dolence. If you wish to comfort by bringing forward blessings or hopes for the future, do not do it with gay, or jesting expressions, but in a gentle, kind manner, drawing your words of comfort, not from trivial, passing events, but from the highest and purest sources.

If the subject for condolence be loss of fortune or any similar event, your letter will admit of the cheering words of every-day life, and kindly hopes that the wheel of fortune may take a more favorable turn; but, if death causes your friend's affliction, there is but little to be said in the first hours of grief. Your letter of sympathy and comfort may be read after the first crushing grief is over, and appreciated then, but words of comfort are but little heeded when the first agony of a life-long separation is felt in all the force of its first hours.

LETTERS SENT WITH PRESENTS should be short, mere cards of compliment, and written in the third person.

LETTERS ACKNOWLEDGING PRESENTS should also be quite short, written in the third person, and merely containing a few lines of thanks, with a word or two of admiration for the beauty, value, or usefulness of the gift.

LETTERS OF ADVICE are generally very unpalatable for the reader, and had better not be written unless solicited, and not then unless your counsel will really benefit your correspondent. When written, let them be courteous, but, at the same time, perfectly frank. If you can avert an evil by writing a letter of advice, even when unsolicited, it is a friendly office to write, but it is usually a thankless one.

To write after an act has been performed, and state what your advice would have been, had your opinion been asked, is extremely foolish, and if you disapprove of the course that has been taken, your best plan is, certainly, to say nothing about it.

In writing your letter of advice, give your judgement as an opinion, not a law, and say candidly that you will not feel hurt if contrary advice offered by any other, more competent to judge in the case, is taken. While your candor may force you to give the most unpalatable counsel, let your courtesy so express it, that it cannot give offence.

LETTERS OF EXCUSE are sometimes necessary, and they should be written promptly, as a late apology for an offence is worse than no apology at all. They should be written in a frank, manly style, containing an explanation of the offence, and the facts which led to it, the assurance of the absence of malice or desire to offend, sorrow for the circumstances, and a hope that your apology will be accepted. Never wait until circumstances force an apology from you before writing a letter of excuse. A frank, prompt acknowledgement of an offence, and a candidly expressed desire to atone for it, or for indulgence towards it, cannot fail to conciliate any reasonable person.

CARDS OF COMPLIMENT must always be written in the third person.

ANSWERS. The first requisite in answering a letter upon any subject, is promptness. If you can answer by return of mail, do so; if not, write as soon as possi

ble. If you receive a letter making inquiries about facts which you will require time to ascertain, then write a few lines acknowledging the receipt of the letter of inquiry and promising to send the information as soon as possible.

CHAPTER XVI.

WEDDING ETIQUETTE.

FROM an English work, "The Habits of Good Society," I quote some directions for the guidance of the happy man who proposes to enter the state of matrimony. I have altered a few words to suit the difference of country, but when weddings are performed in church, the rules given here are excellent. They will apply equally well to the evening ceremony.

"At a time when our feelings are or ought to be most susceptible, when the happiness or misery of a condition in which there is no medium begins, we are surrounded with forms and etiquettes which rise before the unwary like spectres, and which even the most rigid ceremonialists regard with a sort of dread.

"Were it not, however, for these forms, and for this necessity of being en règle, there might, on the solemnization of marriage, be confusion, forgetfulness, and, even-speak it not aloud-irritation among the parties most intimately concerned. Excitement might ruin all. Without a definite programme, the old maids of the family would be thrusting in advice. The aged chronicler of past events, or grandmother by the fireside, would have it all her way; the venerable bachelor in tights,

with his blue coat and metal buttons, might throw every thing into confusion by his suggestions. It is well that we are indepenent of all these interfering advisers; that there is no necessity to appeal to them. Precedent has arranged it all; we have only to put in or understand what that stern authority has laid down; how it has been varied by modern changes; and we must just shape our course boldly. "Boldly?' But there is much to be done before we come to that. First, there is the offer to be made. Well may a man who contemplates such a step say to himself, with Dryden:

'These are the realms of everlasting fate;'

for, in truth, on marriage one's well-being not only here but even hereafter mainly depends. But it is not on this bearing of the subject that we wish to enter, contenting ourselves with a quotation from the Spectator:

"It requires more virtues to make a good húsband or wife, than what go to the finishing any the most shining character whatsoever.'

"In France, an engagement is an affair of negotiation and business; and the system, in this respect, greatly resembles the practice in England, on similar occasions, a hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago, or even later. France is the most unchanging country in the world in her habits and domestic institutions, and foremost among these is her 'Marriage de convenance,' or 'Marriage de raisou.'

"It is thus brought about. So soon as a young girl quits the school or convent where she has been educated, her friends cast about for a suitable parti. Most parents