if possible to get married. Hence none join but those who have long mourned the vacant chair by the fire-side, and who dare not look the coffee-pot fairly in the face, because they have so long failed to provide it a mistress. Hence they join with the determination of marrying. They visit our ladies animo matrimonii, attacking them with marriage prepense,

that is, with sedate, deliberate purpose of committing matrimony. And this disposition, one may readily believe, meets with no damper on the part of the old maids. The parties being thus predisposed to marriage,—all we have to do is, to bring them together; association does the rest.

Many men spend their prime in such close application to business, that they allow themselves no time for society. At middle age the bachelor finds himself independent in circumstances, but with no partner to share and no family to enjoy the fruits of his labour. But, alas! he knows no more about getting a wife than a Fejee cannibal does of medical jurisprudence! He has neglected the opportunity of acquiring confidence and ease in society. He has never been initiated into all the delightful mysteries and easy elegancies which are the very life of fashionable intercourse. He knows nothing of all those delicate and graceful offices of gallantry which mark a polished gentleman, such as offering the arm, holding the prayer-book, turning the music, adjusting the shawl, &c., and he is weighed down by an oppressive sense of ignorance on those points. He has no fund of small-talk, and is not posted

on the current gossip of the neighbourhood. He can discourse of nothing but prices, or markets, or politics,-or if he ventures on literature, he is repulsed by ignorance, or routed on Hiawatha, which he has never been able to get through with. He has been accustomed to connect converse with thought, and perhaps has fostered no slight pretensions to wit among his gentlemen associates. Vain man! Instead of, in conversation with a lady, keeping up a merry random fire of rattling musketry, he brings out his heavy metal, gets a forty-two pounder to bear on her, and consumes a long time in loading, and having pointed it with great formality and precision, pours such a broadside into her as to silence her at once. He knows nothing of the nature of woman-her ways are to him a sealed book. He worships her with a distant veneration, which she invariably fails to appreciate, mistaking his diffidence for stupidity, and his formality for coldness. He wants a wife, but does not know how to get one. Who shall aid him? The Marriage Promoting Association! He is the very man we desire for membership. We introduce him to the Asylum, place him in the hands of ladies accustomed to society, sprightly, witty, and abounding in delicate tact at putting people at their ease. If he is discouraged, we cheer him, if elated we flatter him; we force him to attend, and he soon becomes acquainted; his diffidence forsakes him, and intoxicated by the novelty and delightful excitement of a new phase of existence, he is in two weeks a married man! With the unworn susceptibilities of youth, and the discretion and constancy of maturer years, he is sure to make an attentive husband and a kind father. Another principle which the Committee have adopted with great success, is that perfect frankness shall govern all their match-making. Flirting, and all other practices contra bonos mores, are unheard of in our institution. Moreover, when a gentleman becomes particularly interested in one of our patients, and advises with the board as to courting her, he is given her position, family, age, and fortune, copied from the register.

Candid dealing, (however absurd and incredible it may seem to some), we believe to be the shortest road to matrimony, and we think we discover in it a conservative principle, affording considerable security against unhappy matches. It leaves no room for disappointment. The circumstances of our inmates being carefully concealed except from him who has made his selection, we have in this a protection against fortune hunters. Contrary to the established usage of society, the attention of our beaux is directed in personam, and not in rem.

We believe that if many of the principles we have fairly put in practice could be brought to bear in society, one half the connubial misery of the world would be saved.

Marriage is at best a lottery.

"Where how few the prizes, and the blanks are countless!"

In society the middle-aged marry from avaricious or speculative motives, while the young are dragged into matrimony as oxen are pulled into the care of Cacusin a retrograde manner. With us, avarice finds no field to operate upon; and love, in losing its poetry, gains much in more substantial prose.

Fifty-one marriages in six months, out of one hundred and fifty-one old maids we consider a brilliant success, and yet we do r believe that a single match has been effected that will be other than a source of happiness to both parties.

