't Atticus be the happiest man in the world? You say
that everybody thinks he is. Ah, yes! that's because everybody behind
the blinds or beside the curtains doesn't see the real things that go
wrong,--only the imaginary ones." Atticus, when all alone in his
library, with no holes in the curtains, might tell a different story. He
might tell of a desolate heart, a solitary intellect,--hopes, dreams,
buried. He might ask himself the use of lifting the mind above the level
of common things,--of hoping to carry another one with him in equal
companionship,--of allowing the vulgarities of life to become
disgusting,--and of striving for a clearer, brighter, loftier sphere.
Why refine the thoughts, elevate the aspirations, and broaden the heart,
till the nature shrinks from contact with commonplaces, and shudders at
the coarse touch of worldly tongues? You see that Atticus uses broad
generalities, and never once individualizes Mrs. Atticus. And if Mrs.
Atticus were to steal down stairs in her night-gown, he would be ever so
kind and gentle, and playfully tell her she would catch cold, that she
had not enough clothing on, that the season was raw, that the mercury
stood at thirty, that it would snow to-morrow, etc., etc. And when Mrs.
Atticus retreated to her warm bed, he might look round on the weighty
volumes, and their wealth of lore, and think how he trod the path they
pointed out in solitary silence; and then, as he passed up stairs, a
great, coarse rasp might make his fine-strung nerves quiver, and he
might look at the candle he carried and it would suggest to him the old
Gallic saw which had just given him the spasm. So you see that the
curtains and peepholes had never discovered the price-current of the
Atticus brand of candles.

Nobody knows where some folks buy or burn their candles. Some people
keep them in closets when they do not find it convenient to procure
well-mounted skeletons. There is Mrs. Hidehart,--you know whom I
mean,--when she was a blooming young girl, she fell in love with the
Colonel, and, like a foolish thing as she was, she poured out all the
wealth of her affection upon him, as if the cruse had a magic power of
recuperation. Well, the Colonel turned out to be a rotten one; and
bitter was the taste in the poor girl's mouth for many a day! By-and-by,
when she thought she had washed it well out, and when Sm----, (was I
going to say Smith? No!) when Hidehart came along and bent and begged
and prayed for