straight-forward truth in such circumstances might as well put a knife
to his throat, if love and life are synonyms.

Honest John, thrusting his hands well towards the bottom of his
pockets, smiles sheepishly, yet knowingly, in listening to this
"discourse." Courtship is one thing and marriage is another in his
code. Mary's primal mistake is in assuming--(upon John's authority, I
regret as his advocate to say), that the two states are one and the
same. Moonlight vows and noonday action should, according to her
theory, be in exact harmony. John does not deceive consciously.
Wemmick's office tenets differed diametrically from those he held at
Walworth where his aged parent toasted the muffins, and Miss. Skiffins
made the tea. The mellow fervency of John's "With all my worldly goods
I thee endow"--must be taken in a Pickwickian and Cupidian sense.
Reason and experience sustain 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