He comes, shakes hands with her, spits, and dines.

The conversation is not much, and ten minutes suffices for the dinner; fruit and toddy, the newspaper and the work-bag succeed.
In the evening the gentleman, being a savant, goes to the Wister society, and afterwards plays a snug rubber at a neighbour's.
The lady receives at tea a young missionary and three members of the Dorcas society .-- And so ends her day.
For some reason or other, which English people are not very likely to understand, a great number of young married persons board by the year, instead of "going to housekeeping," as they call having an establishment of their own.

Of course this statement does not include persons of large fortune, but it does include very many whose rank in society would make such a mode of life quite impossible with us.

I can hardly imagine a contrivance more effectual for ensuring the insignificance of a woman, than marrying her at seventeen, and placing her in a boarding-house.

Nor can I easily imagine a life of more uniform dulness for the lady herself; but this certainly is a matter of taste.