It is certainly easier, if less fitting, to get a wife as some people do clothes, not to their own order, but ready made; all the more reason when the bargain is for one's son, not one's self.

So the Far East, which looks at the thing from a strictly paternal standpoint and ignores such trifles as personal preferences, takes its boy to the broker's and fits him out.

That the object of such parental care does not end by murdering his unfortunate spouse or making way with himself suggests how dead already is that individuality which we deem to be of the very essence of the thing.
Marriage is thus a species of investment contracted by the existing family for the sake of the prospective one, the actual participants being only lay figures in the affair.

Sometimes the father decides the matter himself; sometimes he or the relative who stands in loco parentis calls for a plebiscit on the subject; for such an extension of the suffrage has gradually crept even into patriarchal institutions.

The family then assemble, sit in solemn conclave on the question, and decide it by vote.