The Paris Market Marriage.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 161, 17 July 1886, Page 5

The Paris Market Marriage.

Like other marts, in fact more than most of them, the Paris marriage market has its ups and downs, its flutterings and fluctuations. In former daya the heaven in which tnarriagoa were made was the notary's office. Now persons of matrimonial intentions are courted through the advertisement columns of the " Figaro " newspaper. This plan affords peculiar advantages in the way of laying out the advertiser's qualifications to tbo best advantage. It is interesting to arrange imaginary matches between these advertisers. For instance, in one column there are "a Protestant diplomatist, aged 42, well connected," "a young man of historic nobility, with expectations," and "a young man of twenty-eight, of ancient French nobility, with vast colonial properties producing a good income," but who is so mercenary as to stipulate that his wife's fortune shall be in hard cash. What more suitable alliance could be found for either of these ingenuous swains than the two ladies whose attractions are thus painfully compressed—" £120,000," and dowry up to £400,000?" As for the exceedingly beautiful young lady, who is twenty and portionless, we are afraid that for her the net of the advertiser will be spread in vain. She lacks the bait to gild the snare.