They have no trammels placed in the way of their free association; and, I would venture to assert, know more of one another in one month of company-keeping than Augustus and Laura will achieve in the course of any number of seasons of fashionable intercourse.

A "Sunday out" beats a croquet party hollow, in its opportunities for intimacy--as may readily be believed.
It is, really, curious this ignorance common in middle-class husbands and wives, sons-in-law and daughters-in-law, respecting their several attributes and characteristics before they became connected by marriage, and time makes them better acquainted--very curious, indeed! An American essayist, writing on this point, says--"When your mother came and told her mother that she was _engaged_, and your grandmother told your grandfather, how much did they know of the intimate nature of the young gentleman to whom she had pledged her existence?
I will not be so hard as to ask how much your respected mamma knew at that time of the intimate nature of your respected papa, though, if we should compare a young girl's _man-as-she-thinks-him_ with a forty-summered matron's _man-as-she-finds-him_, I have my doubts as to whether the second would be a fac-simile of the first." And yet, young men and women of respectable standing "over the way," are allowed far greater latitude for intercommunication than our own; so much so, that I must say, I would not like our budding misses to go the lengths of the American girl, who receives her own company when she pleases, without any previous permission, and can go abroad to places of public amusement, or, indeed, anywhere she likes, without a chaperon.
Still, there is a medium in all things; and, without verging to the extreme of our Transatlantic cousins, our conventionalities might be so tempered by the introduction of a little genuine human nature, as to admit of a trifling freer intercourse between our youth and young maidenhood of the upper classes.
Goethe, you may remember, makes Werther, whose "sorrows" fascinated a generation in the days of our great grandmothers, fall in love with Charlotte, entirely through seeing her cutting bread and butter--nothing more or less! A very unromantic situation for fostering the growth of the tender passion, you say?
Ah! but the literary lion of Weimar meant a good deal more in his description than lies on the outer surface.

He wished to teach a frivolous school that true affection will ripen better under the genial influences of domestic duties and home surroundings, than the masked world believes.
A girl's chances of marriage, the usual end and aim of feminine existence, are not increased in a direct ratio with the number of her ball dresses! Let your eligible suitors but see those young ladies who may wish to change their maiden state of single blessedness, _at home_, where they are engaged living their simple lives out in the ordinary avocations of the family circle; and not only abroad, in the whirligig of society, where they have no opportunities for displaying their _real_ natures.
Enterprising mammas might then find that their daughters would get more readily "off their hands," at a less expense than they now incur by pursuing Coelebs through all the turnings and windings of Vanity Fair.
Besides, they would have the additional assurance, that they would be better mated to those who prefer studying them under the domestic regime, than if they were hawked about to parties and concerts without end, to be angled for by the butterflies of fashion, who can only exist in the atmosphere of a ballroom and would die of nil admirari-ism if out of sight of Coote's baton! Your man really worth marrying, in the true sense of the word and not speaking of the value of his rent-roll, likes to know something more of his future wife-that-is-to-be, beyond what he is able to pick up from meeting her in society.

Think, how many of her most engaging charms he must remain ignorant of; and then, what on earth can he know of her disposition?
The most hot-tempered young lady in the world will manage to control her anger, and tutor herself to smile sweetly, when her awkward, albeit rich, partner tears off her train during his elephantine gambols in the gallop.

She may even say, with the most unaffected affectation of perfect candour that "really it doesn't matter at all," laughing at the mishap; but I should just like you to hear what she exclaims when her obnoxious little brother, Master Tommy, playfully dabbles his raspberry- jam'd fingers over her violet silk dress, or converts her new Dolly Varden hat into a temporary entomological museum! Observation in the family would enable Coelebs to mark these little episodes more closely, judging for himself the temper and tact of the idol of his fancy; while, at the same time, he might discover many admirable little traits of kindness and charity and grace, which can only be seen to advantage when displayed naturally in the home circle.
The moral is obvious.
Depend upon it, if there were a little more of this freedom of intercourse between our girls and young men, we would have a considerably less number of sour, disappointed virgins in our annual census; and, less vice and dissipation on the part of hot-brained youths, who, frequently, only give way to "fast life," through feeling a void in their daily routine of existence that stereotyped fashion is unable to fill.