g with a remark, in part complimentary
and in part critical, upon the balmy April evening, let down the sash of
a window where the smell of honeysuckles was floating in.

"Have you heard from your wife lately?" he asked, as he resumed his
seat.

"Yesterday," said Richling. "Yes, she's very well, been well ever since
she left us. She always sends love to you."

"Hum," responded the physician. He fixed his eyes on the mantel and
asked abstractedly, "How do you bear the separation?"

"Oh!" Richling laughed, "not very heroically. It's a great strain on a
man's philosophy."

"Work is the only antidote," said the Doctor, not moving his eyes.

"Yes, so I find it," answered the other. "It's bearable enough while one
is working like mad; but sooner or later one must sit down to meals, or
lie down to rest, you know"--

"Then it hurts," said the Doctor.

"It's a lively discipline," mused Richling.

"Do you think you learn anything by it?" asked the other, turning his
eyes slowly upon him. "That's what it means, you notice."

"Yes, I do," replied Richling, smiling; "I learn the very thing I
suppose you're thinking of,--that separation isn't disruption, and that
no pair of true lovers are quite fitted out for marriage until they can
bear separation if they must."

"Yes," responded the physician; "if they can muster the good sense to
see that they'll not be so apt to marry prematurely. I needn't tell you
I believe in marrying for love; but these needs-must marriages are so
ineffably silly. You 'must' and you 'will' marry, and 'nobody shall
hinder you!' And you do it! And in three or four or six months"--he drew
in his long legs energetically from the hearth-pan--"_death_ separates
you!--death, sometimes, resulting directly from the turn your haste has
given to events! Now, where is your 'must' and 'will'?" He stretched his
legs out again, and laid his head on his cushioned chair-back.

"I have made a narrow escape," said Richling.

"I wasn't so fortunate," responded the Doctor, turning solemnly toward
his young friend. "Richling, just seven months after I married Alice I
buried her. I'm not going into particulars--of course; but the sickness
that carried her off was distinctly connected with the haste of our
marriage. Your Bible, Richling, that you lay such store by, is right; we
should want things as if we didn't want them. That isn't the quotation,
exactly, but it's the idea. I swore I couldn't and wouldn't live with