that it meant you were worth a few hundred thousands, that you could
build a splendid house, keep horses and chariots, and live in
style. You and I are sensible men, Paul, and we take the world as we
find it; and know that if a man wants a good dinner he must pay for
it. We don't quarrel with this state of things. How can it be helped?
But we need not virtuously pretend it's something else. When my wife,
being then a gay girl, first smiled at me, and looked at me, and smelt
at the flowers I sent her in an unutterable manner, and proved to me
that she didn't love me by the efforts she made to show that she did,
why, I was foolishly smitten with her, and married her. I knew that
she did not marry me, but sundry shares in the Patagonia and Nova
Zembla Consolidation, and a few hundred house lots upon the
island. What then? I wanted her, she was willing to take me,--being
sensible enough to know that the stock and the lots had an
incumbrance. _Voila tout,_ as young Boosey says. Your wife wants
you to build a house. You'd better build it. It's the easiest
way. Make up your mind to Mrs. Potiphar, my dear Paul, and thank
heaven you've no daughters to be married off by that estimable woman."

Why does a man build a house? To live in, I suppose--to have a
home. But is a fine house a home? I mean, is a "palatial residence,"
with Mrs. Potiphar at the head of it, the "home" of which we all dream
more or less, and for which we ardently long as we grow older? A
house, I take it, is a retreat to which a man hurries from business,
and in which he is compensated by the tenderness and thoughtful regard
of a woman, and the play of his children, for the rough rubs with
men. I know it is a silly view of the case, but I'm getting old and
can't help it. Mrs. Potiphar is perfectly right when she says:

"You men are intolerable. After attending to your own affairs all day,