actical man. If you have power to bind and loose, as you told us
last Sunday, bind that fellow's ungovernable temper, and loose him
from the real slavery which he is in to his miserable conceit and
self-indulgence! and then if he does not believe in your 'sacerdotal
power,' he is even a greater fool than I take him for."

"Honestly, I will try: God help me!" added Frank in a lower voice;
"but as for quarrels between man and wife, as I told you, no one
understands them less than I."

"Then marry a wife yourself and quarrel a little with her for
experiment, and then you'll know all about it."

Frank laughed in spite of himself.

"Thank you. No man is less likely to try that experiment than I."

"Hum!"

"I have quite enough as a bachelor to distract me from my work,
without adding to them those of a wife and family, and those little
home lessons in the frailty of human nature, in which you advise me to
copy Mr. Vavasour."

"And so," said Tom, "having to doctor human beings,
nineteen-twentieths of whom are married; and being aware that three
parts of the miseries of human life come either from wanting to be
married, or from married cares and troubles--you think that you will
improve your chance of doctoring your flock rightly by avoiding
carefully the least practical acquaintance with the chief cause of
their disease. Philosophical and logical, truly!"

"You seem to have acquired a little knowledge of men and women, my
good friend, without encumbering yourself with a wife and children."

"Would you like to go to the same school to which I went?" asked
Thurnall, with a look of such grave meaning that Frank's pure spirit
shuddered within him. "And I'll tell you this; whenever I see a woman
nursing her baby, or a father with his child upon his knees, I say to
myself--they know more, at this minute, of human nature, as of the
great law of 'C'est l'amour, l'amour, l'amour, which makes the world
go round,' than I am likely to do for many a day. I'll tell you what,
sir! These simple natural ties, which are common to us and the dumb
animals,--as I live, sir, they are the divinest things I see in the
world! I have but one, and that is love to my poor old father; that's
all the religion I have as yet: but I tell you, it alone has kept me
from being a ruffian and a blackguard. And I'll tell you more," said
Tom, warming, "of all diabolical dodges for preventing the parsons
from seeing who they are, or what human beings are,