"
If the reader doubts, let him consider its practical results in any
great emporiums of "best society." Marriage is there regarded as a
luxury, too expensive for any but the sons of rich men, or fortunate
young men. We once heard an eminent divine assert, and only half in
sport, that the rate of living was advancing so incredibly, that
weddings in his experience were perceptibly diminishing. The reasons
might have been many and various. But we all acknowledge the fact. On
the other hand, and about the same time, a lovely damsel (ah! Clorinda!)
whose father was not wealthy, who had no prospective means of support,
who could do nothing but polka to perfection, who literally knew almost
nothing, and who constantly shocked every fairly intelligent person by
the glaring ignorance betrayed in her remarks, informed a friend at one
of the Saratoga balls, whither he had made haste to meet "the best
society," that there were "not more than three good matches in society."
_La Dame aux Camelias_, Marie Duplessis, was to our fancy a much more
feminine, and admirable, and moral, and human person, than the adored
Clorinda.
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