ement argues a very limited knowledge of the resources of talk
possessed by two very cultivated and very self-willed persons fairly
pitted against each other in practical questions; the logic may indeed
be ridiculous, but such people as our Hero and Leander find no cases
under the sun where something is to be done, yet where little can be
said. And these wretched wranglings, this interminable labyrinth of
petty disputes, waste and crumble away that high ideal of truth and
tenderness, which the real, deep sympathies and actual worth of their
characters entitled them to form. Their married life is not what they
expected; at times they are startled by the reflection that they nave
somehow grown unlovely to each other; and yet, if Leander goes away to
pass a week, and thinks of his Hero in the distance, he can compare no
other woman to her; and the days seem long and the house empty to Hero
while he is gone; both wonder at themselves when they look over their
petty bickerings, but neither knows exactly how to catch the little fox
that spoils their vines.

It is astonishing how much we think about ourselves, yet to how little
purpose,--how very clever people will talk and wonder about themselves
and each other, and yet go on year after year, not knowing how to use
either themselves or each other,--not having as much practical
philosophy in the matter of their own characters and that of their
friends as they have in respect of the screws of their gas-fixtures or
the management of their water-pipes.

"But _I_ won't have any such scenes with _my_ wife," says Don Positive.
"I won't marry one of your clever women; they are always positive and
disagreeable. _I_ look for a wife of a gentle and yielding nature, that
shall take her opinions from me, and accommodate her tastes to mine."
And so Don Positive goes and marries a pretty little pink-and-white
concern, so lisping and soft and delicate that he is quite sure she
cannot have a will of her own. She is the moon of his heavens, to shine
only by his reflected light.

We would advise our gentlemen friends who wish to enjoy the felicity of
having their own way not to try the experiment with a pretty fool; for
the obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of
folly and inanity.

Let our friend once get in the seat opposite to him at table a pretty
creature who cries for the moon, and insists that he don't love her
because he doesn't get it for her; and in vain