is a changeable thing, as our Virgil informed us at
school; but her change par excellence is from the fairy you woo to the
brownie you wed. It is not that she has been a hypocrite,--it is that
she is a transmigration. You marry a girl for her accomplishments.
She paints charmingly, or plays like Saint Cecilia. Clap a ring on her
finger, and she never draws again,--except perhaps your caricature on
the back of a letter,--and never opens a piano after the honeymoon.
You marry her for her sweet temper; and next year, her nerves are so
shattered that you can't contradict her but you are whirled into a storm
of hysterics. You marry her because she declares she hates balls
and likes quiet; and ten to one but what she becomes a patroness at
Almack's, or a lady-in-waiting."

"Yet most men marry, and most men survive the operation."

"If it were only necessary to live, that would be a consolatory and
encouraging reflection. But to live with peace, to live with dignity, to
live with freedom, to live in harmony with your thoughts, your habits,
your aspirations--and this in the perpetual companionship of a person
to whom you have given the power to wound your peace, to assail your
dignity, to cripple your freedom, to jar on each thought and each habit,
and bring you down to the meanest details of earth, when you invite her,
poor soul, to soar to the spheres--that makes the To Be or Not To Be,
which is the question."

"If I were you, Harley, I would do as I have heard the author of
'Sandford and Merton' did,--choose out a child and educate her yourself,
after your own heart."

"You have hit it," answered Harley, seriously. "That has long been my
idea,--a very vague one, I confess. But I fear I shall be an old man
before I find even the child."

"Ah!" he continued, yet more earnestly, while the whole character of his
varying countenance changed again,--"ah, if indeed I could discover what
I seek,--one who, with the heart of a child, has the mind of a woman;
one who beholds in nature the variety, the charm, the never feverish,
ever healthful excitement that others vainly seek in the bastard
sentimentalities of a life false with artificial forms; one who can
comprehend, as by intuition, the rich poetry with which creation is
clothed,--poetry so clear to the child when enraptured with the flower,
or when wondering at the star! If on me such exquisite companionship
were bestowed--why, then--" He paused, sighed deeply, and, covering