. . .My friend George Muncaster, who does everything charmingly different from any one else, hit upon one of the quaintest plans for his marriage. It was simple, and some may say prosaic enough. His days being spent at a great office in the city, he got leave of absence for a couple of hours, met his wife, went with her to the registrar's, returned to his office, worked the rest of the day as usual, and then went to his new home to find his wife and dinner awaiting him,—all just as it was going to be every night for so many happy years. Prosaic, you say! Not your idea of poetry, perhaps, but, after a new and growing fashion in poetry, truly poetic. George Muncaster's marriage is a type of the new poetry, the poetry of essentials. The old poetry, as exemplified in the old-fashioned marriage, is a poetry of externals, and certainly it has the advantage of picturesqueness.

There is perhaps more to be said for it than that. Indeed, if I were ever to get marr. . . Read More