rand, just outside the Law Courts, might do quite a trade,
re-marrying couples who had just been divorced. A friend of mine,
a respondent, told me he had never loved his wife more than on two
occasions--the first when she refused him, the second when she came into
the witness-box to give evidence against him.

"You are curious creatures, you men," remarked a lady once to another
man in my presence. "You never seem to know your own mind."

She was feeling annoyed with men generally. I do not blame her, I feel
annoyed with them myself sometimes. There is one man in particular I am
always feeling intensely irritated against. He says one thing, and acts
another. He will talk like a saint and behave like a fool, knows what is
right and does what is wrong. But we will not speak further of him. He
will be all he should be one day, and then we will pack him into a nice,
comfortably-lined box, and screw the lid down tight upon him, and put
him away in a quiet little spot near a church I know of, lest he should
get up and misbehave himself again.

The other man, who is a wise man as men go, looked at his fair critic
with a smile.

"My dear madam," he replied, "you are blaming the wrong person. I
confess I do not know my mind, and what little I do know of it I do not
like. I did not make it, I did not select it. I am more dissatisfied
with it than you can possibly be. It is a greater mystery to me than it
is to you, and I have to live with it. You should pity not blame me."

There are moods in which I fall to envying those old hermits who
frankly, and with courageous cowardice, shirked the problem of life.
There are days when I dream of an existence unfettered by the thousand
petty strings with which our souls lie bound to Lilliputia land. I
picture myself living in some Norwegian sater, high above the black
waters of a rockbound fiord. No other human creature disputes with me my
kingdom. I am alone with the whispering fir forests and the stars. How
I live I am not quite sure. Once a month I could journey down into the
villages and return laden. I should not need much. For the rest, my gun
and fishing-rod would supply me. I would have with me a couple of big
dogs, who would talk to me with their eyes, so full of dumb thought, and
together we would wander over the uplands, seeking our dinner, after the
old primitive fashion of the men who dreamt not of ten-course dinners
and Savoy suppers. I would cook the food myself, and sit