would have his own way, even though he had to put his fingers in his
ears to get it. At one period of their joint connubial agreement,
when he had succeeded in accumulating a pitiful hoard amounting to
but little more than ten millions of dollars, she concluded to live
abroad for the purpose of educating their daughter, allowing him in
the meantime to increase his fortune to something like fifty millions
without having to worry about household affairs. But she had
sojourned with him long enough, at odd times, to realise that, so
long as he lived, he would never run away from an argument--unless,
by some dreadful hook or crook, he should be so unfortunate as to be
deprived of the use of both hands. She found room to gloat, of
course, in the fact that he was obliged to stop up his ears in order
to shut out the incontrovertible.

Moreover, when he called her "my dear" instead of the customary Lou,
it was a sign of supreme obstinacy on his part and could not, by any
stretch of the imagination, be regarded as an indication of placid
affection. He always said "my dear" at the top of his voice and with
a great deal of irascibility.

Mr. William W. Blithers was a self-made man who had begun his career
by shouting lustily at a team of mules in a railway construction
camp. Other drivers had tried to improve on his vocabulary but even
the mules were able to appreciate the futility of such an ambition,
and later on, when he came to own two or three railroads, to say
nothing of a few mines and a steam yacht, his ability to drive men
was even more noteworthy than his power over the jackasses had been.
But driving mules and men was one thing, driving a wife another. What
incentive has a man, said he, when after he gets through bullying a
creature that very creature turns in and caresses him? No self-