ain him in the belief that a tyro should
learn a business before being put in charge of important interests.
Mary is a tyro whose abilities and discretion he must test before--in
the words of the old song--he

"gives her the key of his chest,
To get the gold at her request."

Most women take to married and home-life easily, because naturally.
The shadow of the roof-tree, the wholesome restraint of household
routine and the peaceful monotony of household tasks accord well with
preconceived ideas and early education. John's liking for domesticity
is usually an acquired taste, like that for olives and caviare, and to
gain aptitude for the duties it involves, requires patience. He needs
filing down and chinking, and rounding off, and sand-papering before
he fits decorously into the chimney-corner. And when there, he
sometimes does not "season straight." He was hewed across the grain,
or the native grain ran awry, or there is a knot in the wood.

"Why were those newel posts oiled before they were set up?" I asked of
a carpenter.

"T' keep'em from checkin', to be sure."

"Checking?"

"Yes, ma'am. Goin' in shaller cracks all over, 's wood's apt to do
without it's properly treated beforehand. Sometimes 'twould crack
clean through ef 'twarnt for the ile."

In his new position John is apt "to go in shaller cracks all over,"
unless his feminine trainer has been judicious in the use of
lubricants--assuasive and dissuasive. If handled aright by the owner
he, to do him justice, rarely "cracks clean through."

"Checking" in this case signifies the lack of the small, sweet
courtesies which are the peaceable fruits of the Gospel of
Conventionality. Breeding, good or bad, environs the growing lad, as
Wordsworth tells us heaven lies about us in our infancy. The boy whose
mother allows him to lounge into her presence with his cap upon his
head, whose sisters wink indulgently at his shirt sleeves in parlor
and at table--will don his hat and doff his coat in his wife's
sitting-room. Politeness, like gingerbread, is only excellent when
home-made, and is not to be bought for money.

I wonder if John--disposed by nature and too often by education to
hold such niceties of custom as trifles and cheap--suspects what a
blow is dealt to his wife's ideals when he begins to show, either that
he respects her less than of old, or that he is less truly a gentleman
than his careful conservation of elegant proprieties during their
cour