We did not anticipate the possibility of their becoming old maids, and they cannot become brides of the church.  I should honestly be glad to have either of them marry almost anybody, provided he is a decent fellow.  I should not even object to their marrying foreigners, but the difficulty is that it is almost impossible to find out whether a foreigner is really decent or not.  It is true that the number of foreign noblemen who marry American girls for love is negligible.  There is undoubtedly a small and distinguished minority who do so; but the transaction is usually a matter of bargain and sale, and the man regards himself as having lived up to his contract by merely conferring his title on the woman he thus deigns to honor.

I should prefer to have them marry Americans, of course; but I no longer wish them to marry Americans of their own class.  Yet, unfortunately, they would be unwilling to marry out of it.  A curious situation!  I have given up my life to buying a place for my children that is supposed to give them certain privileges, and I now am loath to have them take advantage of those privileges.

The situation has its amusing as well as its pathetic side—­for my son, now that I come to think of it, is one of the eligibles.  He knows everybody and is on the road to money.  He is one of the opportunities that society is offering to the daughters of other successful men.  Should I wish my own girls to marry a youth like him?  Far from it!  Yet he is exactly the kind of fellow that my success has enabled them to meet and know, and whom Fate decrees that they shall eventually marry if they marry at all.

When I frankly face the question of how much happiness I get out of my children I am constrained to admit that it is very little.  The sense of proprietorship in three such finished products is something, to be sure; and, after all, I suppose they have—­concealed somewhere—­a real affection for their old dad.  At times they are facetious—­almost playful—­as on my birthday; but I fancy that arises from a feeling of embarrassment at not knowing how to be intimate with a parent who crosses their path only twice a week, and then on the stairs.

My son has attended to his own career now for some fourteen years; in fact I lost him completely before he was out of knickerbockers.  Up to the time when he was sent away to boarding school he spent a rather disconsolate childhood, playing with mechanical toys, roller skating in the Mall, going occasionally to the theater, and taking music lessons; but he showed so plainly the debilitating effect of life in the city for eight months in the year that at twelve he was bundled off to a country school.  Since then he has grown to manhood without our assistance.  He went away undersized, pale, with a meager little neck and a sort of wistful Nicholas Nickelby expression.  When he returned at the Christmas vacation he had gained ten pounds, was brown and freckled, and looked like a small giraffe in pantalets.