ith contempt for the court or not, and it is pretty hard to
find, when I return home at night, that another set of the judiciary in
the form of Maria's family, a sort of domestic supreme court, controls
all my private life, so that except when I am rambling through the
fields alone, or am taking my bath in the morning, I cannot give my
feelings full and free expression without disturbing the family entente;
and there isn't much satisfaction in skinning people to a lonesome cow,
or whispering your indignant sentiments into the ear of a sponge already
soaked to the full with cold water. I have tried all my married life to
agree with every member of the family in everything he, she, or it has
said, but, now that this Goward business has come up, I can't do that,
because every time anybody says "Booh" to anybody else in the family
circle, regarding this duplex love-affair, a family council is
immediately called and "Booh" is discussed, not only from every possible
stand-point, but from several impossible ones as well.

When that letter of Goward's was rescued from the chewing-gum
contingent, with its address left behind upon the pulpy surface of
Sidney Tracy's daily portion of peptonized-paste, it was thought best
that I should call upon the writer at his hotel and find out to whom the
letter was really written.

My own first thought was to seek out Sidney Tracy and see if the
superscription still remained on the chewing-gum, and I had the
good-fortune to meet the boy on my way to the hotel, but on questioning
him I learned that in the excitement of catching a catfish, shortly
after Alice had left the lads, Sidney had incontinently swallowed
the rubber-like substance, and nothing short of an operation for
appendicitis was likely to put me in possession of the missing exhibit.
So I went on to the hotel, and ten minutes later found myself in the
presence of an interesting case of nervous prostration. Poor Goward!
When I observed the wrought-up condition of his nerves, I was
immediately so filled with pity for him that if it hadn't been for Maria
I think I should at once have assumed charge of his case, and, as his
personal counsel, sued the family for damages on his behalf. He did not
strike me as being either old enough, or sufficiently gifted in the arts
of philandery, to be taken seriously as a professional heart-breaker,
and to tell the truth I had to restrain myself several times from
telling him that I thought the whol