of him succeeded in doing. An opinion which, I remark, is not shared
by the relative in question. The mother of a growing son will know how
to sympathize with her Mamma-in-law, when her own son--

"--will a-wooing go,
Whether his mother will or no."

I am John's advocate and best friend, but I cannot withhold the
admission that he has some grave faults, and one or two incurable
disabilities. Grappling, forthwith, with the most obstinate of these
last--I name it boldly. John is not--he never can be--and would not be
if he could--a woman. Taking into consideration the incontrovertible
truth that nobody but a woman ever understood another woman--the
situation is serious enough. So desperate in fact, that every mother's
daughter of the missionary sex is fired with zealous desire to mend
it, and chooses for a subject her own special John--_in esse_ or _in
posse_.

This may sound like badinage, but it is uttered in sad earnest. The
wife's irrational longing to extract absolute sympathy of taste,
opinion and feeling, from her wedded lord, is a baneful growth which
is as sure to spring up about the domestic hearth as pursley--named by
the Indian, "the white man's foot"--to show itself about the
squatter's door. Once rooted it is as hard to eradicate as plantain
and red sorrel.

I brand it as "irrational," because common sense shows the extreme
improbability that two people--born of different stocks, and brought
up in different households--the man, sometimes, in no household at
all--should each be the exact counterpart of the other; should come