girl the best of husbands; while virtue and understanding combined
cannot be relied upon to obtain her even one of the worst."

"I think the explanation is," replied the Minor Poet, "that as
regards, let us say, the most natural business of our life,
marriage, our natural instincts alone are brought into play.
Marriage--clothe the naked fact in what flowers of rhetoric we will-
-has to do with the purely animal part of our being. The man is
drawn towards it by his primeval desires; the woman by her inborn
craving towards motherhood."

The thin, white hands of the Old Maid fluttered, troubled, where
they lay upon her lap. "Why should we seek to explain away all the
beautiful things of life?" she said. She spoke with a heat unusual
to her. "The blushing lad, so timid, so devotional, worshipping as
at the shrine of some mystic saint; the young girl moving spell-
bound among dreams! They think of nothing but of one another."

"Tracing a mountain stream to its sombre source need not mar its
music for us as it murmurs through the valley," expounded the
Philosopher. "The hidden law of our being feeds each leaf of our
life as sap runs through the tree. The transient blossom, the
ripened fruit, is but its changing outward form."

"I hate going to the roots of things," said the Woman of the World.
"Poor, dear papa was so fond of doing that. He would explain to us
the genesis of oysters just when we were enjoying them. Poor mamma
could never bring herself to touch them after that. While in the
middle of dessert he would stop to argue with my Uncle Paul whether
pig's blood or bullock's was the best for grape vines. I remember