Page 99 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

condemned. The English fashion of the complete
independence of girls was also not accepted, and not
possible in Russian society. The Russian fashion of match-
making by the offices if intermediate persons was for some

reason considered unseemly; it was ridiculed by every one,
and by the princess herself. But how girls were to be
married, and how parents were to marry them, no one
knew. Everyone with whom the princess had chanced to
discuss the matter said the same thing: ‘Mercy on us, it’s
high time in our day to cast off all that old-fashioned
business. It’s the young people have to marry; and not
their parents; and so we ought to leave the young people
to arrange it as they choose.’ It was very easy for anyone
to say that who had no daughters, but the princess realized
that in the process of getting to know each other, her
daughter might fall in love, and fall in love with someone
who did not care to marry her or who was quite unfit to
be her husband. And, however much it was instilled into
the princess that in our times young people ought to
arrange their lives for themselves, she was unable to
believe it, just as she would have been unable to believe
that, at any time whatever, the most suitable playthings for
children five years old ought to be loaded pistols. And so

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