about modest worth and
other things they do not understand.

A meek deportment is a great mistake in the world. Uriah Heap's father
was a very poor judge of human nature, or he would not have told his
son, as he did, that people liked humbleness. There is nothing annoys
them more, as a rule. Rows are half the fun of life, and you can't have
rows with humble, meek-answering individuals. They turn away our wrath,
and that is just what we do not want. We want to let it out. We have
worked ourselves up into a state of exhilarating fury, and then just as
we are anticipating the enjoyment of a vigorous set-to, they spoil all
our plans with their exasperating humility.

Xantippe's life must have been one long misery, tied to that calmly
irritating man, Socrates. Fancy a married woman doomed to live on from
day to day without one single quarrel with her husband! A man ought to
humor his wife in these things.

Heaven knows their lives are dull enough, poor girls. They have none of
the enjoyments we have. They go to no political meetings; they may not
even belong to the local amateur parliament; they are excluded from
smoking-carriages on the Metropolitan Railway, and they never see a
comic paper--or if they do, they do not know it is comic: nobody tells
them.

Surely, with existence such a dreary blank for them as this, we might
provide a little row for their amusement now and then, even if we do
not feel inclined for it ourselves. A really sensible man does so and is
loved accordingly, for it is little acts of kindness such as this
that go straight to a woman's heart. It is such like proofs of loving
self-sacrifice that make her tell her female friends what a good husband
he was--after he is dead.

Yes, poor Xantippe must have had a hard time of it. The bucket episode
was particularly sad for her. Poor woman! she did think she would rouse
him up a bit with that. She had taken the trouble to fill the bucket,
perhaps been a long way to get specially dirty water. And she waited for
him. And then to be met in such a way, after all! Most likely she sat
down and had a good cry afterward. It must have seemed all so hopeless
to the poor child; and for all we know she had no mother to whom she
could go and abuse him.

What was it to her that her husband was a great philosopher? Great
philosophy don't count in married life.

There was a very good little boy once who wanted to go to sea. And
the captain asked him what he could d