shall be placed. Our Hero and Leander are decidedly
nice people, who have been through all the proper stages of being in
love with each other for the requisite and suitable time. They have
written each other a letter every day for two years, beginning with "My
dearest," and ending with "Your own," etc.; they have sent each other
flowers and rings and locks of hair; they have worn each other's
pictures on their hearts; they have spent hours and hours talking over
all subjects under the sun, and are convinced that never was there such
sympathy of souls, such unanimity of opinion, such a just, reasonable,
perfect foundation for mutual esteem.

Now it is quite true that people may have a perfect agreement and
sympathy in their higher intellectual nature,--may like the same books,
quote the same poetry, agree in the same principles, be united in the
same religion,--and nevertheless, when they come together in the
simplest affair of every-day business, may find themselves jarring and
impinging upon each other at every step, simply because there are to
each person, in respect of daily personal habits and personal likes and
dislikes, a thousand little individualities with which reason has
nothing to do, which are not subjects for the use of logic, and to which
they never think of applying the power of religion,--which can only be
set down as the positive ultimate facts of existence with two people.

Suppose a blue-jay courts and wins and weds a Baltimore oriole. During
courtship there may have been delightfully sympathetic conversation on
the charm of being free birds, the felicity of soaring in the blue
summer air. Mr. Jay may have been all humility and all ecstasy in
comparing the discordant screech of his own note with the warbling
tenderness of Miss Oriole. But, once united, the two commence business
relations. He is firmly convinced that a hole in a hollow tree is the
only reasonable nest for a bird; she is positive that she should die
there in a month of damp and rheumatism. She never heard of going to
housekeeping in anything but a nice little pendulous bag swinging down
from under the branches of a breezy elm; he is sure he should have water
on the brain before summer was over, from constant vertigo, in such
swaying, unsteady quarters,--he would be a sea-sick blue-jay on land,
and he cannot think of it. She knows now he don't love her, or he never
would think of shutting her up in an old mouldy hole picked out of
rotte