A MEDITATION BY PAUL POTIPHAR, ESQ.


Well, my new house is finished--and so am I. I hope Mrs. Potiphar is
satisfied. Everybody agrees that it is "palatial." The daily papers
have had columns of description, and I am, evidently, according to
their authority, "munificent," "tasteful," "enterprising," and
"patriotic."

Amen! but what business have I with palatial residences? What more can
I possibly want, than a spacious, comfortable house? Do _I_ want
buhl _escritoires_? Do I want or _molu_ things? Do I know
anything about pictures and statues? In the name of heaven do I want
rose-pink bed-curtains to give my grizzly old phiz a delicate "uroral
hue," as Cream Cheese says of Mrs. P.'s complexion? Because I have made
fifty thousand this last year in Timbuctoo bonds, must I convert it
all into a house, so large that it will not hold me comfortably,--so
splendid that I might as well live in a porcelain vase, for the
trouble of taking care of it,--so prodigiously "palatial" that I have
to skulk into my private room, put on my slippers, close the door,
shut myself up with myself, and wonder why I married Mrs. Potiphar?

This house is her doing. Before I married her, I would have worn
yellow silk breeches on 'Change if she had commanded me--for love. Now
I would build her two houses twice as large as this, if she required
it--for peace. It's all over. When I came home from China I was the
desirable Mr. Potiphar, and every evening was a field-day for me, in
which I reviewed all the matrimonial forces. It is astonishing, now I