regard to life, the final discrimination of what is
right and wrong.

Perhaps it is fairer to Margaret to consider the general opinion of the
world regarding her. No doubt, if we had now known her for the first
time, we should have admired her exceedingly, and probably have accounted
her thrice happy in filling so well her brilliant position. That her loss
of interest in things intellectual, in a wide range of topics of human
welfare, which is in the individual soul a sign of warmth and growth,
made her less companionable to some is true, but her very absorption in
the life of her world made her much more attractive to others. I well
remember a dinner one day at the Hendersons', when Mr. Morgan and I
happened to be in town, and the gay chat and persiflage of the society
people there assembled. Margaret shone in it. The light and daring touch
of her raillery Carmen herself might have envied, and the spirit in which
she handled the trifles and personal gossip tossed to the surface, like
the bubbles on the champagne.

It was such a pretty picture--the noble diningroom, the table sparkling
with glass and silver and glowing with masses of choicest flowers from
the conservatory, the animated convives, and Margaret presiding, radiant
in a costume of white and gold.

"After all," Morgan was saying, apropos of the position of women, "men
get mighty little out of it in the modern arrangement."

"I've always said, Mr. Morgan," Margaret retorted, "that you came into
the world a couple of centuries too late; you ought to have been here in
the squaw age."

"Well, men were of some account then. I appeal to Henderson," Morgan
persisted, "if he gets more than his board and clothes."

"Oh, my husband has to make his way; he's no time for idling and
philosophizing round."

"I should think not. Come, Henderson, speak up; what do you get out of
it?"

"Oh," said Henderson, glancing at his wife with an amused expression,
"I'm doing very well. I'm very well taken care of, but I often wonder
what the fellows did when polygamy was the fashion."

"Polygamy, indeed!" cried Margaret. "So men only dropped the a pluribus
unum method on account of the expense?"

"Not at all," replied Henderson. "Women are so much better now than
formerly that one wife is quite enough."

"You have got him well in hand, Mrs. Henderson, but--" Morgan began.

"But," continued Margaret for him, "you think as things are going that
polyandry will have to come