ON THE COMPARATIVE HAPPINESS OF THE SEXES. 59 



acquaintances, and then solicit the hand of her who to his mind is the 

 beau ideal of what a wife ought to be ; and, in the event of her re- 

 jection of the tender, he can make the same offer to the next one 

 deepest in his affections. With a female the case is the very reverse. 

 She is debarred from making any proposal to our sex in regard to 

 marriage. She must wait until some such proposal is made to her- 

 self before she can utter a word on the subject ; and then it is seldom 

 indeed that she has sufficient time allowed her to come to an enlight- 

 ened and judicious conclusion in regard to the matter. An imme- 

 diate answer one of acceptance or rejection is in the vast majority 

 of cases insisted on ; so that the very haste in which she must decide 

 as to the most momentous step of her life renders it probable 

 that the decision will be a wrong one. If she have serious objections 

 to the individual who proffers her his hand, those objections are often 

 overlooked, lest by assigning them their due weight and rejecting 

 the suitor, she deprive herself of the only opportunity which will be 

 ever furnished her of entering into that state into which all of the 

 female sex are most solicitous to enter. It often happens, on the 

 other hand, that a young girl rejects the addresses of one lover under 

 the erroneous impression that she will by and by be asked by another 

 towards whom she feels a greater partiality ; and thus declines the 

 only such offer it may be a valuable one ever made to her at all. 

 And the remorse and misery which such a female must experience 

 when she learns either that he on whom she had confided has united 

 himself to another, or that from other causes she has nothing but Old 

 Maidship in prospect, will be better conceived than it were possible 

 to describe them. 



And if we contemplate the two sexes in the married state, we 

 perceive abundant reason to adopt the conclusion that in it also the 

 male sex is happier than the other. Women are pent up at home, 

 and doomed to endure the same domestic monotony day after day 

 to prepare the food of the family and superintend a thousand other 

 concerns connected with the house. Men, on the other hand, are 

 always moving about and witnessing an agreeable variety in the 

 affairs of the world. They have only, in most cases, to sit down at 

 the table and masticate their victuals and then depart again without 

 feeling the slightest concern, comparatively speaking, in domestic 

 matters. 



And, in the event of the married pair having children, almost all 

 the trouble of bringing up these falls to the lot of the poor wife. 

 It is hers to administer to their thousand little necessities, to hear 

 their cries, and to sympathize with their distresses. She is, in short, 

 the victim, if we may so express ourselves, of domestic duties. 



To all this it should be added, that there are many circumstances 

 of a physical nature which contribute in a great measure to the un- 

 happiness of woman from which man is exempted. 



On the grounds therefore to which we have slightly adverted, 

 we rest our hypothesis that, taken in the aggregate, the male are 

 much rriore happy than the female sex. 



What then are the practical inferences which should be deduced 

 from such a fact? Assuredly that, since Nature and circumstances 



