ds who have been made more just, more tolerant, more
large-hearted and large-headed, by their wives; for justice lives in a
drier light than that of the affections, and dry light is not a very
popular mode of illumination under "the monstrous regimen of women."

THE GOOSE AND THE GANDER.

Proverbs, as a rule, are believed to contain amongst them somehow or
other a quantity of truth. There is scarcely one proverb which has not
got another proverb that flatly contradicts it, and between the two it
would be very odd if there was not a great deal of sound sense
somewhere. There is, however, one of the number which, as every candid
critic must allow, is based on an egregious falsehood--the proverb,
namely, which affirms, against all experience, that whatever is good for
the goose is good for the gander. Viewing the goose as the type of
woman, and the gander as the type of man, no adage could be more
preposterous or untenable. Such a maxim flies dead in the very face of
society, and is calculated to introduce disturbance into the orderly
sequence and subordination of the sexes. Who first invented it, it is
difficult to conceive, unless it was some rustic Mrs. Poyser, full of
the consciousness of domestic power, and anxious to reverse in daily
life the law of priority which obtained--as she must have seen--even in
her own poultry-yard.

There is one way of reading the proverb which perhaps renders it less
monstrous; and if we confine ourselves to the view that "sauce" for the
goose is also "sauce" for the gander, we escape from any of the
philosophical difficulties in which the other version involves us. No
doubt, when they are dead, goose and gander are alike, even in the way
they are dressed, and there is no superiority on the part of either.
Death makes all genders epicene. Except for one solitary text about
silence in heaven for half an hour, which some cynical commentators have
explained as indicating a temporary banishment from Paradise of one of
the sexes, distinctions of this sort need not be supposed to continue
after the present life. If we are to take the former reading, and to
test it by what we know of life, nothing can be more unfounded, or more
calculated to give a wrong impression as to the facts. Were it not too
late, the proverb ought to be altered; and perhaps it is not absolutely
hopeless to persuade Mr. Tupper to see to it.

"What is good for the goose is bad for the gander," or "what is bad for