midnight
Old ladies , who have passed the age of folly , or little girls , who have n't reached it . But women in the prime of their womanhood are always thinking of fashion-plates and curling-irons and love and shopping . Name me , if you can , four vainer , tiresomer , or more unfruitful topics . Have you never waked in your bed at midnight to wonder how it has come to pass that I , at my time of life , with my attractions , am still a bachelor ? To wonder what untold disappointment , what unwritten history of sorrow , has left me the lonely , brooding celibate you see ? I 'll lift the veil -- a moment of épanchement . It 's because I 've never met a marriageable woman who had n't her noddle stuffed with curling-irons and fashion-plates and love and shopping . ''