they
were doing everything possible to make home pleasant, and wondered at
their failure. There they sat, prodding their husbands with hat-pins,
and grieved over the poor wretches' irritability.

I recall a conversation I once overheard. The husband arrived just at
dinner time. The wife heard him come in, and called to him in a faint,
dying voice, from the top of the stairway--

"George, is that you?"

The answer was spiritless.

"Yes."

The wife came downstairs.

"Well, then, we can have dinner. I don't know that it's ready, though;
Bridget has had a toothache all day, and she's just good-for-nothing."

All this in the same faded tone of voice.

The husband passed into the parlor, and began to read the paper.

The weary tongue of his feminine partner wagged on, in a dreary sort of
way.

"I think these girls are so foolish; they haven't a bit of pluck. I've
been trying to persuade her to go to the dentist's and have her teeth
out, but she won't. I'm just tired to death to-night, and there's no
end to the work; Bridget has been moaning around all day--why her
teeth----"

"Oh, bother her teeth!"

"Why, don't you care to hear anything that goes on at home, George?"

"I don't care to hear about teeth that go on at home; Bridget's teeth
especially. I don't care a rap for the whole set."

"How cross you are to-night, George! when I'm so tired, too. Johnnie,
your face is dirty, go and wash it; be quick now, for it's time for
dinner. I don't know that Bridget will ever call us. She's probably
sitting out in the kitchen, nursing her teeth; why she has five roots
there, and all of them so inflamed that----"

"Bother her roots, I say!"

"George, you are extremely irascible, but that's the way; I get no
sympathy at all."

"Not when you want it by the wholesale for Bridget's roots."

"Well, what should we talk about? I don't see how we can ever have
conversation in the home, if you won't listen to anything."

And so they went on--the tired husband, moody and irritable, and the
tired wife, loquacious about matters of no interest. I felt sorry for
her who spake, and him who heard.

A husband worn out with the cares and worries of an unsatisfactory
business day, and a wife harrassed and fretted by overwork and petty
annoyances, could succeed in talking pleasantly together only by the use
of will-power and principle. It would require a big effort, but the
effort would pay. It would be one of the best investme