As he is very frequently grown up and extensively known at the time the adoption takes place, his change of cognomen occasions at first some slight confusion among his acquaintance.

This would be no worse, however, than the change with us from the maid to the matron, and intercourse would soon proceed smoothly again if people would only rest content with one such domestic migration.

But they do not.

The fatal facility of the process tempts them to repeat it.

The result is bewildering: a people as nomadic now in the property of their persons as their forefathers were in their real estate.