o not get any certain standard of men by a chart of their
temperaments; it will hardly answer to select a wife by the color of
her hair; though it be by nature as red as a cardinal's hat, she may
be no more constant than if it were dyed. The farmer who shuns all
the lymphatic beauties in his neighborhood, and selects to wife the
most nervous-sanguine, may find that she is unwilling to get up in
the winter mornings and make the kitchen fire. Many a man, even in
this scientific age which professes to label us all, has been cruelly
deceived in this way. Neither the blondes nor the brunettes act
according to the advertisement of their temperaments. The truth
is that men refuse to come under the classifications of the
pseudo-scientists, and all our new nomenclatures do not add much to our
knowledge. You know what to expect--if the comparison will be pardoned
--of a horse with certain points; but you wouldn't dare go on a journey
with a man merely upon the strength of knowing that his temperament was
the proper mixture of the sanguine and the phlegmatic. Science is not
able to teach us concerning men as it teaches us of horses, though I am
very far from saying that there are not traits of nobleness and of
meanness that run through families and can be calculated to appear in
individuals with absolute certainty; one family will be trusty and
another tricky through all its members for generations; noble strains
and ignoble strains are perpetuated. When we hear that she has eloped
with the stable-boy and married him, we are apt to remark, "Well, she
was a Bogardus." And when we read that she has gone on a mission and
has died, distinguishing herself by some extraordinary devotion to the
heathen at Ujiji, we think it sufficient to say, "Yes, her mother
married into the Smiths." But this knowledge comes of our experience
of special families, and stands us in stead no further.

If we cannot classify men scientifically and reduce them under a kind
of botanical order, as if they had a calculable vegetable
development, neither can we gain much knowledge of them by
comparison. It does not help me at all in my estimate of their
characters to compare Mandeville with the Young Lady, or Our Next
Door with the Parson. The wise man does not permit himself to set up
even in his own mind any comparison of his friends. His friendship
is capable of going to extremes with many people, evoked as it is by
many qualities. When Mandeville goes into my