Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[66] had not tabulated any statistics on that point, although, judging from the frequency with which wedding-cards came through the post-office, the graduates were in a fair way to be married quite as fast as was desirable, possibly faster. And Sir John was apparently a little relieved when, on exhibiting to him the gymnasium, sheik pointed out the use of various articles of apparatus for physical improvement. “A1!” he said, “that, now, is very interesting indeed; that is excellent. After all, don't you know, nothing improves a girl's chances like a good carriage of the person!”

Why is it that nobody ever speaks of a man's “chances” in a sense wholly matrimonial? Perhaps they do in England, where, I must say, one grows accustomed to hearing the worldly side of marriage presented in a way that rather disgusts an American; but even a travelling Englishman would hardly, I fancy, go through Harvard or Yale asking himself whether the lecture-rooms and the gymnasium were likely to hinder or help the young men's chances of marriage. Yet he-and possibly some of our own countrymen also-would use this odd phrase about women without thinking of its oddity. The assumption is, of course, that marriage is the one momentous event of a woman's life, and a very subordinate matter in a man's; and, moreover, that in a woman's case it is a matter of chance, and