and I must say for my friends, whom she had
severely ignored during her life, that they behaved very
handsomely on that mournful occasion. They turned out in
large numbers, and testified in other ways to their regard for
her unblemished character. I recall, not without emotion after
all these years, that Bunsey's memorial tribute to the church
paper--for which he never received a dollar--was a model
of appreciation as well as of Christian forgiveness and
self-forgetfulness.

The passing of Mrs. Stanhope made it possible for me to put into
operation the long-desired plan of retiring a little way into the
country, not too far from the seductions of the club and the
city, but far enough to conform to the tastes of a country
gentleman who likes to whistle to his dogs, putter over his
roses, and meditate in a comfortable library with the poets and
philosophers of his fancy. Here, with my good house-keeper,
Prudence--a name I chose in preference to her mother's selection,
Elizabeth--and my gardener and man of affairs, Malachy, I lived
for a number of years at peace with the world and perfectly
satisfied with myself. Although I was dangerously over forty, and
my hair, which had been impressively dark, was conspicuously gray
in spots, my figure was good, my dress correct, and my mirror
told me that I was still in a position to be in the matrimonial
running if I tried. I mention these trifling physical details
merely to save my modesty the humiliation and annoyance of
referring to them in future, and to prepossess the gentle reader
wherever the sex makes it highly important.

I do not deny that in certain moments of loneliness which come to
us, widowers and bachelors alike, I had the impulse to tempt
again the matrimonial fortune, and counting on my financial
standing, together with other attractions, I ran over the
eligible ladies of my acquaintance. But one was a little too old,
and another was a good deal too flighty. One was too fond of
society, and another did not like dogs. A fifth spoiled her
chances by an unwomanly ignorance of horticulture, and a sixth
perished miserably after returning to me one of my most cherished
books with the leaves dog-eared and the binding cracked. For I
hold with the greatest philosophers that she who maltreats a book
will never make a good wife. And so the years slipped cosily and
cheerily by, while I grew more contented with my environment and
less envious of my married friends, and when