Were it not for invading the sanctity of private life, we might mention several most happy and conjugal matches made up on an acquaintance of two weeks, or a shorter time. To one we cannot resist the temptation to refer briefly without giving names. Among the first of our patients, was one lady in her fiftieth year. Miss Katharine T. had devoted the prime of her life, (as to what true woman does not?) to getting married. She had failed! Licet saepe requæsita, (and what old maid has not been saepe requæsita!) she was still unmarried, and was fast settling down into a confirmed and despairing celibacy. All the more violent indications of the disease were prominently

developed. She was highly educated, and gifted with genuine talent, attended with not less genuine homeliness, heightened by a few of the stealthiest wrinkles of age:

"Ah! how had Disappointment poured the

tear,

O'er infant Hope destroyed by early frost!"

Her symptoms did not yield to our usual treatment, and our most skilful apWeeks pliances failed to give relief. rolled by, and still no beaux. Her case seemed growing desperate.

In looking over the arrivals of the different hotels one morning in June, we saw the name of an old acquaintance-a wealthy widower from a Planting State. An idea struck us immediately, and with irresistible force. We repaired immediately to the hotel, found our acquaintance and plied him to join our Association. He complied with that alacrity which widowers usually discover. The Matrimonial Committee at our instance recommended Miss Kitty to his particular attention, and after giving her due notice, we introduced him. Miss Kitty seemed determined to summon all her energy for a last desperate effort. The whole attack of this veteran upon the widower was one succession of brilliant strategic manœuvres. Now she marched boldly up and attacked him in front; then she feigned a retreat so as to inveigle him by stratagem, as it were, or cut him off by ambush; again she ventured a desperate effort to turn his flank, and anon effected a diversion in his rear. But it was all to no purpose; the widower was impregnable. All her skill, her tact, and her invincible pertinacity were lost upon him. Days rolled by, and the time for his departure was at hand. What was to be done! Woman's ingenuity came to the rescue. Miss Kitty had some relations living in a city a thousand miles (at least) from here, who had often pressed them to pay her a visit. Here was an opportunity, for our friend passed through that city on his way home. We lost no time in suggesting to him that his services might be àpropos. He promptly tendered them, and after some well gotten up

hesitation on the part of Miss Kitty they were accepted. She hastily packed her three band-boxes, one bonnet-box, two trunks, and a dry-goods box, and she and her escort were soon en route for the sunny South. We heard nothing of them for about a week, when a letter arrived from my dear Miss Kitty, informing us that she was so delighted with her escort, and our friend so well pleased with his companion, that they had mutually agreed to continue the relation on their journey through life, and accordingly the contract was sealed with due solemnity at the house of her relative, on the fifth day after her departure.

This is only one of the many astonishing cures affected by a residence in our asylum that we might cite. Many an old maid, whom her family and friends have long given up as hopelessly incurable, has been turned out of our Institution, in a few weeks, a happy wife. But we forbear, and must bring this already too lengthy report to an end.

Too

re

In conclusion we must be allowed to say something as to our designs and prospect in the future. The feasibility of our plan having been demonstrated by success, there is no impediment to our progress on the same scale on which we have thus far conducted the Institution. much praise can not be accorded to the Executive Committee for the manner in which they have husbanded our sources and our old maids. But can we be content within our present limited sphere of action? Can we, as philanthropists, consent to stand in the midst of suffering, and have no ambition to redouble our efforts to alleviate it? Sixty single females rescued from certain and eternal celibacy! What tender heart does not beat in sympathetic joy with ours at this result? And yet our joy, and just pride, and exultation are marred by the reflection that our necessities have compelled us to reject an innumerable host of applications. Will an enlightened community allow us to be thus cramped in our operations? Will not the clergy exert themselves to forward our enter

prise? Will not the ladies aid us in establishing branches of our Institution all

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