her, she said "Yes!" as she might have assented to an
invitation to hear Patti. Well, that sort of thing don't answer in the
long run. It is all very well to have love without money; but money
without love is another matter. Mr. Hidehart turned out worse than the
Colonel; for he was stupid, vulgar, and mean. And she was so nice, so
delicate, so bright, so intellectual! Oh, what hours of bitter regret,
what biting of lips, what flushes of shame, what heart-shocks that
stopped the life-blood, and--well, truth must out--what caressing
memories of the young hero who first leaped over her young love's
ramparts! what loathing of the sensual lout who had been carelessly
suffered to take command of the fortress!--Why, Mr. Asmodeus! you don't
mean my friend, Mrs. Smith!--Did I mention any such name? No, Mrs.
Grundy, I mean Mrs. Hidehart, a mild, patient, smiling wife. But, up in
a little corner closet of her chamber, she keeps, not a skeleton,--for
those are shocking things to lie near a lady's slumbers, they are bad
enough in the shape of crinoline,--but a candle; and when she is very
much tried, she sits all alone there by its nickering light, and thinks.
What a life's fortune she has paid for the privilege! and how fortunate
that the Colonel doesn't come back reformed!

The Quaker poet of New England, who has written one of the most
beautiful things in the language, has hit off our friends Atticus and
Hidehart most admirably. He was not personally acquainted with them; and
so he has invested them with a tender, imaginative romance, and made the
one a barefooted lass and the other a grave judge. Did you ever read it,
Mrs. Grundy? It is called "Maud Muller"; and Asmodeus would buy a gross
of the best wax lights, if he could get a quarter of the illumination
out of them which shone on the pen that traced those lines.

Why, Mr. Asmodeus, you frighten me! What! Mr. Brown and Mrs. Smith?--My
dear Madam, I mentioned no names, did I? But you may be sure that
expensive candles are burned in houses where you think gas only is used.
How do you know how Jones lights his house? I don't mean the parlor,
where you and Mrs. Asmodeus display the family jewels on grand
occasions, and where Mrs. Jones exhibits the splendor of her beauty and
the radiance of her smiles. That is gas,--bright, beaming, brilliant
gas. What else should irradiate the loving tenderness which unites Mr.
and Mrs. Jones on such occasions? You don't suppose that Jones is g