Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/227

 already well off, and thus deprived of his strongest stimulant to exertion. On the contrary, she would rather have suspected and dreaded such a candidate for her hand and heart, and have preferred one who was likely to be more free to assist, effectively, her own exertions towards imprinting their common mark upon the advancing world, to the credit of their own name after their departure, as well as that of the family they hoped to leave behind them.

The love-sick youth of the other sex must thus, for his part, be careful of allusions to wealth or family, or other such non-personal matters, seeing they were apt to be viewed, by the critically interested fair one, merely as excuses for, or symptoms of, an idling tendency. His great-grandfather's merits, however overshadowing, could not possibly stand for his own. The personal had, in the very practical common sense of the time, become the sole consideration. The process of courtship was, indeed, one of the prominent high arts of the time, the grand object on either side being to find out each other sufficiently upon all important personal points. It was only when each was thus entirely satisfied with the other, that the final agreement was ratified, and a joint life entered upon, which thus gave all good promise of mutual suitability, as regarded alike personal happiness and public usefulness.

Yes, alas! with all its advance at this time, society had not emerged from this social necessity. Divorce features, however, had been very appreciably changed,