think of no other way of announcing or recording this,
except to send a telegram to an old friend (by this time a
total stranger) to say that he had just seen a man with two legs;
and that the man was alive.

"The uprush of his released optimism burst into stars like a rocket
when he suddenly fell in love. He happened to be shooting a high
and very headlong weir in a canoe, by way of proving to himself
that he was alive; and he soon found himself involved in some doubt
about the continuance of the fact. What was worse, he found he had
equally jeopardized a harmless lady alone in a rowing-boat, and one
who had provoked death by no professions of philosophic negation.
He apologized in wild gasps through all his wild wet labours to bring
her to the shore, and when he had done so at last, he seems to have
proposed to her on the bank. Anyhow, with the same impetuosity
with which he had nearly murdered her, he completely married her;
and she was the lady in green to whom I had recently said `good-night.'

"They had settled down in these high narrow houses
near Highbury. Perhaps, indeed, that is hardly the word.
One could strictly say that Smith was married, that he was very
happily married, that he not only did not care for any woman
but his wife, but did not seem to care for any place but his home;
but perhaps one could hardly say that he had settled down.
`I am a very domestic fellow,' he explained with gravity,
`and have often come in through a broken window rather than be
late for tea.'

"He lashed his soul with laughter to prevent it falling asleep.
He lost his wife a series of excellent servants by knocking at
the door as a total stranger, and asking if Mr. Smith lived there
and what kind of a man he was. The London general servant is not
used to the master indulging in such transcendental ironies.
And it was found impossible to explain to her that he did it in order
to feel the same interest in his own affairs that he always felt
in other people's.

"`I know there's a fellow called Smith,' he said in his rather
weird way, `living in one of the tall houses in this terrace.
I know he is really happy, and yet I can never catch him at it.'

"Sometimes he would, of a sudden, treat his wife with a kind of paralyzed
politeness, like a young stranger struck with love at first sight.
Sometimes he would extend this poetic fear to the very furniture;
would seem to apologize to the chair he sat on, and climb the stair