d off." That night you sleep in the hut of the
real estate agent, and though you pray for everybody else, you do not
pray for me. Being more fortunate than many men who go out in such
circumstances, you have money enough to get back, and you come to me,
and out of breath in your indignation, you say: "You have swindled me
out of everything. What do you mean in deceiving me about that Western
property?" "Oh," I reply, "that was all right; that was
sentimentalism, and romance, and a joke. That's the way they all
talk!"

But more excusable would I be in such deception than you, O man, who
by glow of words and personal magnetism induced a womanly soul into
surroundings which you have taken no care to make attractive, so that
she exchanged her father's house for the dismal swamp of married
experience--treeless, flowerless, shelterless, comfortless and
godless. I would not be half so much to blame in cheating you out of a
farm as you in cheating a woman out of the happiness of a lifetime.

LOVERS' ATTENTIONS.

My brother, do not get mad at what I say, but honestly compare the
promises you made, and see whether you have kept them. Some of you
spent every evening of the week with your betrothed before marriage,
and since then you spent every evening away, except you have influenza
or some sickness on account of which the doctor says you must not go
out. You used to fill your conversation with interjections of
adulation, and now you think it sounds silly to praise the one who
ought to be more attractive to you as the years go by, and life grows
in severity of struggle and becomes more sacred by the baptism of
tears--tears over losses, tears over graves. Compare the way some of
you used to come in the house in the evening, when you were attempting
the capture of her affections, and the way some of you come into the
house in the evening now.

DON'T BE PREOCCUPIED.

Then what politeness, what distillation of smiles, what graciousness,
sweet as the peach orchard in blossom week! Now, some of you come in
and put your hat on the rack and scowl, and say: "Lost money to-day!"
and you sit down at the table and criticise the way the food is
cooked. You shove back before the others are done eating, and snatch
up the evening paper and read, oblivious of what has been going on in
that home all day. The children are in awe before the domestic
autocrat. Bubbling over with fun, yet they must be quiet; with
healthful curiosity, yet th